«Communicative performance in the written discourse of undergraduate students: what can literature offer?»

Kingsley Oluchi Ugwuanyi
«Communicative performance in the written discourse of undergraduate students: what can literature offer?»
Bellaterra Journal of Teaching & Learning Language & Literature, vol. 10, n.º 3 (2017)

Bellaterra Journal of Teaching & Learning Language & Literature | Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (UAB) | Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación | Departamento de Didáctica de la Lengua y la Literatura y de les Ciencias Sociales | Bellaterra, Cerdanyola del Vallès (Barcelona) | ESPAÑA


Extracto de apartados en páginas 68-70 y 79-80 de la publicación en PDF. Véanse las referencias en la publicación original del texto.

«Competence-performance dichotomy

»The idea of the inherent knowledge the speakers of language have of their language started off simply as linguistic competence. As hinted earlier, many applied linguists have investigated this, thereby expanding the scope of the concept. Today, we not only talk about linguistic or grammatical competence, but also about sociolinguistic (or even sociocultural) competence, discourse competence, strategic competence, pragmatic competence, interactional competence, formulaic competence, and actional competence (Celce-Mercia, 2007).

»The work of Canale and Swain (1980) is seminal not only because it was the first to clearly discuss communicative competence in the light of second language acquisition (SLA), but because it helped to bring the competence-performance dichotomy to the fore in the discussion of communicative competence in SLA. Most Chomskyan linguists (e.g., Kempson, 1979) adopt the position that competence should be used to refer exclusively to rules of grammar, and that communicative competence should be identified with the theory performance. Kempson (ibid) writes that ‘a theory which characterizes the regularities of language is a competence theory’, while a theory which ‘characterizes the interaction between that linguistic characterization and all other factors which determine the full gamut of regularities of communication is a theory of performance (pp 54-55). In other words, any theory that characterises the knowledge of language (that is, the communicative competence) is a performance theory.

»Another argument Kempson (ibid) pursues quite doggedly is that the study of competence should logically precede the study of performance. According to her, this should be so because it is the knowledge one has (competence) that translates and gives life to what ones does with the language (performance). This position has been criticised (e.g. Canale and Swain, 1980). And since the position of this study is that the natural approach to language learning should be followed, it does not hold water which comes before the other. It is the position of this paper that such this-item-must-come-before-the-other approach will mechanise the learning process and may defeat the real essence of learning, which is mastering the entire gamut of the language.

»Similarly, Canale and Swain (ibid) add that “communicative competence is to be distinguished from communicative performance, which is the realization of these competencies and their interaction in the actual production and comprehension of utterances under general psychological constraints that are unique to performance” (p. 6). They immediately add that such distinction is important in a second language environment so that teaching methods and instruments would be designed to address not only communicative competence, but also communicative ‘performance’.

»The distinction made between communicative competence and communicative performance above appears to serve a more significant purpose in Second Language Learning (SLL) for the reason stated above. But in general terms, the concept of communicative competence (in this and many other models) is not thought of as including such factors that characterize performance. Canale and Swain (ibid) sum this up by saying that communicative competence should be understood to mean the interaction or relationships between the knowledge of the rules of a language (grammar) and the knowledge of the rules of language use.

»Bringing the notion of CC into SLL, they argue that since there is no agreement among scholars as to what is the minimum level of skills necessary to communicate in a given language (even with what Van EK (1977) and Cummins (1976) call ‘threshold level’), ‘it is quite reasonable to assume that since in acquiring a first language the child seems to focus more on being understood than on speaking grammatically, then second language acquisition might be allowed to proceed in this manner’ (Canale & Swain, 1980, p. 10). What this implies is that the goal of SLT should be on internalizing the full package of the linguistic knowledge that would enable one to get one’s meaning across without impediments. Mostly, this could be understood as the model of CC proposed by Canale and Swain.

»This study, however, adopts a model of distinction between the two concepts simpler than what Canale and Swain present. This model draws a simple distinction between competence as ‘knowing’ and performance as ‘doing’. Though this ‘doing’ implies putting the knowledge into use, we know also that some form of more concrete ‘knowing’ takes place in ‘doing’. So our model is such that believes that the two, though may be understood separately, can be pursued together. In fact, when the goal of any model is to develop competence alone, the whole essence of language learning may be defeated because the learners may never gain a proficient mastery of the language in use. This is the model that Bataineh et al (2013) used in their study of Jordan university students’ communicative performance.

»[...]

»Conclusions and recommendations for pedagogy

»This study has taken an area of applied linguistics considered to be more or less the most central as far as second language learning is concerned. It may not be an overstatement to say that everything done in every language teaching and learning situation is targeted towards making the learners acquire adequate knowledge that would enable them to communicate effectively in both the written and spoken forms of the language. Even in a first language situation, the linguistic (or in a broader sense, communicative) competence of those acquiring the language is not played with. This is so important that formal teaching of the language takes place in L1 environment, even though there are many other informal means of acquiring the language. All this is to make certain that the speakers of the language acquire the highest possible competence in their language, especially in its practical use.

»If this level of importance is attached to the development of communicative competence even in first language situations, greater attention should be paid to it in every second language environment, especially in a linguistically plural population like the one for this study. One of the central points this study has established is that the learning of a second language should not be left at an abstract level. This study has proved that second language learning can be enhanced if the learners are given adequate exposure to the language being learned.

»With the results of this study and those of other studies (for example, Krashen, 1982), it can be concluded that second language learning can be allowed to follow some of the steps of first language acquisition. The result of this study has shown that students who are given the opportunity of encountering the language through literature have the capacity of communicating better in the target language.

»The result of this study and related studies have some implications for pedagogy. First, language teaching curriculum at all levels should be designed to include literary texts. Unfortunately, in Nigeria today, unlike it was in the 70’s, English language teaching is completely devoid of literature (Akwanya, 2007). Little wonder, the performance of the students in English have continued to nosedive since then. If English language teaching curriculum is designed to include literary texts, this study has shown that it can help to improve the communicative competence and performance of the learners.»