Communicative Competence and Oral Communication
I'm going to have a presentation about Communicative Competence and Oral Communication for Course and Design Evaluation's class tomorrow with the most beautiful dean at English and Letter Department. Since I was absent for ages, here is the material.
DISCUSSION
Communicative competence is chosen as the main discussion of this paper regarding to the importance it possesses towards the New Economic era these days. To be more knowledgeable about the related issue, this paper is served as the amateur tool in explaining all of it. Not forgetting also to mention the importance of having good communicative competence for all of the secretaries in LEMIGAS Corporation.
What is actually the purpose of learning English? There are so many answers regarding to those questions. But there is one thing, which is similar; it is to be able to communicate well with the interlocutors or native speakers. Being communicative means, the message should be sent clearly and the receiver understands it. Vice versa. ‘Clearly’ word mentioned previously should be interpreted widely too. The message should be spoken clearly using the proper use of grammar knowledge. This is why communicative competence always entails to the ability of speaking English linguistically. It refers to a language user’s grammatical knowledge of syntax, morphology, phonology and the like, as well as social knowledge about how and when to use utterances appropriately (Wikipedia).
What is the relationship between communicative competence and oral communication? It sure does have a lot of connection as the product of utterances will be judged silently by native speakers, so it is best if, for example, a secretary at LEMIGAS who sometimes deals with some important guests from USA understand in communicating well with them without leaving some misunderstanding. It is always a different thing when a non-native has a conversation with a native speaker. It requires the speaker to send the message clearer in order to the receiver fully understands it. Because of this importance, in this New Economic or Globalization era in which everyone fights and strives to be better, they always include their English skills in their resumes. This importance of having communicative competence has become such a depressive feeling towards a secretary (sometimes). It is because most of secretaries somehow hold the image of a company, or their boss. To show the seriousness of a company in holding a lot of business relations globally making the secretaries involved to be good at communicative competence. Therefore, it is important for some of them who are not as good as beginner-level students to follow course design for secretaries held at their companies.
As the module suggests, Canale and Swain (1980) describe the elements of communicative competence. There are four areas of knowledge and skill, as follows;
1. Grammatical competence;
2. Sociolinguistic competence;
3. Discourse competence;
4. Strategic competence.
1. Grammatical competence is the ability to recognize and produce the distinctive grammatical structures of a language and to use them effectively in communication. It is clear that to understand the formula when forming a sentence is important. Unlike Indonesian rules in forming a sentence, English language requires the non-native speakers to differentiate between present, past and future tenses. Grammar is indeed the knowledge that becomes the umbrella for the four skills in language learning (listening, reading, speaking, and writing). Without grammar knowledge, those four skills are hardly to be skilled. Basically, it should be skilled by the secretaries too. As for ESL (English as a Second Language) students who are quite strange with ESL itself, even if they stopped to a hundred native English speakers on the street and asked them about grammar, or tenses, only one of them would give the excellent answers. The other 99 would know little about terms like past perfect, for instance. Yet, they can speak fluent English and communicate effectively. As for the non-native speakers, it really helps to know about tenses, but don’t become obsessed with them. It is also important to speak naturally like native speakers. And it doesn’t hurt or cost an arm and leg to understand about it too. By understanding the formula first, it will be easier to arrange each word properly using correct grammar. Then when the words are uttered to the 100 native English speakers, they would understand well.
2. Sociolinguistic competence is the ability to interpret the social meaning of the choice of linguistic varieties. This competence also requires the non-native speakers to use language with the appropriate social meaning for the communication situation. For example, when there is a chance for greeting someone in a very formal situation, an American might say “Hello, how are you?” or “Nice to see you again.” But if there is also another chance when friends are meeting in an informal situation, it would be much more appropriate to say, “Hi, what’s up? whatcha been doing?”.
There is always a place for everything and we should put each of it in its own place. It also occurs to the way a speaker speaks to people in different age, gender, social environment and culture.
3. Discourse competence refers to the way ideas are linked across sentences in written or spoken discourses. There are two aspects related to discourse competence;
• Cohesion refers to how the ideas are linked linguistically. For example, it’s agreeable to use pronoun she to point at a girl in red dress. Pronoun also refers to what or who has been mentioned previously.
• Coherence refers to how the meanings of sentences or utterances are linked in written or spoken texts. For example, A: It’s hot in here | B: Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll turn on the fan. It can be identified that the conversation has coherence because B understands that A is expressing discomfort and reacts accordingly.
4. Strategic competence refers to person’s ability to keep communication going when there is a communication breakdown or to enhance the effectiveness of the communication. It also means being able to get one's message across through use of repetition, volume, or many other ways. This ability is especially important to lower level English language learners.
As for oral communication, intelligibility is also a very important consideration. It is quite impossible to communicate effectively if there are still some problems of the speakers in producing the sounds, content words in utterances, and pronunciation. Therefore, it is important to talk intelligibly to others so that people can understand what they mean. As Kenworthy (1987: 13) states: “Intelligibility is being understood by a listener at a given time in a given situation.”
It is like being understood of what should be uttered, as the speakers, by the listener. Then the speakers can be identified as intelligible speakers because the listener/receiver can identify what they produce. By looking at that case, there will be no problem in oral communication. If there are still some problems in pronunciation, it is best to practice the correct way of how to produce a word. For example, it is conceivable to check some words and write down how the dictionary suggests the readers to utter it in the proper way. Nothing worth having comes easy. So, the only solution for pronunciation’s problem is by practicing real hard. The simplest one a non-native speaker can manage is when s/he learns a new word, learn how to pronounce it correctly. If the words are said incorrectly, it would be hard to learn how to say it correctly. It is like developing and it takes a long time to break ‘that’ bad habit. So it is important to use dictionaries specifically for English learners. They provide phonetic reading for each word, which means, to learn how to say it correctly is achievable. Start a new habit by reading a lot and writing down some new words can help too. It is always believed, through reading-process, it solves any kinds of problem in this life.
As the module suggest, there is also word stress exists to be the magic key in understanding spoken English, which is also helpful in improving pronunciation. As for the native English speakers, they use it naturally that they don’t even understand or realize they use it. As for the non-native speakers, they need to work hard in speaking using word stress otherwise we might encounter two problems:
• It will be difficult for them to understand native speakers, especially those who speak fast.
• The native speakers may find it difficult to the non-native speakers.
There are some other ways to understand word stress. It is important to engage with a word many times, preferably in different ways, in order to really learn it - identifying and practicing word stress can provide one or two of those engagements. The mistakes can be reduced as a common cause of misunderstanding in English by learning word stress. By stressing the wrong syllable in a word, it can make the word very difficult to hear and understand. It can also change the meaning of type of the word. For example “they desert (dəˈzÉ™rt) the restaurant before the dessert (diˈzÉ™rt) time.” The first use of desert means run out or leave. They are different grammatically.
How to divide words into syllables also makes a big difference in how the word would be pronounced. Since it is very important for the non-native speakers to have the ability to divide words into syllables, let’s take a look at this one:
1. Cab-in
2. Ca-bin
The first is divided after the ‘b’. It makes the ‘a’ has a short sound. The second one is divided after the ‘b’, which makes the ‘a’ long as it is the final letter. It would make the second sound like ‘kay-bin’ which is an incorrect pronunciation. A non-native speaker should understand how to count the syllables first and then move to the syllable division rules. The easiest one to understand how to count syllables is through the listen-method. First, a speaker needs to say the word (e.g. understand). Second, listen carefully and count how many times she hears A, E, I, O, and U as a separate sound? Last, that is the number of syllables.
Sure, it will be in a long run for all of non-native speakers in the world to discuss about word stress and syllables. The point is how they REALLY want to take some time to practice. Laziness or procrastinating has been trusted in giving no solution for them to be able to speak English intelligibly.
CONCLUSION
Communicative competence is surely important for a secretary or language learners out there who want to understand more about speaking English fluently. Therefore, the four-basic competences that have been mentioned earlier should be skilled gradually. As for the secretaries, they should follow some written and listening tests to know which level they belong to. By knowing in which level they are positioned at, it will be easier for them to catch their slowness in understanding English language. Then it will be such a plus for the company per se.
REFERENCES
Anwar, Djasminar. Course Design and Evaluation.
http://www.englishteachermelanie.com/study-tip-how-to-improve-your-english-pronunciation/
http://english.glendale.cc.ca.us/syllables.html
https://www.englishclub.com/pronunciation/word-stress-2.htm
