Workshop: Unit 1

Liliana María Yépez De hoyos.

Teacher:
Sihgh Na Deepak

Course: Linguistic

CECAR

2020

Author: Martha Lucía Bonilla

Revised and adapted by: Rubén Mauricio Muñoz
 Corporación Universitaria del Caribe “CECAR”
Bachelor in Education in Teaching English as a Foreign Language Program
English Linguistics
First Assignment

Objective: To have a clear

understanding of the terms Competence
& Performance based on different
authors and the relation to L2

Resource: “Competence and

performance in learning and teaching:
theories and practices” by David
Newby

“Competence and performance in learning and teaching: theories and

practices” examines the different ways in which both competence and
performance have been defined by linguists and how these different
interpretations have influenced foreign language learning and teaching.
Read the article carefully and develop the answers in this workshop.

1. Chomsky’s states the “distinction between competence (the speaker-

hearer's knowledge of his language) and performance (the actual use
of language in concrete situations)” He further states that “Observed
use of language cannot constitute the actual subject matter of
linguistics. (1Pt.)

a. Based on Chomsky definition about competence and

performance, describe how this competence could be clear
evident in an L2 classroom. (You can give examples.)

This competence could be evident in a level 2 classroom is

through student performance. For example, a student is able to
perform grammaticality and agramaticality judgment on their
own productions, knows the rules of language, is able to form

Author: Martha Lucía Bonilla

Revised and adapted by: Rubén Mauricio Muñoz
 concepts of logical reasoning and creativity development. It is
also able to communicate and employs new vocabularies with a
finite amount of elements. Know the rules of pronunciation and
spelling, know the formation and function of words among many
other things, in short, is a student who already has that
information stored in his brain.

b. Give reasons why performance cannot constitute matter of

linguistics but competence can? Cite at least an author

competition implies knowing the language instead and performance implies

doing something with the language. In the performance the real language is
used only in concrete situations therefore Chomsky affirms that the
observed use can not constitute in the real object of the linguistic and this
tends to do only one discipline. In the competition we find that it can be
used in various methodological practices that seek to link the use of
language in the real world. Recently the cammon european frame of
reference CEFR (Council of Europe 2001) extended the purpose purely to
the scope of the competences based on the language to include the general
competences that are those that are not specific of the language but that are
required for actions of all type including linguistic activities. Given this,
competition must always be at the center of linguistic attention. This
linguistic theory deals mainly with an ideal speaker-listener, in a
completely homogeneous way in a speech community, who knows their
language perfectly and is not affected by such grammars. In irrelevant
conditions such as memory limitations, distractions, changes in attention
and interest and errors.

1. “We have to account for the fact that a normal child acquires
knowledge of sentences, not only as grammatical, but also as
appropriate. He or she acquires competence as to when to speak,
when not, and as to what to talk about with whom, when, where,
in what manner (Hymes).” What does this sentence mean? And
Author: Martha Lucía Bonilla
Revised and adapted by: Rubén Mauricio Muñoz
 how the idea does not necessarily show Chomsky’s idea about
competence and performance?(1Pt.)

This means that within the communicative competence the child

has the ability to behave effectively and appropriately in a given
speech community therefore implies respecting a set of rules,
including grammar and other linguistic levels. Quoting HYMES he
is based on sociolinguistics where he describes it as cultural terms
of the regulated uses of language and speech, that is, the rules of
social interaction of a particular group, institution, community or
society, based on this hymen sees as communicative, which
represents the social reality underlying real behaviour instead
Chomsky represents it as a mental reality. Similarly, while Searle
is best known for the category of "illocutionary act," an intrinsic
part of his speech act theory is what he calls "propositional acts,"
which he describes as "referring and preaching" (1969). 2. 3).
Halliday's functional orientation theories include "ideational"
meaning as a category core. All these categories point to the
importance of grammar and vocabulary transmitting a meaning.

2. Halliday states “Can mean is a ‘realization of can do” this

corresponds to the second criticism of Chomsky’s view of
competence and performance and also concern the functional
dimension of a language. Describe the second criticism and the
functional dimension.(1Pt)

The second criticism of Chomsky's opinion about competence

referred to the Dimension of language. For linguists and
philosophers such as Halliday (passim), Austin (1962) and Searle
(1969), the very basis of language is functional in nature. This is
reflected in the title of Austin's famous book How to Do Things
with Words. Halliday he affirms this point of view bluntly: "It may
mean that it is a" realization of what he can do "(1978: 39). From
various proposed functional theories, it was Searle's concept of"
illocutionary act ".

Author: Martha Lucía Bonilla

Revised and adapted by: Rubén Mauricio Muñoz
 (1969: 23-24), which was to have the greatest influence on
language teaching: later it became common for "communicative"
textbooks to define teaching objectives in terms of "speech
functions". In fact, in the first days of communicative teaching it
was not. It is rare to hear the term "theoretical-functional
approach" that is used synonymously for the teaching of
communicative language.

3. Is language a unit of linguistic analysis? Explain and cite

author(s).(1Pt)
Primary unit of linguistic analysis. Halliday filed the counterclaim
that "Language does not consist of sentences; It consists of text or
discourse - the exchange of meanings in interpersonal contexts of
one kind or another "(1978: 2). A discourse, the perspective of the
competition focuses on the continuous choices that the speakers
take while talking or writing, transmitting, adapting and clarifying
a message, to make the language be used more and be efficient, to
show the relevance of a fragment of information to another, etc.
Categories such as information structure, dialogue structure, co-
text, ellipsis, substitution, reference, deixis and many more reflect
the opinion that linguistic systems not only work at the level of
utterance, but also at the level of discourse. In addition, the
maximum derived from that of Grice. (1975) "cooperative
principle," which attempts to systematically explain how speakers
infer and interpret indirect speech acts, sarcasm, humor, etc., is an
important aspect of the discursive approach. Several aspects of a
discourse approach were to influence the teaching of foreign
languages: for example, the term "expression" tended to replace
"sentence", recognizing that both formal and functional terms that
people do not always speak in grammatical sentences. Also, the
focus of attention expanded beyond individual expressions to
include sections of conversation or writing. In his groundbreaking
book Teaching Language as Communication, which provided an
important link between linguistics and language teaching,
Widdowson devoted a chapter to the categories of discourse as

Author: Martha Lucía Bonilla

Revised and adapted by: Rubén Mauricio Muñoz
 'coherence', 'cohesion', propositional development (1978: 22ff.),
which subsequently came to occupy an important place in the
repertoire of language teachers.

4. What does Chomsky say opposite to the affirmations on the left?

(1Pt)

Langacker, Heine , Tomasello and Chomsky

Jackendoff
 language is not an • Grammar requires linguists to
autonomous cognitive faculty draw a dividing line between
 grammar is conceptualization linguistic and general reality.
• Cognitive, non-linguistic aspects
 knowledge of language of mental reality
emerges from language use
• Chomsky called a "language
acquisition device" but an
experience acquisition device. With
regard to learning foreign
languages, the growing interest in
cognitive knowledge

5. What are the schematic constructs? (1Pt)

A category that has attracted considerable attention in cognitive

linguistics and increasingly in the learning of foreign languages
and teaching is the role and nature of what is usually referred to as
schematic knowledge. Reflecting a constructivist vision of
language, I will refer to this as schematic constructions. These
constructions, or mental representations of knowledge, interact
with the systemic knowledge of a language to facilitate the

Author: Martha Lucía Bonilla

Revised and adapted by: Rubén Mauricio Muñoz
 processing, interpretation and understanding of the schematic
language. However, schematic knowledge is also largely
conventional in the sense that speakers of the speech community
will share a common way of perceiving an event or expression.
The schematic constructions take different forms, ranging from
categories that need, few theoretical explanations such as factual
knowledge or the memory of past experiences, largely declarative,
which may or may not be shared by the interlocutors, for abstract
categories of perception, such as mental generalizations about how
human. The experience is structured; it will be described shortly.
he exchanges of messages between people requires the constant application
of both systemic (language code) and schematic knowledge structures.
Schematic knowledge among linguists. Categories and terms:
• Schemes: a set of ideas, associations, expectations that an individual
speaker or listener can have
in relation to a concept, an object, person, place, action, event, etc.
• Scenario: the internal mental representation of a speaker of a state of
affairs, event, etc. abroad
world.
• Framework: a common and generalizable scenario with which a speaker
and a listener are familiar; a "remembered frame" (see Minsky 1975, cited
in Brown and Yule 1983: 238); lexicon,
The grammatical and pragmatic meaning is to a certain extent predictable
in a specific scenario.
• Script: a framework that extends beyond individual expressions; a
"remembered frame of coherent chains of forms of expression, speech
functions, themes, etc., in which specific speech patterns tend to occur y
they are generalizable (see Schank and Abelson 1977 cited in Brown and
Yule 1983: 241; Hoey 1991). Adjacency pairs (for example, "thank you" -
"you're welcome") can be defined as highly predictable, prototypical
scripts. Conventional schemes play an important role in communication
and in the coding, decoding and interpretation of expressions, but their
importance in language in teaching is not generally recognized.

6. In 1980 Canale and Swain provided a description of

competence based on four categories. What are those
categories? Explain. (1Pt)
In 1980, Canaled and Swain provided a description of Competition
based on four categories:

Author: Martha Lucía Bonilla

Revised and adapted by: Rubén Mauricio Muñoz
 1. Grammatical competence: knowledge of lexical items and rules
of morphology, syntax, sentence, semantic grammar and
phonology. • This includes language features and rules such as
vocabulary, word and sentence formation, pronunciation,
spelling and semantics. This competence focuses directly on the
knowledge and skill required to adequately undertake and
express the literal meaning of expressions.

2. sociolinguistic competence: the ability to communicate

adequately in a variety of contexts; This includes both verbal
and non-verbal communication.
 Sociolinguistic competence deals with the extent to which
expressions are adequately produced and understood in different
sociolinguistic contexts depending on contextual factors such as the
situation of the participants, the purposes of the interaction and the
norms and conventions of the interaction.
3. Discursive competence: the ability to use a language that goes
beyond the level of the sentence; This includes aspects such as
cohesion and coherence.
 It is related to the way in which grammatical forms and meanings
are combined to achieve a locked, spoken or written text in different
genres. For example, an oral or written narrative, an argumentative
essay, a scientific article, a business letter and a set of instructions
represent different genres. The unity of a text is achieved through
cohesion in form and coherence in meaning. Cohesion involves the
way in which phrases are structurally linked and facilitates the
interpretation of a text. For example, the use of cohesion
mechanisms such as pronouns, synonyms, ellipses, conjunctions and
parallel structures serves to establish connections between
individual sentences and to indicate how a group of phrases is to be
understood as a text (for example, logically or chronologically).
Coherence refers to the relationships between different meanings in
a text, where these meanings can be literal meanings,
communicative functions and attitudes.

4. Strategic competence: adequate use of communication

strategies to overcome or repair.

 This competence is composed of the mastery of verbal and non-

verbal communication strategies. The effective use of the language
by a person to promote communication effectiveness, as to

Author: Martha Lucía Bonilla

Revised and adapted by: Rubén Mauricio Muñoz
 compensate for failures that may occur in it, arising from gaps in the
communication. knowledge of the language or other conditions that
limit communication.

7. After reading all the competences described in the CEFR what

do you think CEFR perception about competence and
performance? Is it more related to social or individual? Is it
more linguistic? Or not? (1Pt)

After reading all of these competences described in CEFR, it is

worth mentioning that, although the approach of communicative
language teaching tends to have a pragmatic and discursive
meaning, rather than a semantic meaning, by linguists, including
Hymes, these types of meaning are not mutually exclusive but
complementary. Both in the teaching of languages and in applied
linguistics an unfortunate dichotomy is usually promulgated
between grammatical and pragmatic meaning and discourse
meaning. This is seen in the fairly unjustifiable division between
"formfocussed"
and the "meaning-based" teaching that is often found in applied
linguistic research (see, for example, Spada 1997: 73). The famous
Hymes statement "There are rules of use
without which the rules of grammar would be useless "(1972: 278)
is often erroneous interpreted by methodologists as a rejection of
grammar. That is why I dare to say that it is more related to
linguistics, focusing on aspects of Chomsky. The publication of
Chomsky's Aspects of the theory of syntax in 1965 led to a
fundamental change regarding the objectives of linguistic analysis.
The change of emphasis - at least in theory, from the structures of
language to the human beings who use language. He caused the
focus of the analysis to fall on the nature of the linguistic
competence of the speakers who directed the generation of
expressions. With regard to language teaching, from the late 70's
onwards, at the beginning of in the days of the communicative
approach, "communicative competence" became the slogan by

Author: Martha Lucía Bonilla

Revised and adapted by: Rubén Mauricio Muñoz
 virtue of which various methodological practices that sought to
link pedagogy with
The use of language.

8. Write your own conclusions about competence and

performance and how these two terms affect the SLA? (2Pts.)

We have seen how different linguists and philosophers have spoken about
certain linguistic competences, which we acquired from the nature of speech,
based on the above I dare to say, that competence and performance have
influenced the learning and teaching of foreign languages whose objectives are
related to the linguistic component, to the pragmatic component, to the
sociolinguistic component, or to all of them at the same time. The first objective
when learning a foreign language can be the domain of the linguistic component
of a language (knowledge of its phonetic system, its vocabulary and its syntax)
without worrying about sociolinguistic aspects or pragmatic efficacy. In other
cases, the objective may be mainly pragmatic in nature and the ability to act in
the foreign language with the limited linguistic resources available and without
any special interest in the sociolinguistic aspect. Options, of course, are never
as exclusive as these and generally harmonious progress is pursued in the
different components, but there are many examples, past and present, of a
particular concentration on one or the other of the components of
communicative competence. Since the communicative linguistic competence
considered as a global competence (that is, it includes the varieties of the native
language and the varieties of one or more foreign languages), it is possible to
affirm that, at certain moments and in certain contexts, the main objective when
teaching a foreign language (although this is not done in an obvious way) has
been to perfect the knowledge and mastery of the native language (for example:
resorting to translation, work on registers, vocabulary appropriate to the
translate to the native language, to elements of semantics and comparative
stylistics). competence and performance, in language teaching, means that
language learning can be seen as a skill development rather than simply the
accumulation of knowledge; Therefore, if we are establishing objectives or
evaluating the language we have to use a dynamic that does not affect the self-
esteem of the learner, for this we must use pedagogical knowledge and didactic
competences that support the development of the competences of the students.
Therefore, the affectation is why we must respond to a level of learning
delimiting a time, and controlling expectations in relation to the abilities of the
learner of those who use these pedagogical tools, where they have to provide a
framework of understanding reducing conflict and favoring dialogue.

Author: Martha Lucía Bonilla

Revised and adapted by: Rubén Mauricio Muñoz
Author: Martha Lucía Bonilla
Revised and adapted by: Rubén Mauricio Muñoz