Learners communicative competence in English as a foreign language (EFL)

Abstract

Moving from the 'focus on form' teaching approach such as grammar translation and audiolingualism, recently more language teachers have noticed the failure of form focusing approach in developing learners' communicative ability in real-life situations and shifted to adopt the communicative language teaching (CLT). The CLT approach highlights learners' communicative competence (Hymes, 1972) which is defined as learners' ability to efficiently express what they mean in the target language and successfully achieve communications in real-life situations (Lightbown and Spada, 1999; Power, 2003). In order to do so, learners not only need to acquire the linguistic but pragmatic knowledge of the TL (Hedgcock, 2002). It is suggested that competence, both linguistic and pragmatic, is the knowledge developed and acquired through exposure and use (Kasper, 1997). In other words, without sufficient exposure needed for learners to notice and acquire the language input and chances to use the knowledge, communicative competence is not likely to be promoted. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that the integration of computer-mediated communication (CMC) into English as a foreign language EFL learning can increase both input (exposure) and output (use) of the target language that is needed for learners to promote both their linguistic and pragmatic competence. Key words: Communicative competence, computer mediated communication (CMC), authentic and interactive learning tasks.