Communicative Competence Versus Interactional Competence推荐.pdfVIP

5 Communicative Competence Versus Interactional Competence In this chapter I describe two of the most popular and influential models of communicative competence. Their descriptions will be preceded by a historical overview of the notion of communicative competence. At the end of this chapter I also describe interactional competence (Young 1999), which represents an alternative framework. The purpose of this chapter is to further illustrate the current cognitive ‘‘bias’’ in SLA theory and research. As illustrated below, despite having a name that may give the impression that these models adhere to a communicative view of language, communica- tion (that is, interaction) is viewed as a cognitive issue. In these models interaction refers mainly to the interaction among various language compe- tencies, placed directly in the mind of the learner. Also, the learner is solely responsible for his or her interaction with the external world. Communica- tive competence models are only communicatively or interactionally based on the surface. They are monologically based because the learner is inter- acting with himself or herself. The learner is a loner in an artificially created social context that tends to be described in terms of stable features identified a priori. Since these social features are viewed as being stable and are assumed to be understood by all participants in the interaction in the same fashion, there is no need for coconstruction, or building an understanding of the shared reality based on dialogically negotiated interaction. These models 85 86 Following the Cognitive Tradition adhere primarily to the transmission model of passing the information (that is, the conduit metaphor). The information is en