Difference between Communicative and Linguistic Competence

The main difference between the Communicative competence and the Linguistic one is that the linguistic competence belongs to the whole Communicative Competence or Language Knowledge that the students or native speakers have.


So, Linguistic is a component from Communicative competence in other words.


"Communicative competence is made up of four competence areas: linguistic, sociolinguistic, discourse, and strategic.

• Linguistic competence is knowing how to use the grammar, syntax, and vocabulary of a language. Linguistic competence asks: What words do I use? How do I put them into phrases and sentences?

• Sociolinguistic competence is knowing how to use and respond to language appropriately, given the setting, the topic, and the relationships among the people communicating. Sociolinguistic competence asks: Which words and phrases fits this setting and this topic? How can I express a specific attitude (courtesy, authority, friendliness, respect) when I need to? How do I know what attitude another person is expressing?
• Discourse competence is knowing how to interpret the larger context and how to construct longer stretches of language so that the parts make up a coherent whole. Discourse competence asks: How words, phrases and sentences are put together to create conversations, speeches, email messages, newspaper articles?

• Strategic competence is knowing how to recognize and repair communication breakdowns, how to work around gaps in one’s knowledge of the language, and how to learn more about the language and in an specific context. Strategic competence asks: How do I know when I’ve misunderstood or when someone has misunderstood me? What do I say then? How can I express my ideas if I don’t know the name of something or the right verb form to use?"

http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/goalsmethods/goal.htm


Conclusions


As a teachers we have to acknowledge what involves the communicative competence and then look for ways to develop not only the four features of the communicative competence but  the four skills of the language in the students too.


We have to create our own method and try to figure out the techniques that are best to succeed in the classroom. We have to encourage the students to find the opportunities to practice what they have learned in classes out of the classroom, because that is the only truly way to acquire the language.


As a teachers we have to try to be transformative intellectuals by our techniques, by our method and by our need to be the best teacher in the world.

The Teacher as: thecnician, reflective practitioner and as transformative intellectuals

The role of the Teacher

As Passive Technicians: the teacher education programs focus more on the education part than on the teacher part.

In this role, the teacher transmit the knowledge without altering the content of information and when teaching problems arises, they turn to the established professional knowledge base; at this point we can say that this role is safe and avoid any risk but deprive students to live the experience of made a research about the discussed topic.

The advantages that we found in this role, is that everything is not risky and you always now where to support your teaching. But the disadvantage that I found here is that the teacher never try to improve himself and not usually try to innovate the material for his classes.

As Reflective Practitioners: in this role teachers are seen as problem solvers having "the ability to look back critically and imaginatively, to do cause-effect thinking, to derive explanatory principles, to do task analysis, also to look forward, and to do anticipatory planning" (Dewey, 1933, p.4)

It is quite interesting that Don Schon make a difference between Reflection-on-action that occurs before and after a lesson, in other words the lesson plan we made for the class and the evaluation of effectiveness of the teaching afterward. And this is true, because we can plan our lesson for the next class with our group but what a surprise when we enter in the classroom and our lesson plan is not "catchy" or interesting to the students or the time we planned for the instructions and the tasks were not the appropriate one, because we took more time giving the instructions and as a consequence the time for the activity ran out, etc. So our effectiveness is zero! how discouraging could that be.

On the other hand we can Reflect-in-action, that occurs during our class and we can monitor our performance of the class and make the adjustments needed instantaneously. If we really try to keep this in mind and reflect all the time, we can really make huge improvements to our teaching and the good result will be seeing during the class.

As Transformative Intellectuals: as transformative intellectuals the teachers have not only to empower students by giving them the knowledge but they have to develop social skills in the students that they will need in order to be able to function in the larger society; and also educate them for transformative action.

The teacher who want to be as transformative intellectual has to achieve two things: the educational advancement and the personal transformation.

In the case of educational advancement the teacher has to belong to a community of educators dedicated to the creation of meaningful knowledge and construct curricula that takes in consideration the student's needs, wants and real situations they have.

To achieve the personal transformation the teacher has to educate himself and his students about various forms of inequality and injustice that predominate in our world today and then redress them in purposeful and peaceful ways; transforming life in and outside the classroom.