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Communicative Competence: A Jigsaw Task

The article discusses communicative competence as defined by Canale and Swain in 1980. They proposed that communicative competence has four sub-competencies: grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence, and strategic competence. A jigsaw task is presented as an example of an activity that can reveal deficiencies in one of these competencies. Sample language exchanges are provided that would indicate a lack of grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, or discourse competence.

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84 views3 pages

Communicative Competence: A Jigsaw Task

The article discusses communicative competence as defined by Canale and Swain in 1980. They proposed that communicative competence has four sub-competencies: grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence, and strategic competence. A jigsaw task is presented as an example of an activity that can reveal deficiencies in one of these competencies. Sample language exchanges are provided that would indicate a lack of grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, or discourse competence.

Uploaded by

Jessica SP
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Communicative Competence

In 1980, the applied linguists Canale and Swain published an influential article in which they argued that
the ability to communicate required four different sub-competencies:

grammatical (ability to create grammatically correct utterances),


sociolinguistic (ability to produce sociolinguistically appropriate utterances),
discourse (ability to produce coherent and cohesive utterances), and
strategic (ability to solve communication problems as they arise).

A Jigsaw Task
A jigsaw task is a specific kind of information gap task, that is, a task that requires learners to
communicate with each other in order to fill in missing information and to integrate it with other information.
For example, in the video, the students are not aware that their note cards contain a communicative
problem (e.g. a violation of prescriptive grammar, ambiguous reference, etc.) that indicates a deficiency in
one of the sub-competencies of "communicative competence."

Listen to the students attempt to paraphrase their language sample and see if you can determine which
language sample below indicates a lack of which competency.

Sample 1 Sample 2

"OK, now move your cursor over and "Hello Mr. Patterson, thanks for dropping
choose the scene from the menu." by. I've reviewed your bank statement
and... "
"From the what?"
(interrupts) "Dude, you gonna ask me
"The menu."
a bunch of lame questions?"
"Menu? Why do they call it a menu?"
"Ah...lame questions...uhm...I don't know,
"Well, 'cause you choose from a list. Just uhm...well, I DO have a few more
like in a restaurant. A menu." questions."

"Oh, OK." "Well, make it fast 'cause I am on a


tight schedule!"

Sample 3 Sample 4

"I told 'em about it." He eated the ice cream.

"Told who about what? "


She no think you right.
"John and Mike about the report. And he
wasn't happy about it?"

"Who wasn't happy?"

"Mike wasn't."

Communication style is
characterized by the way people
appear (or attempt to appear) in
communication, the way they
tend to relate to the ones they
communicate with and how their
messages are typically
interpreted.

Here are some examples of


communication styles:

Specific: precise and


detailed, avoiding
vagueness; concrete

Well-reasoned:
providing convincing
argumentation and
reasoning, persuasive

Confident: assured of
personal or other
abilities, judgment, or
other qualities; confident
about resources needed
to succeed

Supportive: giving
support, especially moral
or emotional support,
assistance; helpful,
caring, encouraging,
understanding,
reassuring, sympathetic

Expressive: effectively
conveying meaning or
feeling; eloquent

Forceful: characterized
by strength and power;
pushy; tending to make
powerful impression,
authoritative; can also
exhibit threatening
behaviour, aggressive

Different personality
types process and communicate
information differently. For
example, an ENFJ will
communicate well with people of
ENFJ, INFJ, ENFP, INFP types
(i.e. all who belong to the NF
group), but not necessarily
communicate effectively to
individuals belonging to the ST
group (ESTJ, ISTJ, ESTP, ISTP).
This is because the ST people
process and communicate
information in a sensory and
logical way rather than an
emotional and conceptual
one. How to determine the
type of another person.

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