On Communicative Competence and Alptekin's Intercultural Communicative Competence

Although I found chapter 8 in Brown's Principles of Language Learning and Teaching very interesting, I did not find it very applicable to my own career path. In fact as I read and processed the information, I felt as if this chapter and additional readings were working towards acknowledging English for Specific Purposes. Although, I have yet to read about ESP, I imagine that I will have more affinity for ESP than I currently hold for CC. Research on communicative competence seems rather intuitive to me. The four categories defined by Cannale and Swain (1980) seem logical. Furthermore, it seems obvious that different cultures as well as different L2 will have different ways of approaching grammatical competence, discourse competence, sociolinguistic competence and strategic competence. Researching language functions definitely has its place in Second Language Acquisition Theory as well as teaching English as a Second Language. However, I feel that it has a greater importance for educators who will be teaching foreign languages.

I plan on teaching English in the United States to young elementary age children. Most of these children will probably live most of their lives in the United States, some may even have been born in the United States. Due to the high probability that my students will be surrounded by "native" English speakers for much of their lives, I feel my duty is to teach a curriculum based on Communication for Academic Learning Purposes (CALPS). Even if I were to teach adult learners I would want to know individual students and their purposes for learning English. If a student wants only the ability to communicate in English, then perhaps I would spend more time teaching sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence. It is my personal opinion that students living in this country will gain the Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills needed to survive in this country.

What I want for my students is the CALPS. Perhaps this is because I come from the field of education even before the field of multiculturalism. Although I believe strongly in a global society, I believe that a global society can only be realized through an educated society. Call me old fashioned, but most of the students I have taught in my educational career thus far are lacking in the basic educational foundations needed to pursue higher education. Most liberals who believe in a global/multicultural society of equality, have a good academic foundation and higher education under their belts. I have found that discrimination comes from ignorance and lack of perspective. Some of this ignorance is even found among educators who exit L2 students with the assumption that the student can speak the L2 as well as any other "native" English speaker. I have heard from more than one immigrant that they believe their children do not need ELL services because they speak English perfectly. This to me is a sad assumption that speakers of English as an L2 have the same opportunity to achieve high standards in education as "native" speakers of English.

As I read Alptekin's article, I had an idea for a political cartoon. I envisioned stereotypes of different "native" English speakers. I saw the southern accented Paula Dean (from Food Network) along with the New York Jewish Woody Allen, next to an urban rap artist such as Fifty Cent, and Kim Noble from the BBC on NPR arguing who was the "native" English speaker. In a global society, it would not matter. Communication would be the means to an end, and the end (multiculturalism) would be met if we could overlook things such as sociolinguistic competence and discourse competence.

Don't get me wrong, as I read chapter 8, I was able to see instances where pragmatics, sociopragmatics, and discourse analysis are real. For instance, even though my Spanish is level one at best, I can always tell who my husband is speaking to on the phone. I can tell if he is talking to a woman, or a man. I can also tell whether he is on the phone with a friend, a family member, or an acquaintance. I suppose this is because I have become accustomed to different registers in Spanish, even though I seldom know the extent of what is being said. Does this mean, when I am finished with my ELL endorsement and become a student of Spanish I will learn Spanish faster? I doubt it. If I have an advantage over other Spanish students it will be because I have the ability to practice at home, and not because I can tell a difference in registers.

Again, when talking about discourse and sociopragmatics with my husband as well as Birgit, I felt a mysterious sense that sociopragmatics had a lot more to do with psychology than linguistics. I don't want to go into detail here, but it seems that whether or not a person can end a conversation or reply to a complement has more to do with self-confidence than culture. At least, I can find many instances within my own multicultural family where these instances don't match up to culture at all.

I would be wary of going to another country and into another culture and teaching English to the belittlement of the local language. Thankfully, I'm not going to carry that burden in the career path I am choosing. If I were to go that route, I think I would take Alptekin's article on Intercultural Communicative Competence and hang it over my desk or sleep with it under my pillow.