Communicative Competence Analysis

The ubiquitous theme spread across the landscape of communicative language teaching today is communicative competence. Different terms like communication skills, interpersonal skills, people skills, soft skills, communicative competence (Hymes), communication competence (Spitzberg), pragmatic competence, social competence are liberally dotted on the terrain of communication landscape today. Do they essentially mean the same? Are there subtle differences among the terms? Does it matter to have so many terms to describe something called ‘effective communication’? Actually, what is the goal of the language teacher? A language teacher would say his intention is to make both his bright and weak students effective in communication. If our students are asked what their goals are as far as communication skills are concerned, they would, perhaps, say that fluency and speaking persuasively during campus recruitment to get jobs are their defining needs. And what is end

What is ‘motivation’ vis-à-vis competence? What is knowledge vis-à-vis competence? What is ‘skills’ vis-à-vis competence? These are fundamental concepts language teachers should pay unprecedented importance to. Relational competence should be theme that should be promoted in our classrooms. How should people relate to one another? Communication cannot be relegated to ‘I-said-what-I -wanted-to-on- his/her-face’ kind of brazen statements. After all, history is replete with examples from Egypt where communication was equated with ‘eloquence’ and ‘wise silence’ (Herrick). Motivation, according to Sherwyn Morreale, Brian Spitzberg, and Kevin Barge, and in their book ‘Human Communication—Motivation, Knowledge & Skills’ is the amount of desire or interest a student displays to communicate. Motivation, according to Spitzberg, is of two types, namely, positive motivation and negative