Students' communicative competence

Abstract

Communicative competence is the ability to send messages which promote attainment of goals while maintaining social acceptability. Competent communicators attempt to align themselves with each others goals and methods to produce a smooth, productive and often enjoyable dialogue. The aim of this research was to investigate self-perceived communicative competence (SPCC) of students of Engineering Management in General English and English for Specific Purposes (ESP). A longitudinal study was carried out starting with the first year students at the Faculty of Technical Sciences in Novi Sad and was repeated with the same sample of students during their second and third year of study. Participation was voluntary and took place during regular class time. The measure of communicative competence employed was the Self-perceived Communication Competence Scale. The results of the study indicated that differences in SPCC between the years do exist. The SPCC gradually improved between the first, the second and the third year. The research was also motivated by gaining better overview of the teaching activity. An anonymous questionnaire provided many useful hints and ideas for further work and thus, language teacher made a thorough analysis of the overall teaching procedure. However, it is essential to get some feedback and talk to students in order to evaluate both them and ourselves as well as the teaching syllabus.