COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE ANALISYS

Nowadays, people do not know how important and essential is to have communicative competences, especially for those who are studying to become academic people. Having a good ability to express our ideas is something that can help us to get into a good job, and that is something that everybody wants, but just a few people have the ability required, therefore it is important to know how to develop them and do our best in order to improve them as much as we can. There a lot of things involved in Communicative Competences, and we will develop some of them in order to make them clearer and understandable.

There are a lot of meanings for Communicative Competence, but lets focus in the proposals of Hymes and Savignon. Hymes says that it is The ability to interpret messages and negotiate meaning within specific contexts, here, we should understand this as the different contexts that we have to face to, and we should be capable to understand some kind of jargons (different vocabulary of academic people, ethnic groups or regions), but not only understand them, we have to reproduce them and apply them depending of the context we are into. While Savignon says that Communicative Competence is An interpersonal construct examined by means of over performance of two or more people in the process of communication, this means that is how we communicate with somebody else in a simple way (is neither academic nor formal), and this approach depends of the cooperation of all the participants involved.

Into the field of communication, we have two different approaches for using the language; those are Cognitive/Academic Language Proficiency (C.A.L.P.) and Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills (B.I.C.S.), the first one is the one that is used in a classroom, it is used in exercises and tests focused on the form. In the other hand, B.I.C.S. has a daily usage, because it is the one which people use to communicate with each other, and it focuses on the meaning. C.A.L.P. is called a context-reduced, because the context of this approach is school, a classroom where students can share the information about an established topic, out of there, is domain of B.I.C.S. which is called context-embedded, because the context that is used into is bigger than C.A.L.P. and people can communicate and talk about whatever they want, because they do not have a specific topic to discuss.

Michael Canale and Merrill Swain (1980) proposed four different components related to this topic; those are: Grammatical Competence. Discourse Competence. Sociolinguistic Competence. Strategic Competence.

Grammatical Competence, deals with lexical items, morphology, syntax, semantics and phonology. It is important to know about all of them in order to master the code of a language. Discourse Competence, it is called the complement of the Grammatical Competence, because here, we need to have the ability of connecting a sentence with other sentence in order to create a paragraph with a meaningful sense. Sociolinguistic Competence, according to Savignon, this type of competence Requires an understanding of the social context in which language is used: roles of the participants, the information they share, and the function of interaction. It is important take in consideration what Savignon says here; because we need to be aware about what are we going to share and how to do it, because we can be misunderstood sometimes, context plays an important role here, because our context can be different than somebody else context, therefore, our vocabulary could be different. Strategic Competence, Canale and Swain (1980) refer to this as The verbal and nonverbal communication strategies that may be called into action to compensate for breakdowns in communication due to performance variables or due to insufficient competence. It is how we manage the language in order to get a goal when we have troubles for giving a message.

The first two reflect the use of the linguistic system itself, how we have to use grammar in an appropriate form, also to master the branches of linguistics, because by understanding them, we can have a better idea how language behaves. Also, we are capable to create sentence connection, in order to form a paragraph and even an essay for example. The other two define the functional aspects of communication, how language behaves depending of the context we are into while we make ourselves sure that we are able to understand society rules context.

As we are noticing, everything has a reason in language; that is why a linguist called Michael Halliday, who provided the best expositions of language functions, outlined seven different functions of language: 1) Instrumental function, serves to manipulate the environment, to cause certain events to happen. For example, when a mother tells to her son do not touch the stove! she is trying to avoid that her son gets burn, because he does not know that the stove is hot. 2) The Regulatory function serves for setting rules and control of events, for example, if you did your homework already, you can keep playing. 3) The Representational function shows us the reality as it is and conveys facts and knowledge. The children enjoy playing; The Queen of Spain visited U.S.A. 4) The Interactional function serves to establish and maintain contact knowledge of slang, jargon, jokes, politeness and formal expressions. Whats up dude?; What do you do? 5) The Personal function is used to express feelings and emotions. I feel so sad. 6) The Heuristic function is more used typically for children with their incessant why. We use it to seek answers (usually in the form of a question). Mom, why did you eat my sister? 7) The Imaginative function helps us to create ideas and imaginations and go beyond to the real world. The moon is made of cheese.

In language we have something called discourse analysis, and it helps us to understand the real meaning of a phrase, the pragmatics which is into a phrase, helps us to avoid an ambiguous communication. It is to go beyond of the language and understand the real meaning of the message. But when we try to analyze our conversations with somebody else, it is hard to notice about some steps that we have to follow in order to have a good conversation. Attention getting, topic nomination, topic development and topic termination are the steps we have to use in order to have a good conversation, but it is hard even for native speakers to use them, and the second language students have to deal with this, they have to practice this steps in order to learn how to create, maintain and finish a topic. But the most difficult thing of a conversation is to finishes it, even for native speakers, they use to use a smile or phrases like Oh! Its late, I have to go now when they want to finish a conversation.

Grice (1967) noted that there are four maxims that enable the speaker to maintain a conversation easily. First we have quantity, which is to say exactly what we have to say in order to give an understandable message. The second one is quality, and it refers to say only what is true. Then, we have relevant, we have to say only what is relevant, otherwise, the hearer could get bored. And finally, manner, which means being clear. And there is something indeed of the four tips that we just read, and it is pragmatics, we are able to understand a couple of words as a complete phrase depending of the context, for example, a mom tells to her son who is watching TV: Son, it is late, unconsciously, the child understands What are you doing awoke? Turn off the TV and go to sleep. Pragmatics has an important role in communication, but we must develop it, because is essential and useful.

Another problem that second language students have to face is that they do not know how to manage a discourse; therefore, Martin Joos (1967) provided 5 styles of discourses based on the criterion of formality. The oratorical style, this one is used in public with a large audience; there may be some interactions sometimes. Deliberate style, it is for a larger audience, normally, interaction is not allowed between speaker and hearers. Consultative style, this is a formal dialogue, it includes a careful choice of words, such as doctor-patient conversation. Casual style, social barriers are moderated low, it is a friendly environment, it is a friends and colleagues conversation. Intimate style, there is no social inhibitions here, is used to talk with family, loved ones and very close friends.

Something that is very important in a conversation a good nonverbal communication, we should use kinesics or gestures (body language) in order to do more expressive our message. Another important nonverbal communicative technique is eye contact, it is useful and shows self confidence in American culture, but in Japan, it can be considered rude. But we have more nonverbal ways of communication, for example proxemics or physical proximity, sometimes some objects serve to maintain physical distance between two people, there is a distance that must be respected depending of the context of the situation and the cultural ideology. We have artifacts, such as clothes, and jewelry, show social class, general character, etc. Kinesthetics, where and how we touch to somebody else, it could be misunderstood depending of the confidence that we have with the other person or the cultural context or ideology. Olfactory dimensions, how we smell, we can say a lot things about ourselves by our smell, or if we use a perfume or not.

To finish this analysis, it is necessary to mention that communication is not only to send and receive a message, it is to know how interpret what we read or what we hear, there are a lot of factors that we have seen in this chapter that maybe we never thought that they existed, but they do, and they are very useful to get into the real concept of the communicative competences; even though these competences are not easy to learn and develop, it is not impossible to do it, we just need to practice and be aware about what we say and what we hear all the time.

By Milton Orlando Martinez