implication of strategic competence in the development

IMPLICATIONS OF STRATEGIC COMPETENCE IN
THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMMUNICATIVE
COMPETENCE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING
Grace Villalobos Carmona
English teacher
Student of a Master Program in
Education with emphasis on Bilingualism

INTRODUCTION
• This presentation will share with English teachers, activities and
techniques to develop communication skills in students and in this
way to improve students’ fluency, accuracy and conversational skills.
• Common problematic in English classes.
• Communicative competence

CONCEPTS
• 1. What is Communicative Competence?
• 2. What is Strategic Competence?
• 3. What are Communication Strategies?
Name some of them.
• Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcIz2zP0n48

COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE
• Chomsky (1965) : Language form (competence) and language use
(performance). Concerned primarily with the idea of an ideal
speaker-listener and grammar as the central object of analysis for
linguists.
• Hymes (1972) : Several components of communication which he
called SPEAKING: Setting, Participants, Ends, Act sequence, Key,
Instrumentalities, Norms of interaction and Interpretation, and
Genre.
• Saville-Troike (1989): Three main components: linguistic knowledge,
interaction skills and cultural knowledge of the language.

COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE
• Canale and Swain (1980) and Canale (1983) four components: the
grammatical competence, the discursive competence, the
sociolinguistic competence and the strategic competence.
• “the underlying systems of knowledge and skills required for
communication”.

STRATEGIC COMPETENCE
• Canale (1983: 23) and Canale and Swain (1980: 5) defined strategic
competence as follows:
“The mastery of verbal and non-verbal communication strategies
in L2 used when attempting to compensate for deficiencies in the
grammatical and sociolinguistic competence or to enhance the
effectiveness of communication.”
• Dörnyei and Thurrell (1991)
“strategic competence refers to the ability to get one’s meaning
across successfully to communicative partners, especially when
problems arise in the communication process.”

Tarone and Yule (1989):
“…the ability to select an effective means of performing a
communicative act…”
Bachman (1990)
“The capacity that relates language competence, or knowledge
of language, to the language user’s knowledge structures and the
features of the context in which communication takes place.”

COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES
(Bialystok, 1990: 3):
(1) a mutual attempt of two interlocutors to agree on a meaning in
situations where requisite meaning structures are not shared. (Tarone,
1980)
(2) potentially conscious plans for solving what to an individual
presents itself as a problem in reaching a particular communicative
goal. (Faerch & Kasper, 1983a)
(3) techniques of coping with difficulties in communicating in an
imperfectly known second language. (Stern, 1983)

• Dörnyei (1997)
“a systematic technique employed by a speaker to express
his [or her] meaning when faced with some difficulty.”
• Gallagher (2001)
“Communications strategies are strategies employed in order
to repair breakdowns in spoken communication and to improve
the effectiveness of communication.”
• Maleki (2007)
A communication strategy is defined as an individual's attempt
to find a way to fill the gap between their communication
effort and immediate available linguistic resources.

• Maleki (2010)
“ the use of communication strategies is conductive to language
learning and that communication strategy training should be
incorporated into school syllabuses …”
“Other researchers such as Tarone (1984), Bialystok (1990), Dörnyei and
Thurrel (1991), Dörnyei (1995), Oxford (2001), Littlemore (2001), and
many more have all praised the positive role of communication
strategies in teaching and learning a second language,
specifically English.”

TEACHING STRATEGIC COMPETENCE
Reasons to teach strategic competence
• Improve oral communication
• Students feel more confident
• According to Mali (2007), Maleki (2007) Dörnyei and Thurrell (1991-1994),
Tarone and Yule (1989), Willems (1987), Faerk and Kasper (1986)
language is best learned and taught through interaction; hence,
teaching CS is the recommended fulcrum by which strategic competence
can be developed.
• A great deal of language attainment takes place through taking an active
part in actual communication, and CSs help learners to do so and thus
(a) to obtain practice, and (b) to gain new information by testing what is
permissible or appropriate.

• Studies have revealed that teaching communication strategies is
pedagogically effective.
Dörnyei (1995)
• A significant proportion of real-life communication in L2 is problematic and yet
language classes do not generally prepare students to cope with performance
problems. I assumed that one educational approach learners might potentially
benefit from in developing their coping skills could be the direct teaching of
CSs.
• Communication strategies provide the learners with a sense of security in the
L2 by allowing them room to manoeuvre in times of difficulty. Rather than
giving up their message, learners may decide to try and remain in the
conversation and achieve their communicative goal.
• Providing learners help towards accomplishing this is, I believe, a worthy
objective of communicative language instruction.

TYPES OF COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES
• Dörnyei (1995)
• Avoidance or Reduction Strategies
• 1. Message abandonment
• 2. Topic avoidance
• Achievement or Compensatory Strategies
• 3. Circumlocution
• 4. Approximation
• 5. Use of all-purpose words
• 6. Word-coinage
• 7. Use of nonlinguistic means
• 8. Literal translation
• 9. Foreignizing
• 10. Code switching
• 11. Appeal for help
• 12. Use of fillers/hesitation devices

COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES
• Circumlocution---describing or exemplifying the target object or
action.
• Word-coinage---creating a nonexisting L2 word based on a
supposed rule.
• Nonlinguistic means---mime, gesture, facial expression, or sound
imitation.
• Appeal for help---turning to the conversation partner for help either
directly or indirectly.
• Fillers/hesitation devices---using filling words or gambits to fill
pauses and to gain time to think.

Dörnyei (1995)
TEACHABILITY OF COMMUNICATION
STRATEGIES
The direct approach to teaching CSs might involve the following
procedures:
1. Raising learner awareness about the nature and communicative
potential of CSs
2. Encouraging students to be willing to take risks and use CSs
3. Providing L2 models of the use of certain CSs
4. Highlighting cross-cultural differences in CS use
5. Teaching CSs directly by presenting linguistic devices to verbalize
Them.
6. Providing opportunities for practice in strategy use

ACTIVITIES AND TECHNIQUES TO TEACH
COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES
Based on Dörnyei (1995) recommendations and Maleki (2010) activities
Teaching circumlocution:
1. Students watch a video (English in Mind starter video Life Swap: part 2)
2. Ask some comprehension questions. Discussion
3. Teach to students circumlocution strategy.
4. Make a comparison in both languages. Give examples in Spanish and
English.
5. Hand out a slip of paper to each student with the name of an object on
each slip. Everybody in turn must try to ‘explain’ their word to the others
without actually saying what it is. Students jot down their guesses for all
the words and the winner is the person whose word has been found out by
the most students. Since some words are easier to ‘explain’ than others, a
fair result will be obtained only after several rounds.
(encourage students to take risks.)

6.
• Ask students to make groups of two or three people.
• Put the names of some objects in a bag (words related to the video).
• Pick up a paper and read it aloud. Students write a description for the object.
• Give them 50 seconds to do it. Pick up the papers and read them aloud. Ask students
to listen and discuss if the description is correct or not and explain the reasons. Give
two pints to the first correct one and one point to the other correct ones.
7.
• Divide the class in groups.
• One member of the group picks up a paper. He or she should describe the object or
the action and the others guess. The winner is the team with the highest quantity of
points.
8. Reinforce knowledge.
9. Take advantage of different activities to reinforce the use of this strategy.
10. Do a specific speaking activity. Sport in Colombia and sports in England

Teaching Word-coinage
1. Students work in a copy which is related to sports in British
schools.
2. Encourage students to name and talk about the sports presented
in the copy (they did not know about them but keep talking).
3. Discuss with students what strategies should they use when they
do not know the name of an object element or action.
4. Explain Word-coinage strategy and use.
4. Give some examples of what they could do and compare the
situations to L1 situations.
5.
• Show to students videos of the different sports. Then, ask them to
name the objects and actions presented in the sports.
• Ask students to share with the group the words they wrote. After
that correct them.

Teaching mime
1. Show to students a video (no dialogue). Discuss
2. Describe Lionel Messi using words and gestures.
3. Ask student about the meaning I wanted to transmit. Discuss the
gestures, add more and compare to L1 non verbal communication.
4. Show to students some flashcards with adjectives to describe people.
5.
• Divide the class in groups of four people.
• Give each team a list of scrambled words.
• Give them time to rearrange each scrambled word.
• Ask members of each team to mime each rearranged word while members of
other teams guess the word.
• Have them read out their guessed words
• Get them compare the words with the original mime and correct them
6. Make groups. One student come to the front, pick up a word and explain
it to their partners using mime or talking about them and the others guess.
The winner is the group with more points.
7. Students pick up names of famous sportsmen and will describing using
mime and words. Students guess.

teaching Appealing for help
1. Show to students a conversation in Spanish.
2. Analyze the situation.
3. Compare the situation to L2 situations.
4. Give to students a list of expressions, words and sentences that are
useful to maintain a conversation in English.
5. Explain the use of them by giving examples (tape recorder).
6. We will discuss the use of those words in L1 and L2
7. Then, students sit in couples and have a reading. One student reads and
the other one interrupts him or her by asking questions, for example: Can
you repeat again? What is ….? What does … mean?
8. Divide the class into four or five teams. Play games such as guessing
games, unfinished drawings. Use identifying games for each team to
practice questions like "What's this/that?; What are these/those?; Who's
this/that?; How do you say … in English?; etc."

Teaching fillers
1. Students watch a video. (English in Mind starter video The Hub:
part 1-2 )
2. Analyze the situations and the fillers.
3. Present other fillers, discuss their use. Compare to L1.
4. Take a short part (2-3 utterances) of a current dialogue from the
course book you are using and put it on the board. Divide the
students into groups of three; each group in turn must add one filler
to the dialogue, which you then insert into the text on the board. You
may want to specify that one filler can be used only once. If a group
fails to provide an extra filler, they drop out.
5. Write a dialogue using fillers

TEACHING IMPLICATIONS
• “Teaching communication strategies is not only useful, but feasible.”
(Maleki, 2010)
• “compensatory strategies will undoubtedly promote learner’s
communicative competence. Teachers can play an important role in
conveying communication strategies to students and thereby assisting
them to practice the target language.
(Zhang, 2007)
• “Strategic competence is a crucial component of communicative
competence, largely determining the learner’s fluency and conversational
skills.”
(Dörnyei and Thurrell, 1991)
• Strategic competence is relevant to both L1 and L2, since communication
breakdowns occur and must be overcome not only in a foreign language
but in one’s mother tongue as well.

• “I assumed that one educational approach learners might potentially benefit from in
developing their coping skills could be the direct teaching of CSs.”
(Dörnyei, 1997)
• “…they provide the learners with a sense of security in the L2 by allowing them
room to manoeuvre in times of difficulty. Rather than giving up their message,
learners may decide to try and remain in the conversation and achieve their
communicative goal.”
(Dörnyei, 1997)
• “Strategic competence is a crucial component of communicative competence,
largely determining the learner’s fluency and conversational skills.”
(Dörnyei and Thurrell, 1991)
• Strategic competence is relevant to both L1 and L2, since communication
breakdowns occur and must be overcome not only in a foreign language but in one’s
mother tongue as well.
• Metacognitive awareness.
• Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzxykDIyMVo&feature=related

“Applied linguists have for some time suggested that communicative
competence includes a major component, usually termed strategic
competence, the development of which largely determines the
learner’s fluency and conversational skills. Practicing teachers,
however, are usually unaware of the significance of this competence,
and hardly any activities have been developed to include strategy
training in actual language teaching.”
Dörnyei and Thurrell
“Communicative Competence is generally regarded by most
contemporary educators as an essential goal of second language
acquisition”
Cenoz and Genesee

REFERENCES
• Canale, M. y Swain, M. (1980). Fundamentos teóricos de los enfoques comunicativos de
enseñanza de segundas lenguas y las pruebas. Nueva York: Lingüística Aplicada.
• Canale, M. (1983). De la competencia comunicativa a la pedagogía comunicativa del
lenguaje. Nueva York: J. C. Richards y R. Schmidt W.
• Cenoz, J. and Genessee, F. (2000) Psycholinguistic Perspectives on multilingualism and
multilingual education. In J. Cenoz and F. Genesse Beyond Bilingualism.
Multilingualism and multilingual education. Clevedon: multilingual Matters, pp.
16-32.
• Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspectos de la teoría de la sintaxis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Dörnyei, Z. (1991): On the teachability of communication strategies. TESOL Quarterly, 29
(1), págs. 55-85.
• Dörnyei, Z. and Scott, M. L. (1997). Communication Strategies in a Second Language:
Definitions and Taxonomies. Language Learning, 47: 173–210. doi: 10.1111/0023-
8333.51997005
• Dörnye, Z
• Gallagher, A. (2001). Teaching Communication Strategies to Beginers. Language Learning
Journal, N 24, pp. 53-31

• Hymes, D. H. (1972). En la competencia comunicativa. Harmondsworth,
Inglaterra: Penguin Books.
• Maleki, A. (2010). Techniques to Teach Communication Strategies. Journal
of Language Teaching and Research, Vol. 1, No. 5, pp. 640-646.
• Nani, I. T. y Agatha, S. (2004). The Types of Communication Strategies
Used by Speaking Class Students with Different Communication
Apprehension Levels in English. [Electronic version]. k@ta, Vol 6,
No 1 30-46.
• Saville-Troike, M. (1989). La etnografía de la comunicación: una
introducción. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
• Sparrow, P. & Hodgkinson, G. (2006). ¿Qué es la competencia estratégica
y la Materia DoesIt? artículo Obtenido de
digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu / cgi / viewcontent.cgi?
• Zhang, Y. (2007). Communication Strategies and Foreign Language
Learning. US-China Foreign Language, ISSN1539. Apr. 2007, Volume
5, No.4 (Serial No.43) 8080, USA Obtenido de
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.87.2984&
rep=rep1&type=pdf

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