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The term communicative competence was coined by Dell Hymes (1966) after the birth of “linguistic competence” (Chomsky, 1965). By observing the communicative activities of children, Hymes (1972) concluded that successful communication requires a speaker to use the language not only correctly, but also appropriately. Based on that, he also proposed the four components of communicative competence: linguistic competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence. Later, for the purpose of language testing, Bachman (1990) provided his taxonomy of language competence. According to him, language competence consisted of organizational competence and pragmatic competence. The former was further divided into grammatical competence and textual competence, and the latter into illocutionary competence and sociolinguistic competence. He further summarized communicative competence as “the capacity for implementing, or executing that competence in appropriate, contextualized communicative language use” (Bachman, 1990, p. 84).
Communicative Competence in Language Classrooms
The emergence of such teaching methods as communicative language teaching (CLT) and task-based language teaching (TBLT) in recent decades (see for example Evans, 2013; Farooq, 2015; Long, 2000; Nunan, 1991; Mart, 2018) has fueled the need to improve language learners’ communicative competence through classroom instruction. Many studies in this area have focused on communication strategies, or strategic competence (see Dagarin, 2004; Dörnyei & Dornyei, 2006; Nakatani, 1998); some on linguistic competence (see Newton, 2013); and others on instructional materials and design of communicative activities (see Gilmore, 2011; Nunan, 1989). In these communication-oriented language classrooms, computer-assisted language learning (CALL) technologies also play an important role. Chun (1994) investigated how class discussion through a computer network increased the interactive competence of first-year foreign language learners. Nowrozi (2011) recognized the lack of communicative use of target language both in and outside the classroom and proposed the integration of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) into language learning, as it can increase both input (exposure) and output (use) of the target language needed for learners to promote both their linguistic and pragmatic competence. Another study on network-based communication by Lloyd (2012) examined the role social networking sites could play in encouraging both written and oral communication between language learners and native speakers or other speakers of the target language.