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56 MICHAEL McCARTHY AND RONALD CARTERcommunicative one, \vith no rcal emphasis on rorrcctncss in grammar and vocabulary, andevery cmphasis on the ability to communicate antl achi goals, a balance ofprioritics forwhich it came into much criticism in its o\vn country (See Mohidccn 1991). It was criticismofthis swing ofthc pcmclulum an.ay fi-om linguistic. (i.c. grammatical and lexical) competenceto a prcoccupation bvith communicativc. compctcncc alone, not just in Malaysia, hvhich ledapplied linguists to question whrthcr compctcncc could ever lie seen as a monolithicconcept. Might it make morc sense to think of the lcarnrr developing a set of competences,each one csscntial to using language cffcctivcly, but each one separable in termsof what could bc dcscribed and prescribed tor the syllalius and lcarning programmc?Thusgrammatical and lexical kno\vlctlgc as one of thc scvcral compctences came to the fore againas an issue in language teaching. Applied linguists argued that communicativc ability was ahollow notion without kno\vlctlgc of thc grammatical system that cnablctl actual realizationsof communicative acts (but also vice wrsa; scc Canalc antl S\vain 1980). Equally, there \vasa return of interest in the prol)lcm of i-ocahulary building, lvithout Lvhich little rcalcommunication hias possible (McCarthy 1984; s ~ also c Carter antl McCarthy 1988: ch. 3for a survey of these arguments). Linguistic compctencc, it mas argued, was a nethough not sufficient, condition for communicative ability. From such pressures h\\.hat most \vould agrcc is a healthier balancc hctm n the tlcvclopment of competence intem antl compctcncc in its use, as exemplified in so-called eclectic.an and Walter 1984 Cambridge English Course is a good example), and inwhat Yaltlcn (1983) calls the proportional syllalius, \vherc the proportions of systemorientedknowledge and communication-oi-icntctl skills arc increasingly altcrcd in favourof the latter as the learner progresses from beginner level. The lcxical syllabus (Sinclair andRcnouf 1988;Willis 1990), based on a faithlul description of how words arc used, representsanothcr move in the direction of integrating knowlcdgc of the system antl knou ledgeof use.Rut othcr questions remain for thc guagc tcachcr. If the description of language isincomplete without a description of the 1 of discoursc, and if discourse-level constraintsoperate simultaneously with Icxico-grammatical ones, then is thcrc something akin toa discourse competence that can he tlescrihetl antl articulatcd as a sct of‘ goals for thesyllabus to aspire to? Rcccnt tlcliatcs in syllabus design have tended to assume that there is.Those linguists antl applied linguists who have moved amy from the idea of competence asa monolithic concept have already addcd to thc basic notion ol’communicativc competencesubdivisions such as socio-linguistic competence and strategic competence. As Canalc (1983)uses these terms, they ma); I>