Currently accepted principles of communicative approaches to second language pedagogy are examined to determine the extent to which they are grounded in theories of language, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and other language-related disciplines. The discussion of communicative approaches distinguishes the notions of communicative competence…

An outline is provided of the contents and boundaries of three areas of competence, or systems of knowledge, that are to be minimally included in a theory of communicative competence: grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, and strategic competence. Grammatical competence is concerned with the rules of sentence grammar and sentence…

A review of literature on communicative competence reveals many meanings of the concept and of the way it should be used in second and foreign language instruction. In the literature there are two views: that communicative competence includes grammatical competence, and that it does not; or at least the ability to communicate one's meaning is…