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Some models of competence have been proposed in the last two decades and widely influenced in language teaching and learning. According to Bachman (1990), the concept of communicative language ability covers three fundamental competences such as linguistic, sociolinguistic and strategic dimension. The main objective of CLA is to increase the communication ability of learners in order to enable them to deal with different situations in the target language.
As a second language learner, it is vital to be aware of these competences to see how language is used to achieve particular communicative goals, when and where to produce this certain language appropriately within the society. The CLA exclusively refers to ‘consist knowledge and contextualized communicative language uses’ (Bachman,1990), which means that it is an ability of acquiring both knowledge and skill needed for communication in a certain language, it is not merely about memorizing vocabularies or grammatical rules. In order to indicate different levels of communicative language ability, there is a guideline called ‘The Common European Framework of Reference for Language’ (CEFR). It describes the achievements of learners of foreign languages such as language reception and production from a basic user to a proficient user. The language learners can measure their capabilities in five domains and develop themselves to reach the certain levels. It also becomes a kind of standard for employment in specific area.
In order to extend the knowledge of communicative language ability, I found an informant to investigate how she assessed herself in terms of the CEFR as a second language learner and which areas of language learning did she perceive her strength and weakness. The methodology which I used was the investigator-as-interactant, to further explore the ideas and perspectives during the conversation.
My informant comes from Beijing, China. She started to learn English from primary school. She defined herself as an auditory learner because she thought that receiving language is easier than producing language. However, she found her interest in interpreting and started to learn both consecutive and simultaneous interpreting skills in her freshman year. Through learning translation and working with foreigners, she got a lot of opportunities to strengthen her English and those improved her listening and speaking skills a lot. Therefore, she evaluated her English proficiency level at between B2 to C1 scale in terms of the CEFR. She got Band 7 score in IELTS which can be considered as an evidence to support her self-assessment.
The outcome of my informant’s linguistic competence according to the CEFR scale is an advanced English-learner. She perceived listening and speaking as her strength. For receiving English, she can understand most of the extend speech and lectures, she usually listens to different kinds of podcasts from native channels in her spare time and watches most of English movies and TV dramas without too much effort. Not surprisingly, she got band 8.5 score in IELTS listening part. On the other hand, for producing language, she placed herself in the transition of B2 to C1 level, because she can deliver well-structured prepared presentation and handle impromptu speeches for academic purpose during her undergraduate study. Although she is confident about her speaking ability, she pointed out a challenging part for phonological competence. It is always hard for her pronounce the “th” sound, because it is comparatively uncommon in Chinese. She always pronounced like voiced alveolar plosive sound /d/. Therefore, she listened closely to how native speaker speak the language and practiced on herself. She certainly noticed a massive improvement in her speaking and listening (understanding) abilities since she arrived in UK in this summer. My informant has developed her interaction by socializing with native English speakers, her English becomes more flexible and effective.
Additionally, she can read many professional articles in her major and produce her personal perspective in some written texts. However, she claimed that the English grammar used to be a difficult part for her when she was required to write academic contexts, especially some specialized articles which is not related to her field. Nonetheless, English grammar plays a considerable role in both language acquisition and learning. 'Students need to get an idea of how the new language is used by native speakers and the best way of doing this is to present language in context.' (Harmer, 1991, P57) For the lexico-grammatical competence, the most important thing is that it helps learners to perceive the structures of the language effectively and develops a better cohesion, which relies heavily on both written and spoken text in English.
Last but not least, my informant mentioned about her English-learning experience in China. Learners in China rarely use English outside the language classroom. They do not have enough awareness of making up phrases and sentences together to create a whole coherent conversation. It links to the discourse competence, which is an important part of academic language proficiency in classrooms. The Chinese education system for English learning is extremely exam-oriented, often organized on weak communicative tasks, which makes students acquire knowledge from examinations instead of practical uses in real life. As Llobera (1996, p392) states, “innovation in FLT is based on a model of language which is increasingly influenced by discourse concepts”. However, my informant pointed out that Chinese teachers do not have so many ‘innovations’ for FLT, they do not put focus on advanced methodology like task-based language teaching.
After the interview, it reminds me about my second language learning. Although I come from a multilingual city which English functions as a medium in the education system, I do have some difficulties as my informant raised in the investigation, such as semantic errors or grammatical accuracy. From some findings, it is necessary to know the communicative language ability as a second language learner or as a teacher, like how to use language properly in communication and which ways to examine learners’ levels. In today’s society, the capacity for learners to implement the knowledge in communication has been enlarged. Therefore, there is no limitation for learners to acquire more competences. Every language has its unique features in different aspects, each group comes from different cultural backgrounds, may contains various linguistic or sociolinguistic features that are different from the target language promoted by the school system. The modern world thrives heavily on communication, a successful communication in the target language is the main goal for second language learners, it is essential to focus on the communicative competence, to further interact and perform the communicative acts within the society.
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