英语本科-The Strategies of Fostering Students’ Ability of Communication 毕业论文.docVIP

The Strategies of Fostering Students’ Ability of Communication I. Introduction 1.1 Definition In modern society, communication becomes one of the important parts of people’s life, whether it is daily communication or intercultural communication. In 1966, Hymes coined the expression “communicative competence”, which includes four sectors: what is possible (grammatical), feasible, appropriate, and done. From then on, this expression has been extended and new meanings have been added to it by many linguists. The theories on communicative competence have given great insights into language teaching. Many linguists such as Widdowson, Canale and Swain have extended it and added new meanings to its content. In 1978 Widdowson made a distinction between usage and use, which is based on the notion of “effectiveness for communication”. In 1983 Widdowson made a further clarification by distinguishing between competence and capacity. In introducing the term “capacity”, Widdowson wants to bring in a user’s perspective, for he regards Hymes’s concept of communicative competence as too analytic. From 1980 to 1983, Canale and Swain proposed a theoretical framework of four components by which to describe communicative competence:(1) grammatical competence; (2) sociolinguistic competence; (3) discourse competence; (4) strategic competence. In 1983 Savignon put forward her interactional approach. According to Savignon, the development of learners’ communicative competence is defined as “expression, interpretation, and negotiation of meaning involving interaction between two or more persons or between one person and a written or oral text” (Savignon, 1983:8). She holds that communicative competence is a dynamic concept. It depends on the negotiation of meaning between two or more persons who share to some degree the same symbolic system. In this sense, communicative competence is an interpersonal rather than an intrapersonal concept. Now in a broad sense, communicative competence re