H.D. Brown’s chapter on “Communicative Competence” is a wonderful reminder that learning a language must occur on many fronts. He defines communicative competence as “that aspect of our competence that enables us to convey and interpret messages and to negotiate meanings interpersonally within specific contexts” (223). While it is important to obtain grammatical competence and knowledge of syntactic structures; this is not sufficient in and of itself. It is necessary to have the pragmatic contexts of discourse, because the meaning of a sentence varies depending on how it is said and the context it is said in. As Brown states, “it is not what you say that counts but how you say it” (237). This simple truth tells us that language is largely dependent on interaction between participants. Having cognitive and academic language proficiency is all well and dandy, but basic interpersonal communicative skills are most pertinent to the “real world.”
Focusing on the social and functional role of language is therefore a key aspect of language learning. Most language learning classrooms attempt to emphasize this aspect of language by having interactive components to textbooks and curriculum. For instance, almost anyone who has learned a language in a classroom has done an activity such as introductions, exchanging personal information, giving commands, apologizing and thanking, identifying and describing people, asking for information, etc.
In my opinion however, one truly acquires interpersonal language skills simply by interacting and speaking with native speakers of the language he/she is trying to learn. There are so many subtleties to language that cannot be taught (i.e. non-verbal communication, gender effects, artifacts, etc.). Instead, they must be experienced. In fact, I believe I learn language best through experience first. I prefer to learn by interacting with a native speaker one-on-one. While these interactions have often been extremely awkward in the beginning of my language learning journey, they usually turn out to be worthwhile in the end. As numerous Brazilians told me while I was struggling to acquire Portuguese, it doesn’t matter how many mistakes you make because in the end tudo bom (everything is alright).
Want to know more about the subtleties to Brazilian Portuguese?!?! Check out this cute video below.
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