Does Communicative Competence Need To Be Re-conceptualized?

Abstract

Introduction I begin this examination of communicative competence with a description of my own context and a short anecdote. My own experience with 21st century communications technology is limited. I do not own a cell phone, do not inhabit chat rooms or blog sites, and use e-mail sparingly for personal correspondence. In short, one might say that I am living somewhat in the past. I also do not have a microwave oven or a dishwasher. None of these omissions are by design so much as the effects of habits that have suited me so far and which to date I have had no compelling reasons to change. My relationship with technology is a variation on Ockham's Razor: why do with multiple gadgets what I can do with one. It is not that I am a technophobe. I use computers daily in my teaching and scholarship and I have a digital camera but my first love is my circa 1960s manual single-lens reflex. I worked successfully for four years at a 'laptop' university, devised many creative computer slide shows and ran on-line discussion groups as part of course requirements. I am, however, not a speedster on the information highway. I prefer the secondary routes with occasions for face-to-face interactions with 'the locals.' I love the smell of libraries and the adventure of wandering bodily through stacks of books. I preface the following anecdote with these remarks to position myself vis a vis the subject of communicative competence. Readers with different predilections from mine might wonder why I haven't 'caught on' yet. In my graduate courses in education I usually require students to write a log or journal of responses to course readings, discussions, and related issues. I find it useful to establish what I call an 'epistolary' relationship with each student; we write back and forth. I use this practice to draw out quiet students, respond to points that do not come up in class, question taken-for-granted assumptions, and try to develop a collegial correspondence with each student. I see this as another channel for initiating them into the communicative practices of scholarship. Being of the opinion that if a person already keeps a journal, log, sketchbook, etc., I need not require another, I do not ask for an entire log or journal to be passed in. I require only excerpts. I believe this allows for the privacy required for free writing to be free. It also means I am not taking away the vehicle that is or might become a medium of a student's reflective practice. My goals and expectations have been influenced by literacy theory and my own school and university teaching practices over the past twenty years. This year on the third week of my course on research literacies, students passed in journal excerpts as usual. What wasn't usual was the form one student's excerpt took. It was a print-out from his web log. The pages were typical of what one sees on webpages: multiple spaces for multiple purposes including a strip of advertising near the top. As I began making my comments as usual in pencil in the margins, the absurdity of what I was doing dawned on me. His comments are already out there for the world to read, so why am I scribbling in pencil in the margins of this 'hard copy'? I went on-line to the blog site to discover that the student's current entries were all responses to my course. They were all available in this public space. I was unprepared for the public nature of this exchange. My first reaction was to feel 'outed' as a member of a passing generation. Should I enter into this space created by my student and respond on his terms and in his space? I went on-line and did briefly respond with a question using only my first name so as to blend in with other visitors to the site. I felt as though somehow my pedagogical space had been up-staged. As I read the student's thoughts on my course and its readings, which he was in effect passing on to countless 'unregistered auditors,' I began to question the literacy practices I take for granted and impose in my classroom. …