- Language proficiency: developing fluency and accuracy in a second language in listening, speaking, reading and writing. An emphasis on using language for communicative purposes, with the educated native speaker as the goal. Actfl Proficiency (Alice Omaggio-Hadley, 1993)
Alice Omaggio-Hadley is a professor in the department of French at the University of Illinois, where she teaches courses in methodology, supervises teaching assistants, and directs basic language courses.
Her best-known books are:
- Research in Language Learning: Principles, Processes, and Prospects. The ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) Education Series, 1993.
- Vis-à-vis: Beginning French (several authors)
- Communicative competence: developing language abilities for effective and appropriate communication within cultural contexts of the target language-and-culture. Includes other specific language competencies: grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse, strategic.
(Canale & Swain 1980, and Savignon 1983)
Canale & Swain understood communicative competence as a synthesis of an underlying system of knowledge and skill needed for communication. In their concept of communicative competence, knowledge refers to the (conscious or unconscious) knowledge of an individual about language and about other aspects of language use. According to them, there are three types of knowledge:
- Knowledge of underlying grammatical principles,
- knowledge of how to use language in a social context in order to fulfill communicative functions,
- and knowledge of how to combine utterances and communicative functions with respect to discourse principles.
In addition, their concept of skill refers to how an individual can use knowledge in actual communication. According to Canale (1983), skill requires a further distinction between underlying capacity and its manifestation in real communication, that is to say, in performance.
To understand that, it must be understood that Canale (1983), as well as Canale and Swain (1980), pointed at the importance of making a distinction between communicative competence and communicative performance, that is to say, actual performance which is the term Canale used in order to avoid (negative) connotations with Chomsky’s concept of performance.
Some of her best-known books are:
- Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing,1980.
- A Theoretical Framework for Communicative Competence, 1981
- Cultural competence: developing the ability to act appropriately (alongside communicating appropriately) in the target culture. Gestures, body movements, action sequences such as nonverbal greetings, table manners, manipulation of cultural products.
(Steele and Suozzo, 1994, Damen, 1987 and Stern, 1983).
Hans Heinrich Stern was Head of the Modern Language Center at the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education from 1998 to 1981 and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Curriculum at the same Institute from 1981 to 1987.
From his published books, we can highlight:
- Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching, 1986. H.H. Stern applied linguistics research into its historical and interdisciplinary perspective, giving an authoritative survey of past developments worldwide and establishing a set of guidelines for the future. There are six parts: Clearing the Ground, Historical Perspectives, Concepts of Language, Concepts of Society, Concepts of Language Learning, and Concepts of Language Teaching.
- Issues and Options in Language Teaching, 1992.
- Intercultural competence: developing the ability to interact effectively and appropriately in intercultural situations, regardless of the cultures involved. (Lustig & Koester, 1999, Samovar, Porter & Stenia,1998, Fantini, 1997). Intercultural competence is also called "cross-cultural competence".
If I had to describe in my own words the concept of Intercultural Competence, I would say that it is the ability to work successfully within and across cultures from which we are surrounded.
Encompasses all knowledge, skills, and personal attributes needed to live and work in a diverse world. This includes cultural sensitivity, intercultural communication skills, personal and collective attitudes toward other cultures, and knowledge about other cultures.
Myron W. Lustig is a renowned teacher, writer, scholar, and researcher. After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, he had a distinguished career as a professor of communication at San Diego State University (SDSU), where he is working now, besides other merits. He is a former editor of Communication Reports and is currently on the editorial boards of several intercultural communication journals. His teaching and research interests include intercultural group and interpersonal communication theories, methods, and processes. He has gained additional practical and theoretical lessons about Intercultural Competence while teaching intercultural communication to undergraduate and graduate students at Shanghai International Studies University.
Jolene Koester was president of California State University, Northridge, one of the largest and most diverse campuses in the 23 campus that it gained this system, from 2000 to 2011. She worked to make the University more learning-centered and focused on student success. She is currently serving on the board of directors of NAFSA, an association of international educators, among other important associations.
Both are authors of the famous book called Intercultural competence, 1999, which blends both the practical and theoretical, offering students the requisite knowledge, the appropriate motivations, and the relevant skills to function competently with culturally-different others. It provides a discussion of important ethical and social issues relating to intercultural communication and encourages students to apply vivid examples that will prepare them to interact better in intercultural relationships.
We have been discussing in English class a fragment of this book, which I found very interesting, in speaking of stereotypes.
- Intercultural communicative competence: developing intercultural competence and communicative competence. (Byram, 1997)
Michael Byram is a Professor of Education at Durham University, United Kingdom. He is Professor Emeritus since October 2008.
His work in the School comprised initial teacher education and has a Director of Research Degrees with the supervision of research students. He studied French, German and Danish at King’s College Cambridge, and wrote a Ph.D. on Danish literature. Then he taught French and German at the secondary school level and in adult education in an English comprehensive community school. Since being appointed to a post in teacher education at the University of Durham in 1980, he has carried out research into the education of linguistic minorities, foreign language education and student residence abroad.
Byram has numerous publications, but the fragment we have been reading in class belongs to the famous book called Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence (Chapter 2: "A model for Intercultural Communicative Competence", 31-55).
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