I found the article on communicative competence to be quite interesting and had a lot of overlap on what we have discussed in class. I think that when learning a new language it is important to recognize that people from different cultures may interpret a sentence differently than one would expect. Specifically this article refers to the phrase "I didn't like the casserole"and how this sentence alone can be interpreted as an apology or an insult. When learning a new language it is important to try and understand how phrases like this could be misinterpreted. I believe that this is the most frustrating part of learning a new language.
In the section on conversation analysis, I had never given much thought to the rules of conversation. This is extremely important when learning a new language, but I believe it can never really be learned until one immerses themselves into the culture in which they are studying. It is hard to understand the rules of conversation of another culture unless you are physically there. I think another challenge would be to adjust from your own culture's rules of conversation.
Finally, I found the part on gender and language to be interesting in terms of how this is different in each culture. This difference would be most vastly seen in cultures where women are not valued as highly as men. I don't think that this would be the case in Israel because men and women have equal rights, but I think this would be something to take note of if someone were learning the language of a country where women do not have the same rights as men. Overall I found this article to be interesting and it touched upon many of the themes from our class discussions.
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