Language communication and communicative competence: a view from contemporary classrooms

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Language communication andcommunicative competence: a viewfrom contemporary classroomsConstant Leung a & Jo Lewkowicz ba Centre for Language, Discourse & Communication, Departmentof Education & Professional Studies , King's College London ,London , UKb Student Affairs: Office for the Bologna Process , University ofWarsaw , Warsaw , PolandPublished online: 13 Aug 2012.

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

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Language and Education, 2013Vol. 27, No. 5, 398–414, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2012.707658

Language communication and communicative competence: a viewfrom contemporary classrooms

Constant Leunga∗ and Jo Lewkowiczb

aCentre for Language, Discourse & Communication, Department of Education & ProfessionalStudies, 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 ofcommunicative competence. Drawing on the empirical data collected in linguisticallydiverse university classrooms, we show that meaning-making in social interaction isconsiderably more complex and fluid than is envisaged in theoretical models of com-municative competence. We suggest that curriculum and assessment frameworks suchas the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), based onexisting notions of communicative competence, do not adequately capture the agentiveand contingent nature of co-constructed meaning-making and meaning-taking in socialinteraction, particularly in situations where high levels of ethnolinguistic diversity arefast becoming a norm. We suggest that for benchmarking curriculum and assessmentframeworks such as the CEFR to be relevant, they need to be empirically investigatedand 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 AppliedLinguistics (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 thepast 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 thedevelopment of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR;see Council of Europe 2001, Chapter 2). While we recognise that there is some variationin the ways in which the concept of communicative competence is used in the academicand professional literature and English language textbooks, our discussion will focus onthe CEFR as a particularly salient representation because: (1) it is a policy-supported andwidely adopted benchmarking instrument for setting standards for language teaching andassessment in Europe and beyond (Fulcher 2008, 2009; Jones and Saville 2009); (2) theCEFR 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 – manycommercially produced English language textbooks, for instance, are explicitly linked toCEFR 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

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Language and Education 399

of teaching programmes. For these reasons, we will use the CEFR as a point of referencefor our discussion of how communicative competence is currently conceptualised and forevaluating the framework’s (in)adequacy for describing additional language proficiencylevels and students’ ability to participate through spoken interaction in real-life contentclassrooms. We do this on the basis of empirical evidence from contemporary universityclassroom settings with linguistically diverse students.

We start with a discussion on the CEFR framework in terms of how it operationalisescommunicative competence with particular reference to spoken language. Next, drawingon classroom data we show that meaning-making in social interaction is considerably morecomplex and fluid than is envisaged in this framework, which incidentally, has not beendeveloped on the basis of empirical enquiry (see Cumming 2009, among others). Indeed,as Gonzalez (2009, 99–100) notes, the CEFR has been developed by experts ‘throughdeductive methods . . . [by] defining . . . key competences’. The discussion will concludewith some comments on the implications of a complexified view of communicative com-petence for curriculum development and assessment, including classroom-based teacherassessment 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 notonly in language use, but also in language learning and teaching. The Framework provides acommon 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 widespreadinfluence and use of the CEFR here. Suffice it to say that the CEFR’s influence reaches farbeyond its European heartland. For instance, the International English Language TestingSystem (IELTS), a popular English language test widely used by English-speaking univer-sities to identify the proficiency levels of applicants from other language backgrounds, islinked to the CEFR. Student progression in the New Zealand modern languages curriculumis charted against the levels in the CEFR (Scarino 2005). The seemingly all-purpose andready-to-use quality of the published CEFR scales makes it very important to criticallyexamine the adequacy of the conceptual framework that underpins its descriptors. In thissection, then, we explore the capacity of the CEFR, as a teaching and assessment frameworkunderpinned 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 withthree 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 A1being the lowest level): A1 (Breakthrough), A2 (Waystage), B1 (Threshold), B2 (Van-tage), C1 (Effective Operational Proficiency) and C2 (Mastery). After careful scrutiny, we

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400 C. Leung and J. Lewkowicz

focus selectively on twenty-one B2 and C1 level descriptors on grounds of relevance andbest-fit, i.e. these particular levels and descriptors are most likely to be relevant to spokenlanguage use in academic discussions at universities involving participants from diverselanguage 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 asadditional language use as this level is meant to be virtually indistinguishable from thatof 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 descriptorsare concerned with aspects of learner language performance in spoken interaction (e.g.‘can understand . . . main ideas . . .’ and ‘can keep up with an animated discussion . . .’). Asthe hierarchical organisation of the level descriptors indicates, there is an assumed notionof progressive development and attainment of knowledge and skills; many are qualified byadjectival (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 totap into two or more facets of language use (e.g. ‘can produce . . . well-structured . . . texton complex subjects, showing controlled use of organisational patterns’).

A more close-up reading of the descriptors suggests three underlying concerns, orlatent content (Hsieh and Shannon 2005), in terms of speaker ability. Thus, we sorted the21 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 andhandling content information – of the 21 descriptors analysed, 15 can be attributed to thiscategory. Given the fact that in practically all social interactions, with the possible exceptionof some moments in infant–adult interaction, communication between people tends not tobe free of content meaning, the prominence of this aspect of language use in the descriptorsis perhaps not surprising. At the same time we note that despite its prominence, the idea ofcontent 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 thescale. It may be reasonable to argue that the CEFR scales (and indeed other languageproficiency benchmark frameworks) have to be expressed necessarily in terms that are‘above’ specific content, so to speak. This is because language proficiency scales cannotcover all possible meanings in all fields of human activity. Nevertheless this invocationof 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 thedescriptors such as ‘concrete’ (as in ‘concrete topics’), ‘complex’ and ‘wide range’. Andsince the same qualifier can occur at two different levels, this compounds the difficultiesand 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 . . .’ (B2Spoken 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 possibleto express complex meaning through relatively simple forms of language and vice versa

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

Ability Descriptor component

Understandingand handling(unspecified)content/topicinformation

B2 Global (Council of Europe 2001, 24):• Can understand the main ideas of complex text on both concrete and

abstract topics, including technical discussions in his/her field ofspecialisation

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 differentapproaches

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 recogniseimplicit meaning

• Can produce clear, well-structured, detailed text on complex subjects[showing controlled use of organisational patterns, connectors andcohesive 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 insocialinteraction

B2 Global (Council of Europe 2001, 24):• Can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular

interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either partyB2 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, saywhat they think, etc.

C1 Global (Council of Europe 2001, 24):• Can use language flexibly and effectively for social, academic and

professional purposesMaking use of

languageresources

C1 Global (Council of Europe 2001, 24):• Can express him/herself fluently and spontaneously without much obvious

searching for expressions• Can produce clear, well-structured, detailed text on complex subjects

[showing controlled use of organisational patterns, connectors andcohesive devices]∗

∗Double-barrelled descriptor; relevant parts are in regular upright print.

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(Leung 2010b). Such abstraction and ambiguity can cause interpretative difficulties forteachers (qua assessors) and test developers alike.

Another feature of the CEFR descriptors under discussion is that many of them appearto be primarily focused on individual language performance that is (largely) subject tospeaker’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 oforganisational patterns . . .’ (C1, Spoken Language, global descriptor), and ‘can expresshis/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 islittle doubt that in situations where a speaker has to present information or arguments insome form of solo performance, e.g. presenting a talk, such psycho-cognitive control is animportant aspect of language use. However, it is now well understood that language use insocial interaction tends to be co-constructed – participants build on one another’s utterancein a cumulative manner (e.g. Schegloff 2007, from a Conversation Analysis perspective;Wells 1995, from a socio-cultural perspective); and this fundamental aspect of languageuse 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 willbe picked up in the discussion of the data we present is that the CEFR, indeed the conceptof communicative competence itself, does not explicitly address social relationships in in-teraction (including classroom interaction) in which power and other sociocultural factorsimpinge on participant discourse. In the classroom context where the teacher is expected toboth facilitate and promote student participation, and to assess (often for formative and/ordiagnostic 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 asmanifested 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 collectedfor a two-year London-based language and literacy research project (2009/2011)1. This wasan ethnographically oriented research project investigating language and literacy practicesin 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 fromlocal ethnolinguistic minority communities; the university classes comprised English first-language speakers, EAL speakers from local communities and international students. Thedata collected included curriculum materials and audio-video recordings of non-contrivedclassroom activities. The extracts shown here are selected from the datasets collected intwo 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; Extracts1 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 locatedwithin Greater London. Table 2 summarises the key contextual information of the dataextracts.

These extracts are identified as appropriate for illustrating the conceptual issues raisedin this paper. They represent recurring themes that we have observed while analysing the

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Table 2. Key contextual information for data extracts.

Extract Institution Academic activity

Focal studentlanguage

background

1 University 1 Academic Literacy Seminar, BSc Biology, first-yearprogramme

EAL

2 University 1 Academic Literacy Seminar, BSc Biology, first-yearprogramme

EAL

3 University 2 Lecture – Class discussion: Language,Communication and Society, BA EnglishLanguage Education, first-year programme

EAL

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

Data analysis and interpretation

To prepare the data for analysis, we adopted a two-stage process. In the first stage, followingBloome 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 goingon?’, we inductively identified the main ‘activity phases’ first in the ‘academic literacy’seminar and then in the Language, Communication and Society class. Where an activityphase included some elements of another activity, e.g. teacher answering student questionsin 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 eventswere transcribed for further analysis. The extracts presented here involved teacher–studentexchanges.

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 onproduction format roles that suggest that in any act of communication there are two paralleldiscourse roles:

Productive Receptive

Animator Mechanical ReceptorAuthor Rhetorical InterpreterPrincipal Responsible Judge

(Scollon 1996, 4)

We can illustrate the two sets of roles through an everyday example: when we aretalking (animator role) to someone in the family, we express our meanings rhetorically inour 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 makesense (interpreter role) of what is being said and decide (judge role) whether or how torespond.

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Ordinarily, we may assume that we take on all the productive and receptive roles whenwe communicate with other people. However, it is possible for the roles to be assumed bydifferent participants, particularly in institutional settings. For instance, an office workermay take a phone message (receptor role) and pass it on to someone else to deal with (judgerole) without having to interpret its meaning (interpreter role); similarly, a speech writermay draft (author role) a text for a politician to present in a talk as her own ideas (animatorand principal roles) at a conference.

The meanings and the practices associated with these discourse roles are sociallyinfluenced and can vary in different cultural and social environments. For instance, ina school culture that values social conformity and collective acceptance of established‘knowledge’, pupils are unlikely to be encouraged to actively interpret the information theyreceive or to respond in an untrammelled idiosyncratic way. This would impact on the waysin 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 completelysocially pre-determined manner. An office receptionist, on receiving a message intendedfor someone else, may decide to do more than just passing the information on becausethe nature of the information warrants a non-routine response. In social situations wherethere are individuals with different understandings of the discourse roles, communicatingand negotiating meaning can be very complex. Negotiating meaning in multiethnic andmultilingual situations, where participants cannot presume that a common set of socialpractices and values is shared, is a case par excellence of such complexity, some examplesof which will be seen in the classroom data below. We argue that working with the discourseroles, 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 seminarand 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 comprisedthe 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 studentwritten 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 exercisefor students (three min approx); students reading (and evaluating) sample essays (threemin 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 homeworkassignment (two min approx).

There were six students in this seminar (all first-year Biology majors) – three werefirst language speakers of English and three were EAL speakers from diverse languagebackgrounds. The recorded seminar activities were non-contrived. The topic of discussionfor this seminar was on academic reading and writing with reference to Biology and sciencesmore generally. As a general pattern of interaction in this seminar, the tutor tended to leadthe discussion by offering his views on a particular issue and the students would chime in atvarious moments, sometimes taking the floor from the tutor. While the tutor generally led

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the discussion and the activities, there was an open and participatory feel to the interactionbetween all the participants. In Extract 1, near the beginning of the session, the tutor ledoff by giving his views on reading academic science journal articles.

Transcription key:S - studentT - 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 clearlyfollowing the seminar discussion. Her interjection in lines 08 and 09, however, did notinvolve 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 readingthat supported the tutor’s point. Voluntary offers of support to reinforce an interlocutor’spoint 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 andopposing points of view. (B2.2)

Can express his/her ideas and opinions with precision, present and respond to complex linesof argument convincingly. (B2.2)

At this point of the seminar, however, there was no ‘animated discussion’; the tutor waspresenting his personal view on academic reading. The tutor’s utterance in line 07 suggeststhat 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) authorrole. She seemed to have understood the tutor’s statement in a particular way (interpreterrole) and decided to offer support (judge role). With this amount of active engagement withwhat was going on, it would be difficult to say that the student did not take responsibility forwhat she said (principal role). Given the importance of creating and maintaining supportiverelationships, the data in Extract 1 suggests that volunteering to show support for an

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interlocutor’s instruction and advice is a dimension of classroom interaction that may needto be considered in terms of communicative competence in academic (but possibly alsoother) 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 ofchoosing an appropriate title for written work. As part of this discussion, the tutor evaluatedeach 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 Extract1) 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

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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 tosome misunderstanding of the instructions given on a previous occasion. The exchangein lines 05–07 suggests that the student might have difficulties in working out what shewas supposed to do. In order for the student to re-submit her work in accordance withthe tutor’s arrangements, she would need to know two pieces of information: place and timeof submission. The tutor repeatedly gave explicit information on the pre-arranged locationin lines 08, 14 and 20. However, he did not mention time. This led to her asking an explicitquestion in line 26. While the phrasing of this question could be interpreted in a number ofdifferent ways, the tutor appeared to have chosen to take it as a request for clarification forthe handing-in time (line 27). The subsequent student acknowledgement (line 28) closedthis exchange. This was a difficult situation for the student to manage because the tutor hadshown displeasure by saying ‘if it happens again I can’t let you off’ (lines 17 and 18). Inaddition, the tutor clearly signalled that he had considered the matter closed and wanted tomove on to the next task (line 25). In this instance, the student seemed to have contested thetutor’s invocation of his authority to manage and lead classroom activities (line 25). Onemight say that the student succeeded remarkably well in achieving her goal of clarifyingthe information she needed.

In this exchange it seems clear that the student assumed all the receptive and productiveroles actively, because it was entirely concerned with the handing-in arrangements forher assignment. In line 26, the student’s insistence on reopening the issue of handing-indetails can be seen as a determined effort to play the author role because she really wantedto obtain a particular piece of information (principal role). This kind of discursive andpragmatic move ‘against the current’ is not mentioned in the CEFR descriptors. The closestdescriptor 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; shewas trying to extract a piece of procedural information she needed by reopening a topic thathad been closed by the tutor. Again, shouldn’t this insistence on completing one’s agendabe 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 todiscuss language diversity in society (16 min approx); teacher-fronted mini-lectures onsociolinguistic concepts such as ‘standard language’ and ‘dialects’ (50 min approx, intwo 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 seriesof mini-lectures on various sociolinguistic concepts such as standard language, dialect andvernacular. As part of the discussion, the teacher suggested that there was a distinctionbetween overt and covert prestige enjoyed by different varieties of language in society. The

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teacher had suggested that some social groups might value particular varieties of languagethat did not enjoy high prestige in the public domain. Their preference and support for suchvarieties could be seen as an instance of covert prestige. The focal student, S1, an EALspeaker, 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 hispoint. However, she saw a more complex relationship between overt and covert prestigebecause the conceptual boundaries between the public in society at large and particularsocial groups could not be delineated in any straightforward way. Her response to theteacher (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:


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 anevent; Council of Europe 2001, 79):

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

The fit with both of the above descriptions is not comfortable though (we alsonote 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 02indicate the topic – that covert prestige is contradictory – but there is no signposting asto where the argument is heading or clear articulation of the intended question. In lines04–08, the student used musicians’ language as a conduit to argue that a particular social oroccupational group’s language might also be adopted by the public at large, which is clearlyrelevant to the topic in hand. But the point is made through a specific real-life example

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without any accompanying projection to the theoretical or conceptual plane. The languageexpressions 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 registerconventionally expected in this kind of classroom exchange. A good deal of interpretivework has to be done by the interlocutors. Clearly, the quality of the utterance does not quitefit the threshold level for university entrance.


Can express his/her ideas and opinions with precision, present and respond to complex linesof argument convincingly.

Nevertheless, judging from the teacher’s fairly lengthy effort to respond, one wouldsay that S1 succeeded in communicating a complex argument, and engaged the teacherin discussion effectively. From the point of view of the discourse roles, the fact that thisexchange took place at all is in itself interesting. While the teacher had shown a willingnessto take questions from the students, he did not invite questions at this point. This particularexchange was initiated by the student, who wanted to respond to (animator and authorroles) what she heard (receptor and interpreter roles) presumably because she felt it wouldbe appropriate (judge role) to offer her view (principal).

Looking at this exchange from the point of view of conventionally assumedteacher–student power differentials, it also seems clear that the teacher in this instancedid not choose to make a judgement of S1’s arguments in terms of the register (particularselections of lexemes and prosody and so on) generally associated with discipline-relatedacademic discourse. Agha (1999, 216) suggests that a register conveys to the participantsin social interaction that ‘some typifiable social practice is linked indexically to the currentoccasion of language use’. By extension, switching to a different register can ‘reconfigurethe 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 seenas 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 ofwhich the CEFR, and the concept of communicative competence more generally, seems tounder-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 notcovered 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), butthis descriptor continues ‘with precision, present and respond to complex lines of argumentconvincingly’ – features not present in the speaker’s utterance, nor was it necessary forsuccessful communication in this instance. In Extract 2, as has been pointed out above, thespeaker not only managed to elicit the required information but also did so under duressbecause the tutor had already indicated displeasure and signalled his intention to move onto the next topic. No mention is made in the descriptors of being able to respond in variouscircumstances 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

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‘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-lifeclassroom activities spoken language used for communication is driven by participantmeanings that range from representations and contestations of subject content to expres-sions of personal views. Above all, these episodes happened because the student activelyparticipated in the classroom activities by enacting the receptive and productive roles. Thissuggests that participation should not be taken for granted and it should not be understoodin terms of displaying proficiency. These instances of classroom interaction suggest thatthere are gaps in the CEFR framework. The concern here, then, is not only about what isincluded 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 andinterpretation of communicative competence against the backdrop of linguistically diverseeducational settings. We have done this by scrutining the CEFR (which claims to be builton the concept of communicative competence). We have also used empirical data to showthat live interaction is considerably more complex and contingent than the establishedconceptualisation of communicative competence has specified. In doing this, we do notsuggest that there is no need for curriculum and assessment frameworks such as CEFR. Onthe contrary, we feel that for as long as some kind of curriculum design and assessmentof student knowledge and skills is needed, such frameworks will have a role to play. Afterall we have to start with some sort of reference point. Instead we are suggesting that anycurriculum and assessment framework, given its potential impact on pedagogy, shouldbe empirically interrogated and theoretically critiqued regularly and systematically withreference to its context of use. Also, because situated language use is almost always linkedto content meaning and sociocultural factors such as institutional practices and participantpower relationships, broad and universal frameworks such as the CEFR need to be supportedby locally tuned empirical accounts.

In Extracts 1 and 2, we have shown that situated meaning-making in the classroom ismultifaceted; institutional roles and power relationships can be negotiated by participantsin interaction. In Extract 3, we have shown how subject content can play a significant part inshaping interaction. Here the absence of the expected use of appropriate academic registerand the lack of clear thematic development did not seem to have deterred the teacher. Theteacher 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 fluentresponse in an appropriate academic register did not seem to matter to the teacher. Thiskind of content-driven first-additional language encounter is increasingly commonplaceas 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 thelinguistic diversity in society at large). In these circumstances, participants in subject-driveninteractions are likely to pay as much attention to content-related meanings as to linguisticfelicity, if not more so. Yet, as we have seen, content is generally handled in an abstract andrestricted 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 thecurrent conceptualisation of communicative competence. We can, however, move towardsgreater understanding by beginning to empirically establish what counts as ‘precision’,‘being convincing’ and other indices of language competence in local contexts where

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language is used in live interaction, and in this way build up composite pictures on thisbasis. This would, in turn, provide educators and language assessors alike, with morerealistic 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 possiblecontingent human meanings. Even if this were possible, it would be so voluminous andunwieldy that such frameworks would not be usable in practice. An added complexity isthat given the increasing mobility of people moving across language and national bordersfor reasons of work or more permanent settlement, first-additional language or additionallanguage as lingua franca encounters are increasingly commonplace. This is particularlythe 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 linguisticand 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 aboutmeaning, but it may also involve contingent or novel forms that emerge from interactionalmeaning-making. Of course, things are complexified further still by digital communicationtechnology, e.g. Web 2.0, which offers opportunities for, indeed invites, innovative practicesinvolving language and other semiotic resources. From the point of view of teaching andassessing communicative competence, perhaps an enumeration approach that seeks to chartthe full range of possible human meanings is neither intellectually feasible nor practicable.Instead, one might consider a key ingredient for effective communication that may havebeen unproblematically taken for granted in the current conceptualisations, namely, partic-ipation in interaction and communication. Bourdieu (1977) observes that while there areestablished patterns of social roles, rules and discourses, participants’ meaning-making insocial 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 ofsocial interaction – tacit, dexterity, or savior-faire – presupposed by the most everyday gamesof sociability . . . based on the continuous decoding of the perceived – but not consciouslynoticed – indices of the welcome given to actions already accomplished, continuously carriesout the checks and corrections intended to ensure the adjustment of practices and expressionsto the reactions and expectations of the other agents. (Bourdieu 1977, 10)

Intercultural education theorists have long argued for a widening of the concept ofcommunicative competence that, inter alia, includes sociocultural competence and socialcompetence. Sociocultural competence refers to a speaker having some familiarity withthe social processes and practices related to any specific language use situation. Socialcompetence refers to ‘the will and the skill to interact with others’ (Byram 1997, 10). Thissuggests a cast of mind that transcends a learned and adopted language repertoire that isbased on a pre-specified model. Kramsch (2010; also Kramsch and Whiteside 2008), in adiscussion on intercultural competence, appears to emphasise the value of Byram’s socialcompetence. She argues that the development of such competence is not only a question oftolerance towards or empathy with others, of understanding them in their cultural context, orof understanding oneself and the other in terms of one another, but also a matter of lookingbeyond words and actions and embracing multiple, changing and conflicting discourseworlds, in which

[. . .] the circulation of values and identities across cultures, the inversions, even inventions ofmeaning, [are] often hidden behind a common illusion of effective communication . . . whilecommunicative competence was based on an assumption of understanding based on common

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goals and common interests, intercultural competence presupposes a lack of understandingdue to divergent subjectivities and historicities. (Kramsch 2010, 3)

Kramsch (2010, 6) goes on to suggest that in linguistically and culturally diversesettings ‘symbolic competence’ is required; this kind of competence ‘goes further than . . .

interpret[ing] events according to truths conventionally agreed upon. Symbolic competenceis also engaged in the symbolic power game of challenging established meanings andredefining the real . . .’. For such competences to work, the speaker has to have a dispositionto engage with others. Participation in communication, whether in contexts where theparticipants share a common culture and language or in a context where participants arehaving to work to achieve understanding across languages and cultural practices, seemskey to this communicative sensibility. This brings us back to a Hymesian precept: that thereis 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 ina web of relations of power, a dynamics of availability and accessibility, a situatedness ofsingle acts vis-a-vis larger social and historical patterns such as genres and traditions. Speechis language in which people have made investments – social, cultural, political, individual-emotional ones.

Our classroom vignettes speak to the notions of symbolic competence and speakerparticipation 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 toidentify lexical, grammatical and (rehearsed) sociolinguistic knowledge in so far as they canbe described and enumerated, and competences (however defined) are calibrated at variousbenchmark levels. It is, however, difficult to see how communication can be treated in thesame 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 andsociolinguistic resources to make meaning and to respond to others’ meaning/s in person-ally preferred ways. These are matters involving individual dispositions and volitions incontext that cannot be specified in advance. Any attempt at specification without takingaccount of these ‘properties’ cannot claim validity without having to redefine the conceptof communicative competence itself.

On this view, communicative competence is a composite label for various types oflanguage-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’ activeengagement 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 needto turn to participatory engagement as an additional index. The notion of participationis of course itself an abstraction. It would need to be operationalised. Further thoughtwould 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 whendetermining what counts as communicatively oriented participation? Would it be feasi-ble to convert the notion of participatory engagement into a rating scale for assessmentpurposes?

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Note1. ESRC-funded research project RES-062-23-1666 Modelling for Diversity: Academic Language

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Language communication and communicative competence: a view from contemporary classrooms