Language and Education

ISSN: 0950-0782 (Print) 1747-7581 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rlae20

Language communication and communicative

competence: a view from contemporary
classrooms

Constant Leung & Jo Lewkowicz

To cite this article: Constant Leung & Jo Lewkowicz (2013) Language communication and
communicative competence: a view from contemporary classrooms, Language and Education,
27:5, 398-414, DOI: 10.1080/09500782.2012.707658

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2012.707658

Published online: 13 Aug 2012.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 2646

View related articles

Citing articles: 4 View citing articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rlae20
Language and Education, 2013
Vol. 27, No. 5, 398–414, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2012.707658

Language communication and communicative competence: a view

from contemporary classrooms
Constant Leunga∗ and Jo Lewkowiczb
a
Centre for Language, Discourse & Communication, Department of Education & Professional
Studies, King’s College London, London, UK; bStudent Affairs: Office for the Bologna Process,
University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland
(Received 26 April 2012; final version received 25 June 2012)

In this paper, we examine some of the tenets of the current conceptualisations of

communicative competence. Drawing on the empirical data collected in linguistically
diverse university classrooms, we show that meaning-making in social interaction is
considerably more complex and fluid than is envisaged in theoretical models of com-
municative competence. We suggest that curriculum and assessment frameworks such
as the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), based on
existing notions of communicative competence, do not adequately capture the agentive
and contingent nature of co-constructed meaning-making and meaning-taking in social
interaction, particularly in situations where high levels of ethnolinguistic diversity are
fast becoming a norm. We suggest that for benchmarking curriculum and assessment
frameworks such as the CEFR to be relevant, they need to be empirically investigated
and theoretically critiqued on a regular and systematic basis.
Keywords: classroom interaction; communicative competence; curriculum; EAL;
language minority students; oral language

Introduction
The notion of communicative competence, as it has been developed in Anglophone Applied
Linguistics (e.g. Bachman 1990; Canale and Swain 1980; McKay 2006; cf. Leung 2005,
2010a), has informed a good deal of the work in language teaching and assessment in the
past 30 years or so. This notion has been a key reference point in describing additional/
second (from now on ‘additional’) language proficiency and has provided a basis for the
development of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR;
see Council of Europe 2001, Chapter 2). While we recognise that there is some variation
in the ways in which the concept of communicative competence is used in the academic
and professional literature and English language textbooks, our discussion will focus on
the CEFR as a particularly salient representation because: (1) it is a policy-supported and
widely adopted benchmarking instrument for setting standards for language teaching and
assessment in Europe and beyond (Fulcher 2008, 2009; Jones and Saville 2009); (2) the
CEFR level descriptors, given their high public visibility and apparent all-purpose func-
tionality, are often presented to language teaching professionals as ‘ready for use’ in cur-
riculum development and classroom work, including classroom-based assessment – many
commercially produced English language textbooks, for instance, are explicitly linked to
CEFR levels (e.g. Kay and Jones 2009; Soars and Soars 2009); and (3) many major stan-
dardised tests have been aligned to the CEFR, which in turn can impact on the content

∗
Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

C 2013 Taylor & Francis
 Language and Education 399

of teaching programmes. For these reasons, we will use the CEFR as a point of reference
for our discussion of how communicative competence is currently conceptualised and for
evaluating the framework’s (in)adequacy for describing additional language proficiency
levels and students’ ability to participate through spoken interaction in real-life content
classrooms. We do this on the basis of empirical evidence from contemporary university
classroom settings with linguistically diverse students.
We start with a discussion on the CEFR framework in terms of how it operationalises
communicative competence with particular reference to spoken language. Next, drawing
on classroom data we show that meaning-making in social interaction is considerably more
complex and fluid than is envisaged in this framework, which incidentally, has not been
developed on the basis of empirical enquiry (see Cumming 2009, among others). Indeed,
as González (2009, 99–100) notes, the CEFR has been developed by experts ‘through
deductive methods . . . [by] defining . . . key competences’. The discussion will conclude
with some comments on the implications of a complexified view of communicative com-
petence for curriculum development and assessment, including classroom-based teacher
assessment in ethnolinguistically diverse settings.

The CEFR: a view on communicative competence

The CEFR has been described as:
A comprehensive descriptive scheme offering a tool for reflecting on what is involved not
only in language use, but also in language learning and teaching. The Framework provides a
common basis and a common language for the elaboration of syllabuses, curriculum guidelines,
textbooks, teacher training programmes, and for relating language examinations to one another.
(Martyniuk 2005, 11)
Internationally, the CEFR is widely regarded as a prestigious reference for benchmark-
ing curriculum development and assessment. For example, the European Commission-
funded multilateral project ‘European Survey of Language Competences’ (2008-,
www.surveylang.org) uses the CEFR to assess school students’ additional language profi-
ciency in 16 education jurisdictions. It would not be possible to enumerate the widespread
influence and use of the CEFR here. Suffice it to say that the CEFR’s influence reaches far
beyond its European heartland. For instance, the International English Language Testing
System (IELTS), a popular English language test widely used by English-speaking univer-
sities to identify the proficiency levels of applicants from other language backgrounds, is
linked to the CEFR. Student progression in the New Zealand modern languages curriculum
is charted against the levels in the CEFR (Scarino 2005). The seemingly all-purpose and
ready-to-use quality of the published CEFR scales makes it very important to critically
examine the adequacy of the conceptual framework that underpins its descriptors. In this
section, then, we explore the capacity of the CEFR, as a teaching and assessment framework
underpinned by the notion of communicative competence, to capture and reflect the contin-
gent complexities of authentic spoken discourse. To do this, we start by carrying out a con-
tent analysis (Thomas 2006) of some of the relevant level descriptions set out in the CEFR.
It is explicitly stated that conceptually the CEFR descriptors are concerned with
three aspects of communicative competence: linguistic, sociolinguistic and pragmatic (e.g.
Council of Europe 2001, 13–14). The CEFR sets out six levels of proficiency (with A1
being the lowest level): A1 (Breakthrough), A2 (Waystage), B1 (Threshold), B2 (Van-
tage), C1 (Effective Operational Proficiency) and C2 (Mastery). After careful scrutiny, we
400 C. Leung and J. Lewkowicz

focus selectively on twenty-one B2 and C1 level descriptors on grounds of relevance and

best-fit, i.e. these particular levels and descriptors are most likely to be relevant to spoken
language use in academic discussions at universities involving participants from diverse
language backgrounds. We note that B2 is the lowest proficiency level articulated to uni-
versity entrance. C2 level descriptors, the highest level, will not be considered here as
additional language use as this level is meant to be virtually indistinguishable from that
of first language. In analysing the descriptors, phrases such as can understand can be re-
garded as manifest content (Berg 2009, Chapter 11; Potter and Levine-Donnerstein 1999).
Initial examinations of these descriptors (Table 1 below) suggested that these descriptors
are concerned with aspects of learner language performance in spoken interaction (e.g.
‘can understand . . . main ideas . . .’ and ‘can keep up with an animated discussion . . .’). As
the hierarchical organisation of the level descriptors indicates, there is an assumed notion
of progressive development and attainment of knowledge and skills; many are qualified by
adjectival (e.g. abstract topics) and adverbial (e.g. pass on detailed information reliably)
terms. Some of the descriptors are double-barrelled in that they have been formulated to
tap into two or more facets of language use (e.g. ‘can produce . . . well-structured . . . text
on complex subjects, showing controlled use of organisational patterns’).
A more close-up reading of the descriptors suggests three underlying concerns, or
latent content (Hsieh and Shannon 2005), in terms of speaker ability. Thus, we sorted the
21 descriptors into three ability-related groups, namely understanding and handling content,
participating in social interaction and making use of language resources.

Coverage and limitations

The tabulation of the descriptors in Table 1 shows that there is a preponderance of descriptors
(among the ones included for discussion here) related to the notion of understanding and
handling content information – of the 21 descriptors analysed, 15 can be attributed to this
category. Given the fact that in practically all social interactions, with the possible exception
of some moments in infant–adult interaction, communication between people tends not to
be free of content meaning, the prominence of this aspect of language use in the descriptors
is perhaps not surprising. At the same time we note that despite its prominence, the idea of
content itself is conceptualised and described in an abstract manner with, as Weir (2005)
notes, little guidance on how content should vary according to the different levels of the
scale. It may be reasonable to argue that the CEFR scales (and indeed other language
proficiency benchmark frameworks) have to be expressed necessarily in terms that are
‘above’ specific content, so to speak. This is because language proficiency scales cannot
cover all possible meanings in all fields of human activity. Nevertheless this invocation
of abstract content can lead to some difficulties for interpreting descriptors. For instance,
this abstractness creates uncertainty as to the meaning of many of the qualifiers in the
descriptors such as ‘concrete’ (as in ‘concrete topics’), ‘complex’ and ‘wide range’. And
since the same qualifier can occur at two different levels, this compounds the difficulties
and results in a confusion of terminology and inconsistencies within the scale descriptors
(Weir 2005). For instance, ‘complex’ appears in both the B2 and C1 global descriptors,
albeit for two different modes of language use: ‘understanding . . . complex text . . .’ (B2
Spoken Language, global descriptor) and ‘can produce clear . . . text on complex subjects
. . .’ (C1 Spoken Language, global descriptor). A related issue is whether the meaning of
‘complex’ is related to language form or content meaning, or both. After all, it is possible
to express complex meaning through relatively simple forms of language and vice versa
 Language and Education 401

Table 1. CEFR B2–C1 levels spoken language (abilities).

Ability Descriptor component

Understanding B2 Global (Council of Europe 2001, 24):
and handling • Can understand the main ideas of complex text on both concrete and
(unspecified) abstract topics, including technical discussions in his/her field of
content/topic specialisation
information B2 Formal discussion and meetings (Council of Europe 2001, 78):
• Can keep up with an animated discussion, identifying accurately arguments
supporting and opposing points of view (B2.2)
• Can express his/her ideas and opinions with precision, present and respond
to complex lines of argument convincingly (B2.2)
• Can follow the discussion on matters related to his/her field; understand in
detail the points given prominence by the speaker (B2.1)
• Can contribute, account for and sustain his/her opinion, evaluate alternative
proposals and make and respond to hypotheses (B2.1)
B2 Goal-oriented co-operation (Council of Europe 2001, 79):
• Can understand detailed instructions reliably
• Can outline an issue or a problem clearly, speculating about causes or
consequences, and weighing advantages and disadvantages of different
approaches
B2 Information exchange (Council of Europe 2001, 81):
• Can understand and exchange complex information and advice on the full
range of matters related to his/her occupational role (B2.2)
• Can pass on detailed information reliably (B2.1)
• Can give a clear, detailed description of how to carry out a procedure (B2.1)
• Can synthesise and report information and arguments from a number of
sources (B2.1)
C1 Global (Council of Europe 2001, 24):
• Can understand a wide range of demanding, longer texts and recognise
implicit meaning
• Can produce clear, well-structured, detailed text on complex subjects
[showing controlled use of organisational patterns, connectors and
cohesive devices]∗
C1 Formal discussion and meetings (Council of Europe 2001, 78):
• Can easily keep up with the debate, even on abstract, complex, unfamiliar
topics
• Can argue a formal position convincingly, responding to questions and
comments and answering complex lines of counter argument fluently,
spontaneously and appropriately
Participating in B2 Global (Council of Europe 2001, 24):
social • Can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular
interaction interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either party
B2 Formal discussion and meeting (Council of Europe 2001, 78):
• Can participate actively in routine and non-routine formal discussion (B2.1)
B2 Goal-oriented co-operation (Council of Europe 2001, 79):
• Can help along the progress of the work by inviting others to join in, say
what they think, etc.
C1 Global (Council of Europe 2001, 24):
• Can use language flexibly and effectively for social, academic and
professional purposes
Making use of C1 Global (Council of Europe 2001, 24):
language • Can express him/herself fluently and spontaneously without much obvious
resources searching for expressions
• Can produce clear, well-structured, detailed text on complex subjects
[showing controlled use of organisational patterns, connectors and
cohesive devices]∗
∗ Double-barrelled descriptor; relevant parts are in regular upright print.
402 C. Leung and J. Lewkowicz

(Leung 2010b). Such abstraction and ambiguity can cause interpretative difficulties for
teachers (qua assessors) and test developers alike.
Another feature of the CEFR descriptors under discussion is that many of them appear
to be primarily focused on individual language performance that is (largely) subject to
speaker’s own psycho-cognitive control, e.g. ‘can express him/herself fluently and spon-
taneously without much obvious searching for expression . . . showing control of use of
organisational patterns . . .’ (C1, Spoken Language, global descriptor), and ‘can express
his/her ideas and opinions with precision, present and respond to complex lines of argu-
ment convincingly’ (B2 Formal discussion and meeting). The use of the term ‘performance’
here is meant to signal the observation that while the descriptors are framed within a con-
text of social interaction and social use, the focus of the level description is on individuals’
propensity to display the desired features and qualities in their use of language. There is
little doubt that in situations where a speaker has to present information or arguments in
some form of solo performance, e.g. presenting a talk, such psycho-cognitive control is an
important aspect of language use. However, it is now well understood that language use in
social interaction tends to be co-constructed – participants build on one another’s utterance
in a cumulative manner (e.g. Schegloff 2007, from a Conversation Analysis perspective;
Wells 1995, from a socio-cultural perspective); and this fundamental aspect of language
use in social interaction has also been recognised in the language assessment literature (e.g.
Brown 2003; Leung and Mohan 2004; McNamara 1997). A related consideration that will
be picked up in the discussion of the data we present is that the CEFR, indeed the concept
of communicative competence itself, does not explicitly address social relationships in in-
teraction (including classroom interaction) in which power and other sociocultural factors
impinge on participant discourse. In the classroom context where the teacher is expected to
both facilitate and promote student participation, and to assess (often for formative and/or
diagnostic purposes), this is a particularly salient issue.

An analysis of real-life classroom discourse

To explore the extent to which the CEFR adequately portrays language proficiency as
manifested in real-life language discourse, in this section we focus on three extracts of real-
life classroom discourse. These data extracts are drawn from a larger corpus of data collected
for a two-year London-based language and literacy research project (2009/2011)1. This was
an ethnographically oriented research project investigating language and literacy practices
in senior secondary school and university classes in a range of subjects and disciplines.
All the school and university classes involved in the study were ethnolinguistically diverse.
Many of the school students were English as Additional Language (EAL) speakers from
local ethnolinguistic minority communities; the university classes comprised English first-
language speakers, EAL speakers from local communities and international students. The
data collected included curriculum materials and audio-video recordings of non-contrived
classroom activities. The extracts shown here are selected from the datasets collected in
two university settings: a one-hour video recording of a first-year university seminar on
‘academic literacy’ led by a Biology tutor (not an English Language instructor; Extracts
1 and 2), and a one-and-a-half-hour video recording of a first-year class on Language,
Communication and Society (Extract 3). Both of the institutions involved were located
within Greater London. Table 2 summarises the key contextual information of the data
extracts.
These extracts are identified as appropriate for illustrating the conceptual issues raised
in this paper. They represent recurring themes that we have observed while analysing the
 Language and Education 403

Table 2. Key contextual information for data extracts.

Focal student
language
Extract Institution Academic activity background
1 University 1 Academic Literacy Seminar, BSc Biology, first-year EAL
programme
2 University 1 Academic Literacy Seminar, BSc Biology, first-year EAL
programme
3 University 2 Lecture – Class discussion: Language, EAL
Communication and Society, BA English
Language Education, first-year programme

data. While these extracts represent no more than a fraction of what we have observed, we
believe that these are ‘telling cases’ (Mitchell 1984) pointing to the existence of conceptual
lacunae in the CEFR and the concept of communicative competence that it purports to
articulate.

Data analysis and interpretation

To prepare the data for analysis, we adopted a two-stage process. In the first stage, following
Bloome et al. (2009), we sought to discern the different activities in the focal classrooms.
Through repeated viewing of the video-recordings and asking the question ‘what’s going
on?’, we inductively identified the main ‘activity phases’ first in the ‘academic literacy’
seminar and then in the Language, Communication and Society class. Where an activity
phase included some elements of another activity, e.g. teacher answering student questions
in the middle of a teacher-fronted talk, we tried to signal the mixed nature in the descrip-
tion. In the second stage of data preparation, selective segments of the classroom events
were transcribed for further analysis. The extracts presented here involved teacher–student
exchanges.
In this stage, to help analyse and interpret the classroom data, we adopted Scollon’s
(1996) framework of discourse roles, itself a development on Goffman’s (1981) ideas on
production format roles that suggest that in any act of communication there are two parallel
discourse roles:

Productive Receptive
Animator Mechanical Receptor
Author Rhetorical Interpreter
Principal Responsible Judge
(Scollon 1996, 4)

We can illustrate the two sets of roles through an everyday example: when we are
talking (animator role) to someone in the family, we express our meanings rhetorically in
our own words (author role) and we assume responsibility (principal role) for what we say.
Likewise, when we are listening (receptor role) to someone in the family, we try to make
sense (interpreter role) of what is being said and decide (judge role) whether or how to
respond.
404 C. Leung and J. Lewkowicz

Ordinarily, we may assume that we take on all the productive and receptive roles when
we communicate with other people. However, it is possible for the roles to be assumed by
different participants, particularly in institutional settings. For instance, an office worker
may take a phone message (receptor role) and pass it on to someone else to deal with (judge
role) without having to interpret its meaning (interpreter role); similarly, a speech writer
may draft (author role) a text for a politician to present in a talk as her own ideas (animator
and principal roles) at a conference.
The meanings and the practices associated with these discourse roles are socially
influenced and can vary in different cultural and social environments. For instance, in
a school culture that values social conformity and collective acceptance of established
‘knowledge’, pupils are unlikely to be encouraged to actively interpret the information they
receive or to respond in an untrammelled idiosyncratic way. This would impact on the ways
in which the receptive discourse roles are interpreted and enacted. At the same time though,
it isn’t the case that individuals will always enact these discourse roles in a completely
socially pre-determined manner. An office receptionist, on receiving a message intended
for someone else, may decide to do more than just passing the information on because
the nature of the information warrants a non-routine response. In social situations where
there are individuals with different understandings of the discourse roles, communicating
and negotiating meaning can be very complex. Negotiating meaning in multiethnic and
multilingual situations, where participants cannot presume that a common set of social
practices and values is shared, is a case par excellence of such complexity, some examples
of which will be seen in the classroom data below. We argue that working with the discourse
roles, we can begin to develop a more nuanced account of communicative competence.

Vignettes of classroom interaction

As indicated above, the data extracts are drawn from a first-year academic literacy seminar
and a first-year Language, Communication and Society class at two universities in London.
These extracts will be discussed in turn.

Academic literacy seminar for Biology students (university 1)

The first two extracts are taken from an academic literacy seminar. The session comprised
the following: a tutor-led discussion on the approaches to and demands of reading aca-
demic/scientific articles (16 min approx); the tutor returning marked individual student
written assignments and giving comments and advice to individuals and the whole group
(16 min approx); the tutor handing out sample essays and setting up a marking exercise
for students (three min approx); students reading (and evaluating) sample essays (three
min approx); a tutor-led discussion on marking strategies (two min approx); the tutor ex-
plaining issues related to plagiarism (14 min approx); the tutor setting a written homework
assignment (two min approx).
There were six students in this seminar (all first-year Biology majors) – three were
first language speakers of English and three were EAL speakers from diverse language
backgrounds. The recorded seminar activities were non-contrived. The topic of discussion
for this seminar was on academic reading and writing with reference to Biology and sciences
more generally. As a general pattern of interaction in this seminar, the tutor tended to lead
the discussion by offering his views on a particular issue and the students would chime in at
various moments, sometimes taking the floor from the tutor. While the tutor generally led
 Language and Education 405

the discussion and the activities, there was an open and participatory feel to the interaction
between all the participants. In Extract 1, near the beginning of the session, the tutor led
off by giving his views on reading academic science journal articles.
Transcription key:
S - student
T - teacher/tutor
(.) pause of up to 1 sec
= latching
? rise in intonation
(word) unclear words
[ ] noises and comments related to the utterance
Extract 1

01 T: . . . science papers are not novels (.) they not something that you can read

02 while in the bath or going to sleep or something (.) they require intense
03 concentration. they are hard work (.) there’s no getting away from

04 it (.) no, to read this (an article from Nature) and understand
05 it requires several read and several hours of work =

06 S: = it need to =
07 T: = that’s (quite) for me

08 S: yeah, the scientific method that he was using to find the Fox2P2
09 tended to let you [inaudible] it was hard (.) couldn’t do it

A student from an EAL background interjected (line 06). This student was clearly
following the seminar discussion. Her interjection in lines 08 and 09, however, did not
involve additional content-related information or advance an argument or a point of view.
Rather she chimed in with a contribution on how hard she had found the assigned reading
that supported the tutor’s point. Voluntary offers of support to reinforce an interlocutor’s
point of view are not specified in the CEFR descriptors; the closest descriptors are:
B2 Formal discussion and meetings (Council of Europe 2001, 78):

Can keep up with an animated discussion, identifying accurately arguments supporting and
opposing points of view. (B2.2)
Can express his/her ideas and opinions with precision, present and respond to complex lines
of argument convincingly. (B2.2)

At this point of the seminar, however, there was no ‘animated discussion’; the tutor was
presenting his personal view on academic reading. The tutor’s utterance in line 07 suggests
that the students were not invited to show agreement or support explicitly at that moment.
On this view the student was under no pressure to respond, to play the (productive) author
role. She seemed to have understood the tutor’s statement in a particular way (interpreter
role) and decided to offer support (judge role). With this amount of active engagement with
what was going on, it would be difficult to say that the student did not take responsibility for
what she said (principal role). Given the importance of creating and maintaining supportive
relationships, the data in Extract 1 suggests that volunteering to show support for an
406 C. Leung and J. Lewkowicz

interlocutor’s instruction and advice is a dimension of classroom interaction that may need
to be considered in terms of communicative competence in academic (but possibly also
other) contexts.
The episode in Extract 2 took place some 30 min after the exchange reported in Extract 1.
At this point of the seminar, the tutor had drawn a close to a discussion on the importance of
choosing an appropriate title for written work. As part of this discussion, the tutor evaluated
each of the students’ titles for the written summary they had made of the assigned reading
(set by the tutor) in a previous seminar. However, the focal student’s (self-same, as in Extract
1) submitted assignment appeared to be missing.
Extract 2
01 S: where is mine?

02 T: where is yours (.) it’s a very good question

03 S: I gave it in

04 T: I (.) in that box over there (.) was it? where did you give it
05 S: in the box downstairs

06 T: ah, that’s why I haven’t got it

07 S: why?

08 T: because it should have been in the metal box here (.) you give it to me

09 again (.) it may even be lost

10 S: because if they have any (.) I have your name on my paper [inaudible]

11 T: yes but it’s probably got misplaced somewhere because they are not
12 expecting this work =

13 S: = OK
14 T: it should have been in the metal box there [pointing to the direction of

15 an adjacent room]
16 S: huh

17 T: this time this time I’ll let you off (.) if it happens again I can’t let
18 you off

19 S: OK
20 T: all tutorial work is in the box [pointing to the direction of an adjacent

21 room again]
22 S: in this floor

23 T: yes, on the end here

24 S: OK

25 T: OK [turning away from S] right our next job

 Language and Education 407

26 S: ahh can I give you

27 T: yes, when you just give it to me as soon as you can

28 S: OK

The student appeared to have lodged her assignment in the wrong place, possibly due to
some misunderstanding of the instructions given on a previous occasion. The exchange
in lines 05–07 suggests that the student might have difficulties in working out what she
was supposed to do. In order for the student to re-submit her work in accordance with
the tutor’s arrangements, she would need to know two pieces of information: place and time
of submission. The tutor repeatedly gave explicit information on the pre-arranged location
in lines 08, 14 and 20. However, he did not mention time. This led to her asking an explicit
question in line 26. While the phrasing of this question could be interpreted in a number of
different ways, the tutor appeared to have chosen to take it as a request for clarification for
the handing-in time (line 27). The subsequent student acknowledgement (line 28) closed
this exchange. This was a difficult situation for the student to manage because the tutor had
shown displeasure by saying ‘if it happens again I can’t let you off ’ (lines 17 and 18). In
addition, the tutor clearly signalled that he had considered the matter closed and wanted to
move on to the next task (line 25). In this instance, the student seemed to have contested the
tutor’s invocation of his authority to manage and lead classroom activities (line 25). One
might say that the student succeeded remarkably well in achieving her goal of clarifying
the information she needed.
In this exchange it seems clear that the student assumed all the receptive and productive
roles actively, because it was entirely concerned with the handing-in arrangements for
her assignment. In line 26, the student’s insistence on reopening the issue of handing-in
details can be seen as a determined effort to play the author role because she really wanted
to obtain a particular piece of information (principal role). This kind of discursive and
pragmatic move ‘against the current’ is not mentioned in the CEFR descriptors. The closest
descriptor is:
C1 Formal discussions and meetings (Council of Europe 2001, 78)
Can argue a formal position convincingly, responding to questions and comments and answer-
ing complex lines of counter argument fluently, spontaneously and appropriately.

For the student what was at issue here was not a subject content-related argument; she
was trying to extract a piece of procedural information she needed by reopening a topic that
had been closed by the tutor. Again, shouldn’t this insistence on completing one’s agenda
be regarded as part of communicative competence?

Language, communication and society class (university 2)

There were 20 students in this class, a majority of whom were from an EAL background.
The class comprised the following: as a warm-up activity, the teacher asking students to
discuss language diversity in society (16 min approx); teacher-fronted mini-lectures on
sociolinguistic concepts such as ‘standard language’ and ‘dialects’ (50 min approx, in
two phases); and a teacher-led class task and discussion addressing issues related to mini-
lectures (20 min approx). At the point Extract 3 was taken, the teacher had given a series
of mini-lectures on various sociolinguistic concepts such as standard language, dialect and
vernacular. As part of the discussion, the teacher suggested that there was a distinction
between overt and covert prestige enjoyed by different varieties of language in society. The
408 C. Leung and J. Lewkowicz

teacher had suggested that some social groups might value particular varieties of language
that did not enjoy high prestige in the public domain. Their preference and support for such
varieties could be seen as an instance of covert prestige. The focal student, S1, an EAL
speaker, raised a question at this point.
Extract 3

01 S1: you know the covert prestige thing (.) it’s kind of contradictory to what
02 it really means (.) difficult to know what it means (.) because the overt

03 one is privileged open language (.) but aah people in you know in high
04 places you know such as musicians (.) obviously in high places (.) you

05 know (.) are using this other type of language which is in a way privilege
06 because they can use it (.) and like a majority of people are using

07 the same language (.) so it kind of contradicts the meaning of the covert
08 prestige in a way

09 T: yeah I mean these are (.) these are just terms that (.) what happens aah
10 someone in the field let’s say sociolinguistics will use aah will

11 coin the usage of a term to order to help them understand you know a
12 certain context or a certain aspect of language use (.) and that will gain

13 currency . . .
Quite evidently the student had followed the teacher’s talk closely and understood his
point. However, she saw a more complex relationship between overt and covert prestige
because the conceptual boundaries between the public in society at large and particular
social groups could not be delineated in any straightforward way. Her response to the
teacher (lines 01–08) reflects this complex reasoning. In terms of expressing one’s views,
the CEFR descriptors that correspond to this utterance most closely are:
B1 Formal discussion and meetings (Council of Europe 2001, 78):
Can put over a point of view clearly, but has difficulty engaging in debate.

B1 Goal-oriented co-operation (e.g. Repairing a car, discussing a document, organising an

event; Council of Europe 2001, 79):

Can make his/her opinions and reactions understood as regards possible solutions or question
of what to do next, giving brief reasons and explanations.

The fit with both of the above descriptions is not comfortable though (we also
note that B1 is generally regarded as below university entrance level). In terms of lan-
guage articulation, the student did not signal her main argument clearly. Lines 01 and 02
indicate the topic – that covert prestige is contradictory – but there is no signposting as
to where the argument is heading or clear articulation of the intended question. In lines
04–08, the student used musicians’ language as a conduit to argue that a particular social or
occupational group’s language might also be adopted by the public at large, which is clearly
relevant to the topic in hand. But the point is made through a specific real-life example
 Language and Education 409

without any accompanying projection to the theoretical or conceptual plane. The language
expressions have not been organised with precision, e.g. the deictic meaning of the major-
ity of people (line 06) is unclear; and they do not display a grasp of the academic register
conventionally expected in this kind of classroom exchange. A good deal of interpretive
work has to be done by the interlocutors. Clearly, the quality of the utterance does not quite
fit the threshold level for university entrance.
B2 Formal discussion and meetings (Council of Europe 2001, 78):
Can express his/her ideas and opinions with precision, present and respond to complex lines
of argument convincingly.

Nevertheless, judging from the teacher’s fairly lengthy effort to respond, one would
say that S1 succeeded in communicating a complex argument, and engaged the teacher
in discussion effectively. From the point of view of the discourse roles, the fact that this
exchange took place at all is in itself interesting. While the teacher had shown a willingness
to take questions from the students, he did not invite questions at this point. This particular
exchange was initiated by the student, who wanted to respond to (animator and author
roles) what she heard (receptor and interpreter roles) presumably because she felt it would
be appropriate (judge role) to offer her view (principal).
Looking at this exchange from the point of view of conventionally assumed
teacher–student power differentials, it also seems clear that the teacher in this instance
did not choose to make a judgement of S1’s arguments in terms of the register (particular
selections of lexemes and prosody and so on) generally associated with discipline-related
academic discourse. Agha (1999, 216) suggests that a register conveys to the participants
in social interaction that ‘some typifiable social practice is linked indexically to the current
occasion of language use’. By extension, switching to a different register can ‘reconfigure
the sense of occasion’. In this instance, the teacher did not insist on register conformity.
Instead, he tried to respond to the content in the student’s statement. This can be seen
as an example of participant volition and willingness to engage in meaning-making (ir-
respective of the level of linguistic felicity and register conformity), the importance of
which the CEFR, and the concept of communicative competence more generally, seems to
under-play.

Discussion of data
In all three extracts the students contributed to the accomplishment of the ongoing dis-
course, yet some features of the discourse that contributed to that accomplishment are not
covered by the CEFR descriptors. There is no doubt that in Extract 1 the student could
‘express his/her ideas and opinions’ (Level B2.2 – Formal discussion and meetings), but
this descriptor continues ‘with precision, present and respond to complex lines of argument
convincingly’ – features not present in the speaker’s utterance, nor was it necessary for
successful communication in this instance. In Extract 2, as has been pointed out above, the
speaker not only managed to elicit the required information but also did so under duress
because the tutor had already indicated displeasure and signalled his intention to move on
to the next topic. No mention is made in the descriptors of being able to respond in various
circumstances or to persist with a topic that is considered closed by one’s interlocutor(s).
Finally, Extract 3 clearly demonstrates that it is possible and even acceptable (in this case,
at least to the teacher concerned) to engage in the discussion of a complex topic without
410 C. Leung and J. Lewkowicz

‘precision’ and being ‘convincing’ (Level B2 Formal discussion and meetings), or explicitly
‘inviting others to join in’ (Level B2 Goal-oriented co-operation).
Furthermore, these three episodes of classroom interaction remind us that in real-life
classroom activities spoken language used for communication is driven by participant
meanings that range from representations and contestations of subject content to expres-
sions of personal views. Above all, these episodes happened because the student actively
participated in the classroom activities by enacting the receptive and productive roles. This
suggests that participation should not be taken for granted and it should not be understood
in terms of displaying proficiency. These instances of classroom interaction suggest that
there are gaps in the CEFR framework. The concern here, then, is not only about what is
included in the descriptors, but also about what is not present but should be.

Implications for further development

In this paper, we have looked at some of the tenets of the current conceptualisation and
interpretation of communicative competence against the backdrop of linguistically diverse
educational settings. We have done this by scrutining the CEFR (which claims to be built
on the concept of communicative competence). We have also used empirical data to show
that live interaction is considerably more complex and contingent than the established
conceptualisation of communicative competence has specified. In doing this, we do not
suggest that there is no need for curriculum and assessment frameworks such as CEFR. On
the contrary, we feel that for as long as some kind of curriculum design and assessment
of student knowledge and skills is needed, such frameworks will have a role to play. After
all we have to start with some sort of reference point. Instead we are suggesting that any
curriculum and assessment framework, given its potential impact on pedagogy, should
be empirically interrogated and theoretically critiqued regularly and systematically with
reference to its context of use. Also, because situated language use is almost always linked
to content meaning and sociocultural factors such as institutional practices and participant
power relationships, broad and universal frameworks such as the CEFR need to be supported
by locally tuned empirical accounts.
In Extracts 1 and 2, we have shown that situated meaning-making in the classroom is
multifaceted; institutional roles and power relationships can be negotiated by participants
in interaction. In Extract 3, we have shown how subject content can play a significant part in
shaping interaction. Here the absence of the expected use of appropriate academic register
and the lack of clear thematic development did not seem to have deterred the teacher. The
teacher treated the student’s expression of his view seriously because of its content relevance.
Seen in this light, the student’s apparent lack of linguistic resources to produce a more fluent
response in an appropriate academic register did not seem to matter to the teacher. This
kind of content-driven first-additional language encounter is increasingly commonplace
as the populations of universities and other educational institutions in Western Europe,
North America and other places become more and more diverse (itself a reflection of the
linguistic diversity in society at large). In these circumstances, participants in subject-driven
interactions are likely to pay as much attention to content-related meanings as to linguistic
felicity, if not more so. Yet, as we have seen, content is generally handled in an abstract and
restricted way in the CEFR limiting the context validity of the framework (Weir 2005).
This is a knotty problem that cannot be satisfactorily addressed within the purview of the
current conceptualisation of communicative competence. We can, however, move towards
greater understanding by beginning to empirically establish what counts as ‘precision’,
‘being convincing’ and other indices of language competence in local contexts where
 Language and Education 411

language is used in live interaction, and in this way build up composite pictures on this
basis. This would, in turn, provide educators and language assessors alike, with more
realistic descriptions/models of successful communication.
Another basic issue that requires attention is contingency within the concept of compe-
tence. It is highly unlikely that any language assessment framework can cover all possible
contingent human meanings. Even if this were possible, it would be so voluminous and
unwieldy that such frameworks would not be usable in practice. An added complexity is
that given the increasing mobility of people moving across language and national borders
for reasons of work or more permanent settlement, first-additional language or additional
language as lingua franca encounters are increasingly commonplace. This is particularly
the case for an international language such as English (which has several native and na-
tivised varieties). In such encounters adherence to some putative native-speaker linguistic
and pragmatic norms may not be a priority, or even an important consideration (e.g. Jenk-
ins 2007; Seidlhofer 2006, 2009). In this kind of context, contingency is not just about
meaning, but it may also involve contingent or novel forms that emerge from interactional
meaning-making. Of course, things are complexified further still by digital communication
technology, e.g. Web 2.0, which offers opportunities for, indeed invites, innovative practices
involving language and other semiotic resources. From the point of view of teaching and
assessing communicative competence, perhaps an enumeration approach that seeks to chart
the full range of possible human meanings is neither intellectually feasible nor practicable.
Instead, one might consider a key ingredient for effective communication that may have
been unproblematically taken for granted in the current conceptualisations, namely, partic-
ipation in interaction and communication. Bourdieu (1977) observes that while there are
established patterns of social roles, rules and discourses, participants’ meaning-making in
social encounters is enacted in actual interaction, not entirely pre-inscribed in situations.
The idea that people adhere strictly to social rules and norms:
[. . .] ceases to convince as soon as one considers the practical mastery of the symbolism of
social interaction – tacit, dexterity, or savior-faire – presupposed by the most everyday games
of sociability . . . based on the continuous decoding of the perceived – but not consciously
noticed – indices of the welcome given to actions already accomplished, continuously carries
out the checks and corrections intended to ensure the adjustment of practices and expressions
to the reactions and expectations of the other agents. (Bourdieu 1977, 10)
Intercultural education theorists have long argued for a widening of the concept of
communicative competence that, inter alia, includes sociocultural competence and social
competence. Sociocultural competence refers to a speaker having some familiarity with
the social processes and practices related to any specific language use situation. Social
competence refers to ‘the will and the skill to interact with others’ (Byram 1997, 10). This
suggests a cast of mind that transcends a learned and adopted language repertoire that is
based on a pre-specified model. Kramsch (2010; also Kramsch and Whiteside 2008), in a
discussion on intercultural competence, appears to emphasise the value of Byram’s social
competence. She argues that the development of such competence is not only a question of
tolerance towards or empathy with others, of understanding them in their cultural context, or
of understanding oneself and the other in terms of one another, but also a matter of looking
beyond words and actions and embracing multiple, changing and conflicting discourse
worlds, in which
[. . .] the circulation of values and identities across cultures, the inversions, even inventions of
meaning, [are] often hidden behind a common illusion of effective communication . . . while
communicative competence was based on an assumption of understanding based on common
412 C. Leung and J. Lewkowicz

goals and common interests, intercultural competence presupposes a lack of understanding

due to divergent subjectivities and historicities. (Kramsch 2010, 3)

Kramsch (2010, 6) goes on to suggest that in linguistically and culturally diverse

settings ‘symbolic competence’ is required; this kind of competence ‘goes further than . . .
interpret[ing] events according to truths conventionally agreed upon. Symbolic competence
is also engaged in the symbolic power game of challenging established meanings and
redefining the real . . .’. For such competences to work, the speaker has to have a disposition
to engage with others. Participation in communication, whether in contexts where the
participants share a common culture and language or in a context where participants are
having to work to achieve understanding across languages and cultural practices, seems
key to this communicative sensibility. This brings us back to a Hymesian precept: that there
is a difference between language as system and speech as instances of meaning-making.
Blommaert (2009, 264) elaborates on speech thus:
Speech is language-in-society, i.e. an active notion and one that deeply situates language in
a web of relations of power, a dynamics of availability and accessibility, a situatedness of
single acts vis-á-vis larger social and historical patterns such as genres and traditions. Speech
is language in which people have made investments – social, cultural, political, individual-
emotional ones.
Our classroom vignettes speak to the notions of symbolic competence and speaker
participation eloquently. From the point of view of benchmarking, the concept of commu-
nicative competence may need to be reworked. As Widdowson (2001) notes, it is possible to
identify lexical, grammatical and (rehearsed) sociolinguistic knowledge in so far as they can
be described and enumerated, and competences (however defined) are calibrated at various
benchmark levels. It is, however, difficult to see how communication can be treated in the
same way. To communicate with others, speakers in any given situation have to, minimally,
(1) decide to participate in social interaction, and (2) make use of available linguistic and
sociolinguistic resources to make meaning and to respond to others’ meaning/s in person-
ally preferred ways. These are matters involving individual dispositions and volitions in
context that cannot be specified in advance. Any attempt at specification without taking
account of these ‘properties’ cannot claim validity without having to redefine the concept
of communicative competence itself.
On this view, communicative competence is a composite label for various types of
language-related knowledge and speakers’ use of such knowledge to participate in com-
munication. The former can be described, sampled and assessed to greater or lesser extent.
The latter, however, is not easily captured by approaches that discount participants’ active
engagement in social interaction.
An expanded notion of communicative competence for curriculum design and as-
sessment that takes account of the contingent nature of social interaction would need
to turn to participatory engagement as an additional index. The notion of participation
is of course itself an abstraction. It would need to be operationalised. Further thought
would need to be given to a large number of ground-clearing questions that would in-
clude: In academic contexts, how should curriculum content be factored into participa-
tory communication? How far can participation be operationalised in terms of observ-
able features of action/interaction? What normative values might come into play when
determining what counts as communicatively oriented participation? Would it be feasi-
ble to convert the notion of participatory engagement into a rating scale for assessment
purposes?
 Language and Education 413

Note
1. ESRC-funded research project RES-062-23-1666 Modelling for Diversity: Academic Language
and Literacies in School and University (2009/11).

References
Agha, A. 1999. Register. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 9, no. 1–2: 216–9.
Bachman, L. 1990. Fundamental considerations in language testing. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Berg, B.L. 2009. Qualitative research methods for the social sciences. 7th ed. Boston, MA: Allyn &
Bacon.
Blommaert, J. 2009. Ethnography and democracy: Hymes’s political theory of language. Text & Talk
29, no. 3: 257–76.
Bloome, D., M. Beierle, M. Grigorenko, and S. Goldman. 2009. Learning over time: Uses of inter-
contextuality, collective memories, and classroom chronotopes in the construction of learning
opportunities in a ninth-grade language arts classroom. Language and Education 23, no. 4:
313–34.
Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brown, A. 2003. Interviewer variation and the co-construction of speaking proficiency. Language
Testing 20, no. 1: 1–25.
Byram, M. 1997. Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. Clevedon: Mul-
tilingual Matters.
Canale, M., and M. Swain. 1980. Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language
teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics 1, no. 1: 1–47.
Council of Europe. 2001. Common European framework of reference for languages: Learning,
teaching, assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cumming, A. 2009. Language assessment in education: Tests, curricula, and teaching. Annual Review
of Applied Linguistics 29: 90–100.
Fulcher, G. 2008. Testing times ahead? Liaison Magazine 1: 20–4.
Fulcher, G. 2009. Test use and political philosophy. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 29: 3–20.
Goffman, E. 1981. Forms of talk. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania.
González, J.P. 2009. Competences in language teaching: From their conceptualisation to their con-
cretion in the curriculum. In English language teaching in the European credit transfer system,
ed. M.L. Cañado, 93–108. Oxford: Peter Lang.
Hsieh, H.-F., and S.E. Shannon. 2005. Three approaches to qualitative content analysis. Qualitative
Health Research 15, no. 9: 1277–88.
Jenkins, J. 2007. English as a lingua franca: Attitude and identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jones, N., and N. Saville. 2009. European language policy: Assessment, learning, and the CEFR.
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 29: 51–63.
Kay, S., and V. Jones. 2009. New inside out. Oxford: Macmillan.
Kramsch, C. 2010. Plenary speeches: The symbolic dimensions of the intercultural. Language Teach-
ing 44: 354–67.
Kramsch, C., and A. Whiteside. 2008. Language ecology in multilingual settings towards a theory of
symbolic competence. Applied Linguistics 29, no. 4: 645–71.
Leung, C. 2005. Convivial communication: Recontextualizing communicative competence. Interna-
tional Journal of Applied Linguistics 15, no. 2: 119–44.
Leung, C. 2010a. Language teaching and language assessment. In The Sage handbook of sociolin-
guistics, ed. R. Wodak, B. Johnstone, and P. Kerswill, 545–64. London: Sage.
Leung, C. 2010b. English as an additional language: Learning and participating in mainstream
classrooms. In Conceptualising learning in applied linguistics, ed. P. Seedhouse, S. Walsh, and
C. Jenks, 182–205. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Leung, C., and B. Mohan. 2004. Teacher formative assessment and talk in classroom contexts –
assessment as discourse and assessment of discourse. Language Testing 20, no. 3: 335–59.
Martyniuk, W. 2005. Relating language examinations to the Council of Europe’s Common European
Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). Paper presented at the proceedings of the
414 C. Leung and J. Lewkowicz

ALTE conference on Multilingualism and assessment: Achieving transparency, assuring quality,

sustaining diversity, May, in Berlin, Germany.
McKay, P. 2006. Assessing young language learners. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McNamara, T. 1997. ‘Interaction’ in second language performance assessment: Whose performance?
Applied Linguistics 18, no. 4: 446–66.
Mitchell, J. 1984. Typicality and the case study. In Ethnographic research: A guide to general conduct,
ed. R.F. Ellen, 238–41. New York: Academic Press.
Potter, W.J., and D. Levine-Donnerstein. 1999. Rethinking validity and reliability in content analysis.
Journal of Applied Communication Research 27, no. 3: 258–84.
Scarino, A. 2005. Learning languages in the New Zealand curriculum. http://www.tki.org.nz/r/
nzcurriculum/references_e.php.
Schegloff, E. 2007. Sequence organisation in interaction: A primer in conversation analysis. Vol. 1.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Scollon, R. 1996. Discourse identity, social identity, and confusion in intercultural communication.
Intercultural Communication Studies 6, no. 1: 1–16.
Seidlhofer, B. 2006. English as a lingua franca in the expanding circle: What it isn’t. In English in the
world: Global rules, global roles, ed. R. Rubdy and M. Saraceni, 40–50. London: Continuum.
Seidlhofer, B. 2009. Common ground and different realities: World Englishes and English as a lingua
franca. World Englishes 28, no. 2: 236–45.
Soars, J., and J. Soars. 2009. New headway intermediate student’s book. 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Thomas, D.R. 2006. A general inductive approach for analyzing qualitative evaluation data. American
Journal of Evaluation 27, no. 2: 237–46.
Weir, C.J. 2005. Limitations of the Common European Framework for developing comparable exam-
inations and tests. Language Testing 22, no. 3: 281–300.
Wells, G. 1995. Language and the inquiry-oriented curriculum. Curriculum Enquiry 25, no. 3: 233–69.
Widdowson, H.G. 2001. Communicative language testing: The art of the possible. In Experimenting
with uncertainty: Essays in honour of Alan Davies, ed. C. Elder, N. Brown, E. Iwashita, E. Grove,
K. Hill, T. Lumley, T. McNamara, and K. O’Laughlin, 12–21. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.