MOVING FROM COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE TO INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE:

Amali Boralugoda

S3482023

GLOCALISATION OF ENGLISH In its journey across the globe, English has become increasingly

localised by many communities of speakers around the world, adopting it to encode and express their cultural conceptualisations. Sharifian (2013) refers this notion as glocalisation.

As a result of glocalisation,“English is now redefining national and individual identities worldwide, shifting political fault lines, creating new global patterns of wealth and citizenship” (Graddol 2006, 12).

Increasingly, as globalisation and the new technology continue to bring people from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds closer together, the default form of communication in everyday life for many people is becoming instances of intercultural communication.

Increased contact between people from different cultural backgrounds call for new notions of ‘competence’ to be applied for successful intercultural communication.

Thus, native speaker models of English language teaching seems rather irrelevant in the globalised era of learning English.

COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

Communicative Competence (Hymes, 1972)

includes four areas of knowledge and skill: grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence, and strategic competence.

COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE VS.

INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE

Communicative Competence (Hymes, 1972)

1. Grammatical Competence: “Mastery of the language code itself”

2. Sociolinguistic Competence: “Utterances are produced and understood appropriately in different sociolinguistic contexts”

3. Discourse Competence: “Mastery of how to combine grammatical forms and meanings to achieve a unified spoken and written text in different genres…Unity of text is achieved through cohesion in form and coherence in meaning.”

4. Strategic: “Mastery of verbal and nonverbal communication strategies…”

COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE (HYMES,1972)

Communicative

Competence

Knowledge of underlying

grammatical principles

knowledge of how to

combine utterances

and communicativ

e functions with respect to

discourse principles

knowledge of how to use language in a

social context in order to fulfill

communicative function

CRITICISMS: COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

developed on the native speaker-based notion of communicative competence.

CC is found to be utopian,

native speakership is a linguistic myth, it portrays a monolithic perception of the native

speaker’s language and culture, by referring chiefly to mainstream ways of thinking and behaving.

unrealistic, it fails to reflect the lingua franca status of English.

Constraining it defines both teacher and learner autonomy by

associating the concept of authenticity with the social setting of the native speaker

INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE.

“the complex abilities needed to perform effectively and appropriately when interacting with others who are linguistically and culturally different from oneself” (Fantini, 2005).

INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

(BYRAM, 1997) 1. Attitudes: “Curiosity and openness, readiness to

suspend disbelief about other cultures and belief about one's own.”

2. Knowledge: “of social groups and their products and practices in one's own and in one's interlocutor's country, and of the general processes of societal and individual interaction.”

3. Skills of interpreting and relating: “Ability to interpret a document or event from another culture, to explain it and relate it to documents from one's own.”

4. Skills of discovery and interaction: “Ability to acquire new knowledge of a culture and cultural practices and the ability to operate knowledge, attitudes and skills under the constraints of real-time communication and interaction.”

5. Critical cultural awareness/political education: “An ability to evaluate critically and on the basis of explicit criteria perspectives, practices and products in one's own and other cultures and countries.”

MULTIDIALECTAL COMPETENCE(CANAGARAJAH, 2006)

According to Canagarajah the notion of ‘proficiency’ and its assessment are much more complex in the postmodern era of communication.

“In a context where we have to constantly shuttle between different varieties [of English] and communities, proficiency becomes complex. … One needs the capacity to negotiate diverse varieties to facilitate communication”

Canagarajah refers this as “multidialectal competence” part of which is “passive competence to understand new varieties [of English]”.

SYMBOLIC COMPETENCE (KRAMSCH, 2008)

“Social actors in multilingual settings, even if they are non-native speakers of the languages they use, seem to activate more than a communicative competence that would enable them to communicate accurately, effectively and appropriately with one another. They seem to display a particularly acute ability to play with various linguistic codes and with the various spatial and temporal resonances of these codes.”

Please bring a plate for

morning tea tomorrow…

Sure. I have heaps of picnic

plates at home.

COMPARING CC TO ICC

OMG!! Does he have x-

ray vision!!!No thongs at work!!!

COMPARING CC TO ICC

Hey!! Where’s the barbie mate?

Barbi?

COMPARING CC TO ICC

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO DEVELOP AND “POSSESS” INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE ? Attitudes, knowledge & skills - Understand that

language and culture and the interactions between them are situated and variable, that intercultural interactions need to be ethical, and understand the role of

power and its distribution play in intercultural interactions.

Gain linguistic and cultural knowledge to understand and interact effectively in multilingual/multicultural settings.

Develop an understanding of the roles linguistic and cultural attitudes play in interactions across multilingual and multicultural settings and how they influence the success of such interactions.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO DEVELOP AND “POSSESS” INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE ?

Develop the awareness needed to successfully participate in multilingual/multicultural interactions. This addresses not only the knowledge and attitudes discussed above but also how communication/interaction is structured across cultures and languages, how communication is monitored while in interaction, and what factors support or hinder successful interactions.

Develop "tools" for understanding their own and others' ways of interacting in order to be able to participate effectively in multilingual/multicultural interactions across a range of languages and cultures.

In conclusion,

The traditional native speaker based models of competence fail to address the dynamic aspects of intercultural communication. Therefore, it is high time for ESL/EAL to reconsider the notion of competency. The shifting away from Communicative Competence towards, Intercultural Communicative Competence may help to uphold the multi cultural values of the Australian society, while facilitating successful communication between people from different cultural back grounds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BT0rz7c3jSA

WALTZING MATILDA….

BIBLIOGRAPHY Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and Assessing Intercultural

Communicative Competence: Multilingual Matters. Canagarajah, S. (2006). Changing Communicative

Needs ,Revised Assessment Objectives: Testing English as an International Language. Retrieved October 25, 2014, from http://personal.psu.edu/users/a/s/asc16/pdf/LAQ.pdf

Fantini, A. (2006). Exploring and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence. Retrieved October 25, 2014, from http://digitalcollections.sit.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=worldlearning_publications

Hymes, D.H., Pride, J.B., & Holmes, J. (1972). On Communicative Competence.

Kramsch, C. (2008). Ecological perspectives on foreign language education. Language Teaching, 41(3), 389-408. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/85692729?accountid=13552

Sharifian, F. (2013). Globalisation and developing metacultural competence in learning English as an International Language. Multilingual Education, 3(1), 1-11.