Communicative competence

The topic represented in the following map is communicative competence. For this concept map, I got the information from two Jack C. Richards videos (Video 1 and Video 2) and previous knowledge. In the map, you will be able to see the definition of communicative competence, the contrast with linguistic competence, the five strands of communicative competence, and how we can focus a syllabus on communicative competence. 

Communicative competence is the ability to understand and use our knowledge of the language effectively in communication, making language appropriate for the context. For the context, I refer to the situation, the age of the participants, the culture of the participants, the formality of their relationship, the setting, among other factors.

On the other hand, linguistic competence is the ability we have to create accurate sentences that are grammatically correct, and it focuses more on accuracy rather than in fluency. Communicative competence has five strands to focus on and these are accuracy, fluency, complexity, appropriacy, and capacity.

Accuracy refers to the use the language in ways that it is grammatically and phonetically correct. Fluency is the ability to keep the flow of communication going and use our language resources to avoid speech breakdowns. Complexity refers to what extent your language has developed, how much your vocabulary, your knowledge of the grammar or your technical language has expanded. Appropriacy is the ability to adapt your language after reflecting the conditions of your context. And lastly, capacity refers to how much you can express yourself with what you know about the language.

Our ultimate goal as teachers is that our students can be able to master fully the target language, in other words, that they develop communicative communication and for that we can organize our syllabuses to focus them on communicative competence, focusing them on functions, tasks, fluency activities, and different context

In conclusion, we need to stop only focusing on the grammar aspects of the language and start focusing on language as a whole, helping our students to develop communicative competence so that they not only produce accurate sentences but that they also can use all their resources to express themselves in every context they can be in effectively and in an appropriate way.