Communication and skill 9781315679587, 9781138931701, 1138931705, 1315679582

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Communication and Skill

In this module on communication, the reader explores the nature and consequences of a particular definition of communication: the expression and interpretation of meaning in a given context. Special attention is given to context (i.e., physical setting, participants, purpose of communication) and how these impact how we think about communication in language classrooms. Bill VanPatten is professor of Spanish and second language studies at Michigan State University.

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The Routledge E-Modules on Contemporary Language Teaching Series Editors: Bill VanPatten, Michigan State University, USA, and Gregory D. Keating, San Diego State University, USA

The Routledge E-Modules on Contemporary Language Teaching series is an exciting and innovative approach to topics for the novice or in-training teacher of languages. Written in an easily accessible style and delivered in e-format only, specialists and experts provide the latest thinking on a variety of issues that form the foundation of language-teacher knowledge and practice: the nature of language and communication, second language acquisition, interactive tasks, assessment, focus on form, vocabulary development, and technology in language teaching, among many others. Each module serves as a self-contained unit to be used on its own or as part of an introductory course on language teaching. Instructors may “mix and match” modules to create their own readings for a course on language teaching. The modules may serve as primary reading or as supplemental reading, with each module offering points of reflection, discussion questions, selfquizzes, and a reading list for those who wish to delve further into the topic. Language Bill VanPatten Communication and Skill Bill VanPatten Second Language Acquisition The Basics Gregory D. Keating Vocabulary in Language Teaching Joe Barcroft Interactive Tasks Michael J. Leeser and Justin P. White Focusing on Form in Language Instruction Wynne Wong and Daphnée Simard Technology in Language Learning An Overview Bryan Smith

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Communication and Skill Bill VanPatten

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First published 2016 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 Taylor & Francis The right of Bill VanPatten to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. ISBN: 978-1-315-67958-7 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

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Communication and Skill Bill VanPatten MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

Overview In this module you will explore the following topics: • • • • • • •

the nature of communication how context affects communication the purpose of communication the nature of skill skill as proficiency communication versus language how the above information can be used to inform contemporary language teaching

If you’ve read the module on the nature of language, you know that linguists define language as some kind of underlying mental representation that is implicit and abstract in nature. As underlying mental representation, language consists of constraints on the properties of a linguistic system such that a speaker knows not just what is possible in a given language but also what is impossible. For example, the English speaker knows that Does Bill drink vodka? is possible in English and that Drinks Bill vodka? is not possible in English, while the Spanish speaker knows that the equivalent of Drinks Bill vodka? is possible in Spanish but not the equivalent of Does Bill drink vodka? Neither the English speaker nor the Spanish speaker knows why the versions of the sentences just presented are impossible in each of their languages; they only know that they aren’t. This is what makes mental representation of language implicit. What makes this representation abstract is the subject of formal linguistic inquiry, and if the reader is interested, there is some discussion in the module on the nature of language. The point to underscore here is that this mental representation does not resemble the types of rules found in textbooks (e.g., “The English passive is formed by . . .”) or the kinds

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Figure 1 What is this man indicating with this gesture and facial expression?

of prescriptive rules given by teachers and language purists (e.g., “don’t use double negatives”). Mental representation is difficult to describe in simple terms. Different from language is communication, although many people tend to confuse the two. Communication is one of the things that people do with language, although people can communicate with each other without language (e.g., all adult North Americans know what the man in Figure 1 above is indicating) and species that don’t have language are very good at communicating a wide variety of messages (e.g., every dog can read every other dog’s tail position). Before we contrast language with communication, let’s create a working definition of communication.

The Nature of Communication Definitions of communication abound, and experts might argue about the specifics of a definition. But what is clear about communication is that it involves some kind of meaning exchange between two or more people (or, to be precise, two animate beings). For this exchange to occur, there has to be expression and interpretation of meaning. That is, one entity must express a meaning and another entity must understand what the other entity is attempting to convey. Communication is never a one-way venture in which the entire burden is on the person who is attempting to express something. As you read these words, you are the interpreter of meaning; I, as the author, am attempting to express meaning. Thus, expression can be either oral or written—or signed, if we’re talking about language used among the deaf. We shouldn’t fall into the trap of thinking

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that communication is only oral. Likewise, interpretation can involve listening to or reading something—or watching signing, if we’re talking about language used among the deaf. But what is meaning? Minimally, there are two levels to meaning. The first is the face value of words or phrases. I can say, for example, It’s raining. And indeed, if you look out the window, you will see precipitation. I am merely stating a fact. Now imagine that my partner gets ready to leave the house, kisses me goodbye, and then heads for the door. I shout out, “It’s raining!” He then stops by the front closet and grabs an umbrella. In this case, although indeed there is precipitation outside, my utterance had the additional intent of making a suggestion: you’d better take an umbrella. What this scenario demonstrates is that a string of sounds (or gestures) can have either “factual” information or some other hidden “intent,” or both. These “hidden intents” are called speech acts and include such things as suggestions, recommendations, compliments, insults, and requests. (For detailed discussion of speaker intent and what are called speech acts, see the module on the nature of language, specifically the discussion of pragmatics.) But the expression and interpretation of meaning is not always successful on the first go-round. In face-to-face communication (or even in chat rooms), negotiation of meaning occurs if what was expressed was not what was interpreted. We communicate non-comprehension by a variety of means, such as asking for clarification, using some gesture or expression, or by saying something that clearly shows we did not understand or misinterpreted what the person just said. This in turn triggers the other person to do something: repeat, state another way, ask a question about our comprehension, and so on. Following is an example: TIM: She’s getting married. NICOLE: LIC. TIM: I know. It licks. NICOLE: Licks? No, L—I—C. TIM: Oh.

LIC. Like I Care.

In this interchange, Nicole’s use of the acronym LIC (pronounced like “lick”) is misinterpreted by Tim, who thinks it’s a verb. Nicole realizes this by Tim’s response and enters into a repair sequence in which she clarifies her intended meaning. A good deal of native-speaker negotiation of meaning happens when there is a lack of lexical knowledge, a difference in cultural knowledge, or the intent of a sentence is misinterpreted—and there probably isn’t a reader of this module that hasn’t experienced this kind of negotiation of meaning recently, if not sometime today. To be sure, there are situations of communication in which negotiation of meaning may not be present. This happens, for example, when one reads, when one listens to the radio, when one watches a movie or TV. In short, whenever there is no interaction involved. And yet, the idea that

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communication is fundamentally both the expression and interpretation of meaning is present even in non-interactive situations. Let’s illustrate with an example from writing. As I write this module, I am imagining an audience of largely non-experts. This does not mean that an expert in language teaching and communication may not read this module; it simply suggests that I am tailoring my writing for a particular group of people. I am casting the net as wide as possible to make what I write comprehensible. This affects the way I write, the examples I use, the length of my sentences, terminology and jargon, and so on. Why? Because, as a writer, I am anticipating the reader’s interpretation. I am asking myself constantly, “Will the reader understand what I have just written? What can I do to make it fully accessible?” Thus, although it may seem that only the expression of meaning is involved, I cannot write without contemplation of the interpretive side of things. To be sure, whether I am successful is another matter. Indeed, the reader may re-read, ask him or herself, “Did I just understand that correctly?” and engage in other behaviors indicative of the reader’s role of interpreter in this particular act of communication. No matter how the act of reading unfolds, the point to underscore here is that even in a situation in which it appears that only expression of meaning is involved, the expresser may fully consider how something may be interpreted. And, ultimately, the goal of the written expression of meaning is that someone will read it—that is, interpret it. In short, there is no expression of meaning without interpretation at some level. The Importance of Context Communication never happens in a vacuum. There is always a context for communication. By context we are not referring to linguistic context (e.g., an article such as ‘the’ is normally followed by some kind of noun phrase), but instead social or situational context. A variety of factors help to shape situational context, but the main factors are the participants and the setting. Regarding participants, how communication is effected depends on, for example, the participants’ relationships to each other, their ages, gender, social status, whether one is human or not, and so on. Setting refers to the physical context of the communicative event and, to some degree, its purpose (we will examine the purpose of communication in the next section). Although other factors may also affect context, the point to underscore here is that how people communicate may change depending on the context. Let’s take a fictional 19-year-old named Jake who is attending college. Let’s see how he asks questions in the following situations. [talking with his best friend at lunch in the student union] JAKE: Hey. Here’s a question only you can answer. FRIEND: Shoot.

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[in a political science class] JAKE [raising his hand]: Excuse PROFESSOR: Go ahead, Jake.

me, Professor. I have a question.

[with his romantic partner while watching a DVD at home] I have to ask you something.

JAKE [leaning in close, lowering his voice]: PARTNER: Hmmmm?

In each scenario, how Jake engages another person depends on who that person is and what that person’s relationship is to him. It also depends on the setting and what the people are supposed to be doing at that time. Note that the context affects both the way Jake asks a question and the way the other person responds to him. What is more, there may be a time when Jake has a question but the context suggests to him not to ask it at that time. Thus, context can also affect not just how we communicate but whether we communicate anything at all. Now, there could be another person, say Bobby, who is also 19 years old and attends the same university as Jake. Bobby, however, may not have been raised the same way as Jake, or he might be of a different socio-economic class or sub-culture within the U.S. For Bobby, some contexts may blur, and he may not communicate in the same way as Jake, or he may use other language. He may not use body language the same way or raise his hand. What this illustrates is how fluid communication is as a concept. We can talk about it in the abstract, but we can’t always predict how it turns out precisely because it is context dependent, and context can vary greatly. The role of context has great importance when it comes to language teaching. When learned in classrooms, the context of communication is always fixed. That is, the physical setting and the participants, the time of day, and other factors do not change. The teacher is always the teacher. The students are always the students. The classroom is always the classroom. Thus, the context of communication for classroom language learning tends to limit what is communicated and how it is communicated, a factor that all teachers must ultimately consider when designing communicative curricula. As another example of how context (participants and setting) affects communication, let’s recall the example of writing from the previous section. In that example, I describe how my understanding of the reader affects both what and how I write something in this module. I understand the reader to be a non-expert in language studies. Thus, the context of writing this module involves me (presumably an expert) and the “typical” reader (presumably a non-expert). Can you, the reader, imagine how my choice of language and communicative devices would change if I assumed the reader was an expert? To be sure, there would be much more jargon, the text would be riddled with citations such as

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“According to Lee and VanPatten (2003) . . .”, and the writing would surely seem different to anyone reading the two versions. So, even in non-interactive situations, there is context and this affects the nature of the communication. Context also affects choice of language. For example, I am writing this module in English. Why is that? Because once again, the context involves me and the typical reader, who—I have to assume—may not know Spanish (my other native language). But what happens when the context involves bilinguals of the same language? Have you ever heard of code-switching? Code-switching involves the use of two languages in the same conversation. Following is an example: MARTIN:

And so me, por enojo, le digo, “Forget it.” (por enojo = because of anger, le digo = I say to him) ALICE: Pues, that’s how some people are. (pues = well) Martin and Alice go easily back and forth between Spanish and English. Although there may be formal rules on code-switching in terms of syntax (i.e., you can’t just code-switch anywhere in the sentence), code-switching itself is an act of communication that can only take place between two people who know both languages. If Martin were talking to someone who (1) only knew Spanish and (2) wasn’t part of a perceived social group with whom he could code-switch, he would stay in Spanish. Or, if he were talking to someone who only knew English, he would stay in English. And just because two people both know two languages doesn’t mean they will code-switch during a communicative interaction. I’ve noted over the years, for example, that colleagues from Spanish speaking cultures who were raised monolingually tend not to code-switch with me, even though their English is quite good. There is something about the use of code-switching that involves more than the mere knowledge of two languages. That is, there may be something social or personal about code-switching, with “social” and “personal” clearly pointing toward participants (i.e., context). In short, code-switching is another example of communication that is clearly context dependent— again, context being defined by participants and setting.

Reflection One factor that influences context is the age of participants. Consider for a moment how little kids, teenagers, and 40-year-olds are similar or different in (1) what they talk about, and (2) how they talk about it. What does this reflection suggest to you?

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The Purpose of Communication It is true that humans are social animals. Just like wolves, chimps, dolphins, dogs, and many other mammals, humans like to interact with each other—to greater or lesser degrees, to be sure. We all know or have heard of the curmudgeon who just wants to be left alone, who has no use for others. Those people are few and far between. Most of us are pulled into social interaction because it’s our nature to do so as a species. As part of this interaction, what purpose does communication serve? Broadly speaking, communication has two purposes. One is psychosocial. This purpose entails communication for the establishment and maintenance of social relationships, for the regulation of people’s roles, for the creation of emotional bonds, and so on. When the parent says to the four-year-old, “I said ‘no’ and I mean ‘no,’” that parent is not only communicating a desire, but also exerting control over a situation and subtly reminding the child of who’s in charge. When we pass someone in the hall and say “Hey. How’s it goin’?”, we are not really out to get detailed information from that person about his or her life, we are simply acknowledging their presence so as not to be rude. This kind of communication sort of “greases the wheels” of interaction because without it, at least in North American culture, interactions would seem blunt and rude. When we approach an attractive person in a bar or social setting and say, “I think I’ve seen you around here before,” we are using a well-known “pick up” line with a purpose other than merely saying you recognize the person; that is, you are hoping to meet that person and establish some kind of rapport with him or her. And as one more example, I might introduce a friend and say, “This is my friend Gretchen.” Pretty perfunctory. But I might introduce her by saying, “This is my very best friend Gretchen. Be nice to her, OK?” In this latter introduction, I am signaling to Gretchen how I feel about her, even though what I’m saying is directed to someone else. In the everyday world, the psycho-social use of language abounds among native speakers. It is so woven into how we interact, we don’t even think about it. And like all communication, it is accompanied by gestures, facial expressions, and other non-verbal signals that indicate the psycho-social use of language. (Imagine a “hello” from a colleague in the hallway that is accompanied by a big smile as opposed to no smile.) The other major purpose of communication is cognitive-informational. This purpose involves obtaining particular information as part of some task, either immediate or future. For example, when the teller in a bank asks someone if he or she wants the change back in 20-dollar bills, the teller is asking this question solely for the purpose of completing a financial transaction. When the clerk in a department store asks someone what size he or she needs, that person is asking solely for the purpose of getting the information needed to see if what the customer wants is in stock. And when the flight attendant comes down the aisle with a cart and asks,

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“Something to drink?” he or she asks this question in order to find out indeed if you want something to drink. In each of these scenarios, the purpose of communication is to obtain information to perform a relevant task or to verify something. In all three cases, the task is immediate; it will be completed as soon as the information is obtained. Longer-range tasks involve getting information either for a task that is to be completed later or because that information will help a person organize a task to be performed later. In a dating service, for example, a person might be asked a series of questions such as “What is your favorite movie?” and “What are you looking for in someone else?” This information is encoded somewhere for the later task of finding that person someone compatible (hopefully). Although we can separate out psycho-social and cognitive-informational purposes of communication, in real life such purposes often overlap. One good example is gossip. When two people gossip, they may actually intend to share information. At the same time, they do so in such a way as to create a “private circle” with a special relationship between the two. In short, gossip may involve the exchange of information that at the same time creates or maintains a relationship between two or more people. In addition, both psycho-social and cognitive-informational purposes of communication can alternate within simple exchanges. Let’s expand on the bank teller scenario touched on above to see how this works: TELLER: Hi. How are you today? [psycho-social] CUSTOMER: Just great, just great. And you? [psycho-social] TELLER: I’m great, too. Thank you for asking. [psycho-social]

What can I do for you? [cognitive-informational and psycho-social] CUSTOMER: I need to deposit this check. [cognitive-informational] TELLER: Do you have your bank card? [cognitive-informational] (Customer shows the card. Teller begins to type into the computer.) TELLER: Any plans for this weekend? [psycho-social] Everyday situations such as this one demonstrate that the purpose of communication is fluid and layered. While we may define communication as the expression and interpretation of meaning, communication always happens in a context. And that context creates an interesting tapestry of the purpose of communication. People deftly move back and forth between psycho-social and cognitive-informational uses. We mentioned briefly above that classrooms are fixed contexts, with the roles/relationships of teachers and students constant and the physical setting also constant. Classrooms are not banks, bakeries, restaurants, doctors’ offices, street corners, or movie theaters, and do not involve tellers, bakers, servers, receptionists, nurses, strangers, or any other type of person we might encounter. The fixed context of the classroom suggests that both psycho-social and cognitive-informational purposes of communication may not be equally represented or distributed in the same way as they are

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outside of the classroom. Indeed, one could argue that there is a tilt toward the cognitive-informational purpose of language in classrooms, given what classrooms are supposed to achieve. And role-playing does not circumvent the fixed nature of classrooms. When students are assigned skits to play or scenes to act out, they are not themselves engaging in actual communicative interactions. They are engaging in a different kind of “interaction,” and what one has to ask is to what extent are they are truly expressing and interpreting their own meaning and for what purpose.

Reflection Although the two most basic purposes of communication are psycho-social and cognitive-informational, are there others? Or are any others some specialized form of these two basic purposes? Consider for a moment stand-up comedy. The context for comedy is (1) a public setting (stage, bar, comedy club) and (2) the comic plus the audience. What kind of communication, if any, goes on in such a scenario? Where is the expression and interpretation of meaning? What is the purpose of the communication?

Communication and Language Teaching I hear some teachers say, “I teach communicatively” or “I focus on communication in my classroom.” Upon probing, I find out that what is actually meant by these teachers is that they focus on speaking in some way or another. For them, speaking is synonymous with communication. But what do they mean by speaking? And should we take this position, that is, that communication is about speaking only? Let’s begin by examining what speaking means. Just because students’ mouths are moving in a classroom does not mean they are engaged in communication. When students are repeating after a teacher, are they communicating? The answer should be obvious, and it should be obvious for several reasons. First, repetition of what someone else says does not engage either the expression or interpretation of meaning. I can repeat something in another language with enough practice and have no idea what I’m saying. Second, what is the purpose of this repetition? Is it the psycho-social purpose of communication? Or is it informational-cognitive? The answer is neither. The purpose is, well, to repeat—presumably because this is supposed to help learn something. In short, in order to determine whether or not an act in a classroom is communicative, we have to ask two fundamental questions: 1. Is there expression and interpretation of some kind of meaning? 2. Is there psycho-social or cognitive-informational purpose to the act?

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Here’s another example, to which the reader is asked to apply the two questions above. A teacher has the students open their books and proceeds to ask students to take turns reading aloud parts of a passage in the book. As the students read aloud, is this communicative? The answer, of course, is no, when we apply the two questions and answer them. Reading aloud does not involve the expression of one’s own meaning nor does it involve the interpretation of someone else’s meaning. What is more, there is no communicative purpose to reading aloud in this particular scenario (we are not talking about bedtime reading aloud to a five-year-old). Yet when I probe teachers who purport to teach communicatively, I sometimes hear them say how they insist that students repeat, read aloud, and engage in other similar activities. And the reason they do this is because they have, in effect, no working definition of communication that can inform them what it means to teach communicatively. (I will address textbooks later on.) Here’s a third example that is a bit fuzzier. A teacher wants to practice numbers and says, “How many fingers am I holding up?” A student says, “Four,” and the teacher says, “Correct. Now how many fingers am I holding up?” Is this communication? Again, if we apply our two questions, we begin to see how some acts in the classroom are borderline. In this case, there is expression of meaning (both in what the teacher asks and what the student says) and there is also interpretation of meaning (the student must understand the teacher in order to answer and the teacher must understand the student in order to say “correct”). But what is the purpose of this act? With this question, we see there is no communicative purpose. The point of this act is to practice with language, not to communicate as we’ve described it. The point being made here can easily be seen if we describe a different context in which the language used is very similar. A patient is sitting in a doctor’s office. She has been suffering from headaches after a knock on the head (she turned and ran into an open cabinet door in the kitchen that morning). As part of the examination, the doctor shines a light into her eyes, and then asks some questions. At one point he holds up three fingers and says, “How many fingers am I holding up?” The patient says, “Three.” The doctor moves his hand to her peripheral vision and holds up two fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up now?” She responds, “Two.” What makes this act communicative is two-fold. There is clearly the expression and interpretation of meaning, just as there was in the classroom scenario we just described. However, this time, there is cognitive-informational use of communication. The doctor asks the questions not to practice numbers with the patient but to get information about whether there is a vision problem or not. The patient understands this and responds accordingly. Thus, our two test questions are answered differently in the two scenarios. In the classroom number-of-fingers scenario, only one question gets us an answer that points toward a communicative act. In the doctor scenario, both questions get us an answer that point toward a communicative act.

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What this discussion leads us to is that acts in the language classroom may be: • • •

non-communicative; partially communicative; fully communicative.

Non-communicative acts are those in which the expression and interpretation of meaning are absent (purpose would not matter here). Fully communicative acts would be those in which there is some kind of expression and interpretation of meaning, and there is either psycho-social or cognitive-information purpose to the act. Partially communicative acts would be those in which there is some kind of expression and interpretation of meaning but a communicative purpose is lacking. Again, we are talking about language classrooms here, so we don’t want to extrapolate our three-level distinction beyond this context at this point. We see, then, that having a working definition of communication not only helps us understand the nature of how humans interact, but it also provides us with an easy framework with which to evaluate what we do in classrooms as well as what textbooks provide. In 1998, I published an article in which I discussed the problematic nature of the term “communicative” as it was used by scholars on the one hand, and teachers and publishers of teaching materials on the other (see suggested readings). What I concluded was that most teachers get their definitions of communication and communicative language teaching not from scholars but from their own perceptions, and more importantly, from what commercial publishers tout as communicative and proficiency-oriented materials. One only has to read what is said in textbook prefaces and what activities are offered to see that there is a big difference between making a claim about what you do and what you actually do. Most language textbooks are chock full of activities that aren’t communicative. Here’s an example from an introductory college-level French textbook published in 2013 (fifth edition). A. And you? Calculate the age of the following people . . . adding them up! Model: My sister is 32 years old and I am 24 years old. That makes 56 years. B. Descriptions. Look at the people on page 70. What are they like? How old are they? What color eyes do they have? And hair? C. Your family. Describe two members of your family—or of a famous family if you prefer. Use the example. D. Find someone. Take a sheet of paper and number it 1–8. Then, ask the following questions to classmates. Anyone who answers “yes” must sign. 1. Do you have a brother named Matt?

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Bill VanPatten 2. Do you look like your father? 3. Do you have grandparents? etc.

E. Let’s get specific. Interview a partner about his or her preferences and those of family and friends, following the example. Also respond to his/her questions. Model: Speaker 1: Does your family like films? Which films? Adventure films? Speaker 2: No, we prefer comedies. According to this lesson, these activities invite the students to communicate using the knowledge they have learned during the lesson. But if we examine them with our two questions about the nature of communicative activities in class, we see they fall short of being fully communicative. While we could argue (or quibble) about the extent to which they involve the expression and interpretation of meaning, there is no question about the lack of communicative purpose in all five activities. When we look at them collectively, we still see no communicative purpose; that is, the five activities taken as a whole do not add up to any purposeful use of language. Another module in this series will discuss the nature of communicative tasks in classrooms but for now I leave the reader with the following point: what teachers think is communicative in class may not really be communicative after all. Before leaving this topic, let’s return to how we started this section: teachers may equate communication with speaking. But as we noted from early on in this module, communication is the expression and interpretation of meaning. Thus, if learners are engaged in a listening activity (in which someone is expressing meaning), are they engaged in something communicative? The answer is “yes,” because they are interpreting what that person is saying even though they themselves aren’t talking. Of course, what would determine the full communicative nature of such a listening activity is its purpose. Does it have some purpose that goes beyond merely practicing listening? Is there some psycho-social or cognitive-informational purpose involved? When people listen to the news, for example, they listen to it not to practice listening but to learn something. When an audience listens to a lecture, it is to learn something about a topic or issue. So, the question is whether or not things like classroom (or homework) listening or reading activities are communicative. In the same materials cited earlier for French at the college level, we find the following activity, which precedes A through E. What age are they? Listen and decide whether what you hear is possible or not based on the drawing below.

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[Teacher script to read, with numbers corresponding to people in the drawing. 1. He is 76 years old. (Answer: not possible) 2. She is 42 years old. (Answer: possible), and so on.] This listening activity has no purpose other than to see if students understand a number when they hear it. It is devoid of any communicative purpose of language we have seen so far. Thus, as a listening activity, it is, at best, only partially communicative. In fact, we might consider that some classroom activities are meaning-based, but not communicative. That is, the student has to pay attention to meaning at some level of the activity but there is no communicative purpose to what the learner and others are doing.

Reflection Many non-linguists (teachers and students included) often conflate or equate language and communication. Why do you think this is so? Why is it important for us, as professionals, to maintain language and communication as separate constructs? Consider the following: how is communication learned? Can it be learned entirely in a classroom?

Quiz Take the following short quiz to see what you have learned so far. Answers are given at the end, so don’t peek. 1. Which of the following are fundamental to communication? a. expression of meaning b. interpretation of meaning c. both a and b 2. Context of communication refers to . . . a. the linguistic environment around words. b. people, settings, and other factors. c. both a and b. 3. Two native speakers of the same language . . . a. will almost always communicate in similar ways. b. may vary in how they communicate. c. never communicate in the same way. 4. Which of the following contexts invites code-switching more easily? a. two monolinguals

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Bill VanPatten b. two bilinguals c. one monolingual and one bilingual 5. Context, as defined in this section, does not affect . . . a. word choice. b. the use of pragmatic devices. c. underlying competence. 6. During face-to-face interactions, negotiation of meaning occurs . . . a. between native-speakers. b. between native-speakers and non-natives. c. between any kind of speakers. 7. Communication is . . . a. largely dependent on language. b. partially dependent on language. c. not dependent on language. 8. Which of the following involves psycho-social purpose of communication? a. [in class, an instructor says:] “Your papers are due by 5:00 pm on Thursday.” b. [in the clinic, the doctor says:] “Long time no see, Richard.” c. neither a nor b. 9. Classrooms tend to be lop-sided or biased toward particular purposes of communication because . . . a. participants are constant. b. setting is fixed. c. both a and b. [Answers: 1. c; 2. b; 3. b; 4. b; 5. c; 6. c; 7. a; 8. b; 9. c]

The Nature of Skill Outside the field of second language research, when someone talks about knowing another language, that person normally means communicative ability. If, for example, you’re in an emergency room and someone says, “Does anybody here know Japanese?” it is highly unlikely that person wants to know if someone has a mental representation of Japanese and to what degree it resembles that of a native speaker’s. What that person wants to know is whether someone can communicate effectively in Japanese in order to, for example, assist with a patient. This is what we refer to as skill.

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In everyday language, skill is a term used to mean that someone is good at something, as in “he’s a skilled carpenter” or “she’s a skilled politician.” But skill has a technical definition and it is that definition we want to work with here. Skill refers to the accuracy and fluency with which a person can perform an activity—from playing tennis to typing to speaking another language. Accuracy refers to how error-free someone performs an activity. We can shorthand error-freeness as “sloppiness,” with “sloppy” defined by the skill itself (e.g., what is sloppy in tennis is quite different from what is sloppy in wallpaper hanging). Fluency refers to the speed and ease at which someone can perform an activity. However, both accuracy and fluency may be context dependent and what each contributes to what it means to be skilled at something may vary. A highly skilled typist/word processor would be someone who types relatively fast (is highly fluent) and produces text that is relatively error-free (not sloppy). A very skilled surgeon is someone who makes no mistakes during surgery, leaves minimal scars, and for whom patients don’t die. Fluency may be less important in the operating room (i.e., we might want surgeons to take their time during a procedure). In most situations, accuracy and fluency go hand in hand to determine skill, but what is acceptable accuracy and what is acceptable fluency depends on context. For example, I used to play in a men’s tennis league, a non-competitive group in which playing tennis and making friends on the court was more important than trophy winning. This context is quite different from, say, the French Open, where the point is to both earn trophies and money. Thus, the demands on my accuracy and fluency back when I played tennis were different than what is demanded of someone like Rafael Nadal (who at the time of this writing had just won his ninth championship title at the French Open). Sloppy tennis for Rafael Nadal is quite different from sloppy tennis for me. To offer one more example, the reader is invited to ponder something as simple as making an omelet. Is making an omelet at home by the non-chef the same context as making an omelet for brunch at the five-star Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas? Clearly it is not. What is expected out of the omelet maker at home and what is expected out of the omelet maker at the Bellagio are two different things, so that the accuracy and fluency of omelet making varies between the two contexts. In the case of the emergency room scenario we began with in this section (“Does anyone know Japanese?”), the activity involved is speaking. (Skill in language, however, can also mean skill in writing, reading, or listening, among others.) Because skill is determined by accuracy and fluency, a highly skilled speaker of Japanese speaks quickly and effortlessly, and produces few things that sound non-nativelike. A low skilled speaker of Japanese may speak slowly while searching for words and phrases, while backtracking to self-correct, and sound non-nativelike. And there are degrees of skill in between. In short, skill is not absolute. It is not an either/or situation. Accuracy and fluency fall on a scale—and in language situations we sometimes refer to this as proficiency.

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Skill as Proficiency Although a dictionary definition of proficiency may refer to degree in knowledge or ability, an examination of any proficiency-oriented rating for language clearly points to skill and not underlying mental representation (implicit knowledge) of language. For example, below are two descriptions of roughly the same level of ability with language, one from the United States and the other from Europe. Speakers at the Advanced-High level perform all Advanced-level tasks with linguistic ease, confidence and competence. They are able to consistently explain in detail and narrate fully and accurately in all time frames. In addition, Advanced-High speakers handle the tasks pertaining to the Superior level but cannot sustain performance at that level across a variety of topics. They can provide a structured argument to support their opinions, and they may construct hypotheses, but patterns of error appear. They can discuss some topics abstractly, especially those relating to their particular interests and special fields of expertise, but in general, they are more comfortable discussing a variety of topics concretely. Advanced-High speakers may demonstrate a well-developed ability to compensate for an imperfect grasp of some forms or for limitations in vocabulary by the confident use of communicative strategies, such as paraphrasing, circumlocution, and illustration. They use precise vocabulary and intonation to express meaning and often show great fluency and ease of speech. However, when called on to perform the complex tasks associated with the Superior level over a variety of topics, their language will at times break down or prove inadequate, or they may avoid the task altogether. (From the American Council on the Teaching for Foreign Languages—ACTFL—Oral Proficiency Guidelines) The independent user . . . • •

can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either party; can produce clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects and explain a viewpoint on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of various options. (From the Common European Framework of References for Language—CEFR)

Clearly, the concern in describing the Advanced-high speaker or the Independent User is not what that person knows, but what he or she can do, as referenced by phrases such as “cannot sustain performance,” “a well-developed ability,” “great fluency and ease of speech,” and “can interact . . . without strain.” Thus, proficiency is about skill and not

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knowledge. It is about what people do, not what exists in their mental representation. Such descriptions and all proficiency ratings are useful if not necessary in the real world of job performance, academic work, and other domains. They let us know how well a person can function and what communicative tasks that person can do. We wouldn’t want a first grade teacher in Columbus, Ohio, for example, to be of the lowest levels of English proficiency and be in charge of 33 students who are going to learn things through the medium of English. And just to remind ourselves, skill is not limited to speaking. One can find descriptions for reading, writing, and listening similar to those we have just seen for speaking. As mentioned earlier, skill is not absolute or either/or. In fact, most proficiency ratings place someone on a scale. The ACTFL scale, for example, places people on a range from Novice to Superior, with shades of differences even in particular range (e.g., one could be Advanced-low, Advanced-mid, or Advanced-high). The same is true of the Common European Framework, which has three levels (Basic User, Independent User, Proficient User) with two sub-levels within each major level. To be sure, the move from one level to the next is not just a move in, say, accuracy (i.e., people get less “sloppy” with their abilities as they move up the scale) and fluency (i.e., people speak with more ease). In both the ACTFL and European scales, there is a qualitative difference among levels. As one simple example, at the lowest levels, language users may be limited to speaking in sentences and phrases and be largely reactive to what people ask of them or say to them. At higher levels, speakers may string sentences together, use discourse connectors to link ideas, and initiate topics and interactions rather than merely being reactive. Thus, when it comes to communication, as one gets more skilled, one’s ability to participate in wider and wider kinds of communicative situations also changes. Some rating systems for skill or proficiency exist in what are called “can do” statements (see the ACTFL website at www.actfl.org for discussion of these kinds of statements). For example, at Michigan State University (MSU), we have enacted a series of five “can do” statements for each semester of language study that refer not to what students know about Spanish or French but what they can do. Here are examples from the first semester of study: 1a. I can answer basic questions about my daily schedule including classes, work, and study time. 1b. I can ask someone basic questions about his or her daily schedule related to classes, work, and study time. 2a. I can introduce myself, tell someone where I’m from, and tell that person it is a pleasure to meet him or her. 2b. I can ask someone his or her name and ask them where he/she is from.

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Bill VanPatten 3a. I can describe three to four of my basic personality traits to someone. 3b. I can ask someone else what his or her personality is like. 4a. I can describe different types of clothing I see at a store, including what articles of clothing I see, how much different items cost, and what colors they are. 4b. I can ask a salesperson different questions about clothing he/she sells. 5a. I can describe my immediate and extended family members and what they look like. 5b. I can ask someone about their family and what his/her family members look like.

We ask students to self-assess on each of these “functions” using the following scale: • • •

I can perform this function with ease. I can perform this function, but not easily. I am not sure I can perform this function.

The reader will immediately note two things about these types of selfrating statements. The first is that they are focused, referring to very particular communicative events and topics. However, the idea is that such statements, when added up across several semesters of study, serve as indicators of a proficiency rating. For example, across four semesters of study, our MSU students have a total of 20 such statements that, when viewed together, form a profile of typical Intermediate-mid ability on the ACTFL oral proficiency scale. The second thing a reader might notice is that in such statements, accuracy is normally left out of the picture, as students may not know if they are accurate with language and communication or not. The idea behind “can do” statements is to allow a language learner to self-reflect and then to even test him/herself. At MSU, for example, students rate themselves and then are asked to perform an activity that gets at the particular function. They are then asked to re-rate themselves to see if they were on target during the first rating. Note that as a measure of skill, the statements are about what learners can do, not about what they know. Returning to the issue of the context dependent nature of skill, we should acknowledge here that communication as skill is context dependent and also topic/situation dependent. And this is true of native speakers as well as non-native speakers. Someone could be fairly well skilled in everyday one-on-one situations but have a terrible time trying to explain why people fall in love. Or the opposite could be true: someone could develop relatively good skills in communicating abstract topics due to

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on-the-job experience, but have difficulty in certain everyday situations. That is, skill may break down in certain domains because the person just doesn’t have experience in that domain. Again, this is as true of native speakers as it is of non-native speakers. So far, we have talked about skill as something measurable by a rating system, with clear descriptors. But there may be something intangible about communication that is not reflected in such rating scales. That intangibility has to do with perception of interlocutors about how effective a person is. I can think of no way better to illustrate this point than to offer a quote from the anthropologist Margaret Mead, known for her work in the South Pacific. Here is what Mead said about her own language ability: I am not a good mimic and I have worked now in many different cultures. I am a very poor speaker of a language, but I always know whose pig is dead, and when I work in a native society, I know what people are talking about and I treat it seriously and respect them and this in itself establishes a great deal more rapport, very often, than the correct accent. I have worked with other field workers who were far, far better linguists than I, and the natives kept saying they couldn’t speak the language, although they said I could!1 What is illuminating about this quote is the role of perception of others that Mead clearly indicates, suggesting that we all don’t have to be good speakers of another language to be good communicators. At the same time, context of communication raises its head and we have to ask ourselves whether Mead’s experience in the South Pacific would be the same as in West End London or one of the environs of Paris or the suburbs of Chicago. Even if our answer is no, Mead’s point is well taken; communication is in the eye of the beholder, pointing us always to context: the participants and the setting of communication.

Reflection What do you think is more important: what a person’s proficiency rating is on a scale or how others view that person’s ability?

Communication and (versus) Language If we take language to mean the underlying mental representation that people possess for such things as phonology, morphology, lexicon, syntax, and pragmatics (see the module on the nature of language), then clearly communication and language are not the same thing. This dissociation

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sometimes causes some consternation in some people, so if you, the reader, are one of these people, we can approach the issue by asking these two questions: (1) Do dogs communicate with each other? (2) Do they have an underlying mental representation of language (phonology, morphology, lexicon, syntax, and so on)? The answer to the first question is clearly “yes”—dogs do communicate with each other. All species do in some form or another. Canine specialists can tell a person all about how dogs signal information through body posture, eye contact, tail position, vocalizations, smell, and movement, among other indicators. César Milán—the Dog Whisperer—has made a career out of helping people communicate with dogs. But it is equally clear that dogs do not have language. They have no mental representation that could ever come close to what is involved in the abstract properties of language. For example, a growl might mean ‘danger’ or ‘warning’ but dogs cannot indicate differences such as ‘will warn,’ ‘has warned,’ ‘was about to warn,’ and they do not have morphology that interfaces with lexical roots to form ‘warn,’ ‘warns,’ ‘warned,’ ‘warning,’ and so on. They do not possess syntax that governs the way subjects behave in sentences. They cannot embed clauses. They do not have passive and active sentence structure. In short, dogs are simply not hardwired for language. Humans are. Of course, humans aren’t hardwired for certain things that dogs possess, but that’s another story. What is more, human communication itself may or may not involve language. In the Jake examples from above, he communicates something by raising his hand. His eyes may indicate something. Leaning in close to his partner before speaking is an act that communicates something. Thus, the use of language for humans may be part of a larger act we call “communication,” but communication can involve more than language. What does it mean, for example, if someone winks at you? What does it mean if someone gives you a sign with his thumb up? What does it mean if someone applauds or stands up while applauding? These are all examples of human communication without language. As such, they are not language (e.g., there is no phonological system behind applauding, there is no syntax of giving a thumbs up, there is no inflectional morphology in winking). And as in the Jake examples, communication can be language plus something else, such as a visual cue (e.g., Jake raises his hand to ask a question in class). In fact, many communication experts would say that communication has to be more than language, that is has to involve non-verbal signals. Researchers such as Albert Mehrabian have conducted analyses and have proposed percentage amounts of how much verbal and non-verbal communication contribute to interactions. His findings suggest that non-verbal indicators of meaning are used more than verbal indicators; that is, people unconsciously rely on “body language” more than they do the words they hear. (It is not clear how this applies to signed language).

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More on Context Although context defined as participants and setting influences communication, it does not influence underlying representation. We can take syntax as an example. Syntactic competence does not change, for example, depending on context. People may select one way over another to say something, but the underlying syntactic competence that governs sentence structure and the relationships among words in a sentence does not change. Let’s take a fundamental difference between Spanish and English as an example. Spanish allows what are called null subjects (i.e., a subject pronoun is not required to make a sentence grammatical). When talking about a third person, for example, once we know who is being talked about, we don’t need to use a subject pronoun, as in the following exchange: ROBERT: Ya regresó Alicia. JOHN: ¿Y cómo se ve? ROBERT: Bien, más o menos.

‘Alice has come back.’ ‘And how does she look?’ ‘Fine, more or less.’

When John responds to Robert, he does not need to use either Alicia or the subject pronoun ella (‘she’) in his response. His sentence is perfectly grammatical without either. But notice how in English, this is not possible: ROBERT: Alice has come back. JOHN: And how does look? ROBERT: Fine, more or less.

Without using she, John’s sentence just isn’t English. (There’s much more to the null-subject nature of Spanish than what is presented here, but this example will suffice.) Returning to our fictional college student Jake, he would not use null subjects in English the way a Spanish speaker would when speaking Spanish. Null subjects are just not part of Jake’s syntactic competence. Nor would Jake invert verbs and subjects in English (as in Spanish or Italian), no matter what he was communicating. And Jake would never make use of object-verb order like Japanese and Turkish (e.g., I apple am eating) because English does not allow such orders. What we are saying here is that context does not affect language itself; that is, it doesn’t affect mental representation. Of course, bilinguals must draw upon two distinct sets of competences depending on what language they engage at a given moment. But this switch does not change the underlying competence of one language or the other. Thus, the context for a KoreanEnglish bilingual’s use of one language over the other to communicate does not alter his or her mental representation of Korean or English. Now there is the possibility that bilinguals may borrow words between two languages, but does this mean they are changing underlying knowledge?

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Not at all. Two examples will suffice. Some Cuban-American dialects have coined the term friquearse, which means to “freak out.” Clearly, one can see the similarity between the Spanish word and its English origin. But note that in order to borrow the word in Spanish, (1) it had to be assigned a verb class (it is an –a verb, meaning it will have certain endings and not others), (2) when used, it has to be inflected like any other verb (for tense, person-number, mood), and (3) it uses the se morpheme to indicate it is a particular kind of intransitive verb whose subject is not the same kind of subject as “eat” or “run.” All of these things show that although the word is borrowed, once borrowed, the Spanish underlying system asserts control over the properties of the verb for it to be used correctly. Our second example comes from everyday English. Did you know that about 25% of everyday words are from Old French? Here are a few: soldier, blond, table, flower, eagle, depart, to marry, and the list goes on. Yet, how many of you are speaking French when using these words? How French does “table” sound to you when you say it? And how much of English sentence structure has changed because of these French words? The answers are that English is English and French is French. Borrowing words (and even phrases) does not alter underlying competence. Indeed, it’s the other way around: underlying competence asserts itself over anything borrowed from another language. This competence requires the borrowed word to have our phonology and behave in sentences like other elements of its kind (e.g., if it’s a verb, it must behave like a verb and do what verbs in our language do). When it comes to decisions about sentence structure, to be sure, people can make decisions depending on context. For example, should I use an active or a passive sentence to express something? But note that such decisions do not affect the underlying competence of the speaker. That person can make this kind of decision only because the language in that person’s head already contains the linguistic representations from which to choose. As another example, in some context I might say I don’t have any. In another context, I might say I ain’t got none. I did not suddenly go from English, which doesn’t normally allow double negatives, to using something like Spanish syntax where double negatives are permissible, and in some cases obligatory. Actually, I have both don’t and ain’t in my English repertoire and know how to use each correctly and in what kinds of communicative contexts. So, context does not alter competence or underlying mental representation, but it might affect choice of structures (and words) that a person uses to communicate an idea. Some Final Words on the Distinction between (Communicative) Skill and Mental Representation Language and communication must be connected in some way, but that connection is not quite clear. For example, when we say a person can

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“narrate smoothly in the past with few errors,” this does not tell us how the abstract concepts of temporality (past, present, future) and aspect (whether an action, process, or state is reported as finished, starting, or in progress at a certain point in time) are constructed in his or her head with regard to linguistic devices for expressing such concepts. Such a description also does not reference what abstract rules related to discourse structure (how sentences and ideas are organized to create coherence) exist in the mental representation. Furthermore, because proficiency ratings tend to be holistic or global and deal with functions (e.g., narrating, asking questions) and not particular linguistic features, we may not be able to use ratings to pinpoint particular aspects of a learner’s mental representation. Finally, we know that mental representation of language is as much about knowing what is impossible in a language as what is possible. For example, as a speaker of English, I know that Does Bill study linguistics? is a perfectly fine yes/no question in English but Studies Bill linguistics? is not. Yet I only speak in sentences that are possible; that is, I would never say Studies Bill linguistics? in a conversation to find something out about Bill. Thus, communicative use of language only tells us what is permissible in a speaker’s underlying system. Samples of language do not reliably indicate what is impossible. This situation makes speaking tests not the most suitable for ascertaining what exists in mental representation, and vice versa—tests of representation don’t necessarily tell us what people do to effectively communicate ideas and intents. To offer one more example, let’s look at null subjects in Spanish once again. Spanish permits null subjects, but they are constrained by discourse and pragmatic features of language. That is, although null subjects are permitted in Spanish, they are governed by certain non-syntactic aspects of language such as topic-shift (e.g., one sentence is about John but the next sentence is about someone else), emphasis, disambiguation, and so on. We can imagine a second language learner of Spanish taking a proficiency test. That learner tends to overuse—if not use consistently— explicit subject pronouns where native speakers would use null subjects. For example, that learner might say Juan llegó a la fiesta. Él vio a una chica. Él la invitó a su casa ‘John arrived at the party. He saw a girl. He invited her to his house.’ A native speaker would normally say Juan llegó a la fiesta. Vio a una chica. La invitó a su casa, avoiding the use of the explicit subject pronoun él because in such situations, a null subject pronoun would normally be used when the subject-topic of one sentence does not shift from one sentence to the next. Does the learner’s overuse of subject pronouns in Spanish mean that the second language learner does not have a “null subject grammar” in his head? Not necessarily. Most likely he does have a null subject grammar, and if we give him certain tests for what’s in his mental representation, we could ascertain this. What that learner most likely lacks is whatever interface there is between the mental representation and real time speaking.

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In short, mental representation and skill are distinct, but both are equally important concepts depending on what one is interested in measuring. The question for the second language context is how these aspects of language and communication develop. That is the topic for a different module.

Reflection Some languages have something like noun-adjective agreement in which an adjective must be inflected in certain ways to “agree” with the noun. Gender is one example. In French, for example, one would have to say la maison blanche ‘the white house’ but le livre blanc ‘the white book.’ Imagine you collect data on second language learners of French and find that they generally have no trouble producing noun-adjective agreement with gender in a noun phrase (la maison blanche), but you also notice many errors when the adjective appears in a different part of the sentence, as in Mon frere ne acheterait pas une maison qui n’était pas *blanc ‘My brother wouldn’t buy a house that wasn’t white.’ Is this error one of skill or one of a deficit in mental representation?

A Peculiar Communication Strategy for Second Language Learners Only When engaging in communication, both native and non-native speakers of a language engage in a variety of strategies that compensate for either a lack of underlying knowledge or less-than-optimal skill. For example, both native and non-native speakers, when having to give a formal speech for the first time, may employ strategies such as note cards, cheat sheets, and practice in an attempt to provide a good speech. In the middle of an interaction, both native and non-native speakers may forget a word for something and may employ circumlocution (talk around the word), make an appeal for assistance (“Help me out here. You know what I’m talking about . . .”), or use some other device. Both native and non-native speakers may simply not say something, particularly in situations in which they have no experience and don’t know what to say. The point is that both native and non-native speakers may “get stuck” at a particular point in communicating something and have to resort to some kind of compensatory strategy to get around being stuck. There is one strategy for communication, however, that is different for second language learners that is not available to native speakers. That strategy is relying on the L1 to generate what to say and then dressing

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it up in L2 words. As one example, imagine the language learner who does not have in his or her mental representation how to express age in Spanish and French, both of which use the verb “to have” and not “to be” to tell age (i.e., “I have 30 years” versus “I am 30 years old”). Let’s further imagine that learner in a situation requiring the expression of age. Not knowing what to do, that learner thinks in English and dresses this up somehow in French: Je suis treinte ans. The result is an effort that has L2 words but sounds like an L1 structure. Teachers often classify this as a problem of first-language transfer in learning or even as grammatical or lexical “error,” but in reality, it is a communication strategy. It is a strategy learners routinely engage when asked to perform beyond their current underlying knowledge and ability. For this reason, the strategy is particularly prevalent at the beginning and intermediate levels of proficiency. At these stages, learners may be asked to speak in complete sentences (or feel the pressure to do so) or to communicate ideas for which they have gaps in their mental representation (be they lexical gaps or gaps in sentence structure and form). Thus, L1-like behavior in early and intermediate stages of proficiency may be a function not of the transfer of the native language to the second language as a learning device, but as a communication strategy because of task-induced requirements on the learner. This is not to say that nativelanguage influence doesn’t happen in acquisition (the topic of another module). The point here is that early and intermediate-staged communication may have its fair share of L1-like production because of how learners unconsciously deal with the demands placed on their abilities.

Quiz Take the following short quiz to see what you have learned in this section. Answers are given at the end, so don’t peek. 1. A technical definition of skill involves the intersection of accuracy and . . . a. b. c. d.

fluency. knowledge. both a and b. neither a nor b.

2. Skill is similar to communication in that it is partially shaped by . . . a. practice. b. context.

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Bill VanPatten c. speed. d. meaning. 3. “You either have skill or you don’t.” This statement is false because . . . a. b. c. d.

skill is absolute. speaking involves two people. there are degrees of skill. none of the above.

4. Proficiency ratings normally do not refer to . . . a. b. c. d.

how well someone can do something. what a person knows. interactive abilities. reading and listening.

5. “Can do” lists are primarily used as . . . a. b. c. d.

tests of competence. proficiency objectives. self-assessment tools. none of the above.

6. Which of the following is true? a. b. c. d.

Communication and language are basically the same thing. Communication does not require language. All higher order animals have some degree of language. All higher order primates communicate in similar ways.

7. From the discussion, it is clear that context . . . a. may influence linguistic choices but does not affect underlying representation. b. affects both communication and underlying representation of language. c. minimally impacts how we perceive communication. d. plays different roles with different languages. 8. Both native and non-native speakers engage in strategies to effect communication, except that . . . a. b. c. d.

natives are better at it. non-natives are better at it. natives have more strategies. non-natives have a strategy that natives do not.

[Answers: 1. a; 2. b; 3. c; 4. b; 5. c; 6. b; 7. a; 8. d]

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Summary and Conclusion In this module, we have sketched out the nature of communication, distinguishing it from language. In so doing, we have described the expressive and interpretive sides of communication, along with the concept of negotiation of meaning. We have also demonstrated that communication is a complex enterprise that is context dependent, with context determined by setting and participants. Finally, we have seen that communication always has a purpose, usually either psycho-social or cognitive-informational. Thus, for an event to be deemed communicative, it must involve the expression and interpretation of meaning and have a purpose. Using this framework, we can ask ourselves to what extent we teach communicatively and to what extent our activities are communicative in nature. We have also examined skill as the intersection of accuracy and fluency, and—like communication—we have determined that skill is context dependent. Distinguishing skill from knowledge (underlying mental representation), we explored the idea that proficiency rating systems are about what people can do, not what they know. All of the ideas touched upon in this module are informative of contemporary language teaching that has a communicative or proficiencyoriented curriculum. When we sit back and examine what we have reviewed, we can conclude that there is no such thing as “the communicative method,” as some people mistakenly refer to contemporary language teaching. Instead, there can be an array of approaches to teaching communicatively—approaches that share in the idea that the context dependent nature of meaning exchange informs choices in materials, activities, and even expectations. These are the principles that each teacher must develop, and through continued reading about language, language acquisition, tasks in the classroom, assessment, and other related matters, each teacher should be able to fashion an approach to the classroom and say, “This is why my teaching is communicative.”

Discussion Questions and Projects 1. Ask a friend who is not in a field related to language teaching, linguistics, or language acquisition what the difference is between language and communication. What kinds of ideas surface in that person’s answer? How do they compare to the ideas presented in this module? Do you think beginning students have these same ideas? 2. Explain the communicative purpose (psycho-social, cognitiveinformational) of the following: • • •

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diary writing; taking notes in a lecture; reading the instructions on a new medication;

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Bill VanPatten • •

a counseling session with a troubled teen; an attorney’s summation at the end of a trial.

3. Although you may read about acquisition later, how do you think communication develops for second language learners? Can it be taught in the traditional sense of “teaching”? 4. Interview three males and three females. Ask them if the other gender communicates differently from their own. If they say “yes,” what kinds of examples do they offer? 5. Examine three to four textbook prefaces. What do they claim about being communicative or proficiency-oriented? Follow this up with an examination of a string of activities. What is your conclusion about the communicative nature of the materials? 6. In the conclusion to this module, teachers are exhorted to develop their own principles that guide communicative language teaching. Based on what you have read in this module, begin to develop those principles. What are they and how many are there? Can you explain these principles to a fellow teacher or colleague?

Note 1. This quote comes from Sandra Savignon’s 1983 book on communicative competence, and she attributes it to Ruth Cryme’s 1980 article “Current trends in ESL instruction” (TESOL Newsletter, 14, pp. 1–4).

Suggested Further Reading Communication Peasons, J. C., Nelson, P. E., Titsworth, S., & Harter, L. (2001). Human communication. 4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. Savignon, S. (1997). Communicative competence: Theory and classroom practice: texts and contexts in second language learning. 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Skill Anderson, J. R. (2000). Learning and memory: An integrated approach. New York: John Wiley & Sons. [See especially the chapter on skill acquisition.] DeKeyser, R. (2015). Skill acquisition theory. In B. VanPatten & J. Williams (Eds.), Theories in second language acquisition (pp. 94–112). New York: Routledge. VanPatten, B. (1998). Perceptions of and Perspectives on the Term communicative. Hispania, 81, 925–932. VanPatten, B. (2013). Mental representation and skill in instructed SLA. In J. Schwieter (Ed.), Innovative research and practices in second language acquisition and bilingualism (pp. 3–22). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

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