By: Melanie Gay Y. Tagaylo
Students’ competence in communication is really important, but what is communicative competence? How can this be acquired? Communicative competence is the ability to communicate in a personally effective and socially appropriate manner.
Some authors would say that it is a linguistic ability of being able to produce and comprehend utterances which are appropriate to context in which they are made (Hymes, 1972). It is the ability to know which statement is suitable in social settings. Canale and Swain (1980) also defined communicative competence as a synthesis of knowledge of basic grammatical principles, knowledge on how language is used in social settings to perform communicative functions, and knowledge on how utterances and communicative functions can be combined according to the principles of discourse.
Communicative competence is therefore can be acquired through education and experience. It is the school where students acquire knowledge and understand what phonology, semantics, grammar and pragmatics are while it is experience that gives students acquaintance of actual communication. Thus, it does not alone give assurance that students can really be competent since communicative competence involves knowing not only the language code but also what to say, to whom, and how to say it appropriately in any given situation. It deals with the social and cultural knowledge speakers are presumed to have to enable them to use and interpret in linguistic forms (Hymes, 1971).
exegesis 