Communicative Competence in a Second Language Theory, Method, and Applications

Table of Contents

List of contributors

Acknowledgements

1. Introduction: Historical overview, key constructs, and recent developments in the study of communicative competence

Matthew Kanwit and Megan Solon

2. Generative considerations of communicative competence

Alan Juffs

3. Sociolinguistic approaches to communicative competence

Kimberly L. Geeslin and Stacey Hanson

4. Sociocultural considerations of communicative competence

Matthew E. Poehner

5. Investigating communicative competence in ethnographic research

Rebecca Lurie Starr

6. Real-time psycholinguistic measures of communicative competence

Jill Jegerski and Sara Fernández Cuenca

7. Corpus-linguistic and computational methods for analyzing communicative competence: contributions from usage-based approaches

Stefan Th. Gries

8. Interlanguage pragmatics as communicative competence

Minh Thi Thuy Nguyen

9. Applying a communicative competence framework to the study and teaching of second language writing

Charlene Polio and D. Philip Montgomery

10. Computer-assisted language learning and communicative competence

Glenn Stockwell and Yurika Ito

11. Assessing communicative competence

Luke Harding, Susy Macqueen, and John Pill

12. Looking forward: Future directions in the study of communicative competence

Megan Solon and Matthew Kanwit

Index

List of Contributors

Sara Fernández Cuenca is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at Wake Forest University, USA, where she teaches undergraduate courses in Spanish language and linguistics. Her research focuses mainly on instructed heritage and second language acquisition with a special interest in language processing.

Kimberly Geeslin is Professor of Hispanic Linguistics at Indiana University, USA. She investigates the geographic, social, and situationally-variable properties of second languages. Her recent publications include Sociolinguistics and Second Language Acquisition (Routledge, 2014), The Acquisition of Spanish as a Second Language (Routledge, 2021), and The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Sociolinguistics (2022).

Stefan Th. Gries is a Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), USA, and Chair of English Linguistics (Corpus Linguistics with a focus on quantitative methods, 25%) at the Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, Germany. He is a quantitative corpus linguist with additional interests in statistical methods in linguistics, cognitive/usage-based linguistics, psycholinguistics, and computational linguistics.

Stacey Hanson is a doctoral candidate in Hispanic Linguistics at Indiana University Bloomington, USA. Her research focuses on second language acquisition, as well as phonetics and phonology, with a particular interest in the second language perception and production of geographically indexed phones.

Luke Harding is a professor in Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University (UK). His research interests are in applied linguistics and language assessment, particularly assessing listening and speaking, World Englishes and English as a Lingua Franca, language assessment literacy, and professional ethics.

Yurika Ito is currently a Research Associate in the School of International Liberal Studies, Waseda University, Japan. Her research interests include computer-assisted language learning (CALL), CALL teacher education, and the role of online communities in teacher professional development.

Jill Jegerski is an Associate Professor of Spanish and SLATE (Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education) in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. Her primary research interests include second language and bilingual sentence processing, psycholinguistic research methods, and Spanish as a heritage language.

Alan Juffs is Professor in the Department of Linguistics, University of Pittsburgh, USA. He was the Director of the English Language Institute at the University of Pittsburgh from 1998-2020. He has published books on the lexicon, sentence processing, and language development in Intensive English Programs.

Matthew Kanwit is Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Pittsburgh, USA. His research on communicative competence and functional approaches to L2 acquisition has appeared in Applied Linguistics, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Language Learning, The Modern Language Journal, and the Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Sociolinguistics.

Susy Macqueen is Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at the Australian National University. Her research interests lie at the intersection of second language learning, language assessment, and language use in health and educational contexts. She has a background in second language teaching and language test development.

D. Philip Montgomery is a doctoral student in Second Language Studies at Michigan State University, USA. He is an educational linguist interested in multilingual writers and teachers. Philip has published on adaptive transfer of genre knowledge in multilingual contexts and is the Graduate Assistant Director of the Writing Center at MSU.

Minh Thi Thuy Nguyen teaches TESOL at the University of Otago, New Zealand. Her research interests include pragmatics in language teaching and learning, interactional competence, second language acquisition, heritage language maintenance, and child language learning.

John Pill is a lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University (UK). He teaches in the MA in Language Testing programme. His research interests include specific-purpose language testing, particularly in healthcare and academic contexts, speaking assessment, and language assessment literacy.

Matthew E. Poehner is Professor of World Languages Education and Applied Linguistics at The Pennsylvania State University, USA. His research engages Vygotskian Sociocultural Theory to organize educational environments and activities to promote learner language abilities. A major line of this work involves the diagnosis of abilities through Dynamic Assessment.

Charlene Polio is Professor in the Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures at Michigan State University, USA. She researches second language (L2) writing and the interface between L2 writing, second language acquisition, and corpus-based methods. She is co-editor of TESOL Quarterly and The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Writing.

Megan Solon is Lecturer in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University, USA. She researches the acquisition of phonetics/phonology, including sociolinguistically variable features. She is co-editor of the Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics book series (John Benjamins) and co-author of The acquisition of Spanish as a second language: Foundations and new developments (Routledge).

Rebecca Lurie Starr is an Associate Professor in the Department of English, Linguistics and Theatre Studies at the National University of Singapore. Her research focuses on children’s sociolinguistic development and language variation and change in multilingual and dialectally-diverse settings.

Glenn Stockwell is Professor in Applied Linguistics at Waseda University, Japan. His research interests include language teacher and learner motivation, mobile learning, and the development of learner autonomy. He is the author of four books and numerous articles and book chapters in the field.

Biography

Matthew Kanwit is Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Pittsburgh, USA. His research on communicative competence and functional approaches to L2 acquisition has appeared in Applied Linguistics, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Language Learning, The Modern Language Journal, and the Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Sociolinguistics.

Megan Solon is Lecturer in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University, USA. She researches the acquisition of phonetics/phonology, including sociolinguistically variable features. She is co-editor of the Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics book series and co-author of The Acquisition of Spanish as a Second Language: Foundations and New Developments.

"This volume achieves unprecedented levels of coherence, epistemological complementarity, and currency in the exploration of communicative competence. It offers a vibrant tour de force through theories, methods, and diverse spheres of application. A must read for all interested in understanding this construct at the heart of the field of second language acquisition!"

Lourdes Ortega, Georgetown University, USA

"The notion of communicative competence is so deeply entrenched in our collective understanding of L2 development. Yet many of us, if prompted on the topic, might respond like the fish that asks "What is water?". Flounder no longer! Kanwit and Solon bring together in this volume works by a world-class cast of contributors that deftly address the theory-methods-practice trifecta as it pertains to communicative competence. The editors’ and authors’ various takes on this topic are as refreshing as they are informed, as current as they are diverse in perspective."

Luke Plonsky, Northern Arizona University, USA

"This engaging, original, scholarly, and insightful book updates the concept of communicative competence, clarifying and deepening the definition, description, and analysis of this crucial concept in second language acquisition. It covers a multiplicity of aspects of the area and deftly and authoritatively presents theories, methodologies, and applications. This is a significant contribution to the field, and a must read for both established scholars and those new to the field, with contributions from distinguished researchers from a wide variety of research areas."

Vera Regan, University College Dublin, Ireland