Communicative Competency

The Communicative Competence of the 3rd and 4th year

Bachelor of Secondary Education English Majors in De La Salle University Dasmarinas in Giving Desirable Response during their Major Classes

Kryzza Lyn B. Faustino and Rea Hannah M. Sotto

Bachelor of Secondary Education Major in English

Introduction

Each person has the ability and capability to learn and speak a language. Not just that, every person can learn more than one language and in most cases, it is the mother tongue and the foreign language. Considering the Philippines, the mother tongue is Filipino and the second language is English. English is the language that is universally known around the world. Since it is an important aspect, Strang Burton, PhD, defined language as a vehicle

It also includes how and when to use utterances appropriately. The concept of communicative competence was coined by Dell Hymes in 1972 and was introduced by Noam Chomsky in 1965. According to Chomsky, ‘competence’ is defined as ‘the speaker-hearer’s knowledge of his language’ (1965:4) which is the prime concern of linguistic theory. He said, “competence is an idealization: it is the knowledge of the ‘ideal’ speaker-listener’ operating within ‘a complete homogenous speech community’. It distinguishes itself from ‘performance’ which is seen as ‘the actual use of language in concrete situations.’” As Chomsky says, (and Hymes quotes), ‘a record of natural speech will show numerous false starts, deviations from rules, changes of plans in mid-course, and so on’. In these senses, performance represents both an incomplete and degenerate reflection of the ideal speaker-listener’s competence, and as such is considered to be of little relevance theoretical and descriptive linguistics. According to Canale and Swain, applied linguists, the ability to communicate requires 4 different sub-competencies which are grammatical (ability to utter statements grammatically correct), sociolinguistic (ability to utter statements that is sociolinguistically appropriate), discourse (ability to utter statements with coherence and cohesion) and strategic (ability to communicate problems

Along the process, there will be more unfolding of the truth on why do these particular students, specifically the 3rd and 4th year English Major students of De La Salle University Dasmarinas, could not give desirable responses during their major classes; the negative factors that affect the communicative competence; and how do these factors influence the communicative abilities of the students as a whole. Communicative competence applies to both written and spoken language as well as too many other symbolic systems. But this research will focus on giving oral