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substantial (knowledge) and procedural (ability)
components and assumes knowledge of the essence of a
problem and an ability to solve it [3].
At once we would like to allocate that the analysis
of researchers’ opinions requires a clarification of
the distinction between the concepts «competence»
and «competency». Many scientists-pedagogists treat
«competence» as the highest level of education. In the
English literature, there is a term competence (academic,
linguistic,
cultural, professional competence).
In compliance with the norms of the Russian
language recorded in the explanatory dictionaries,
competence is «a circle of questions about which
somebody is knowledgeable «or «a circle of questions,
phenomena in which this person masters with
authoritativeness, knowledge, experience».
In other words, «competence» and «competency»
are two different concepts: competence is a phenomenon
(«a circle of questions») and competency is a property,
quality of a personality. From the viewpoint of practical
education experience, competency is an ability of a
personality to perform any activity, any actions. As
for the term competence, it is considered as a content
of education which is acquired by learner, forms his
competency in any area of activity. It is possible to say
that competence is a content of being well-educated.
N. Rozov defines the following aspects of
competence:
- a semantic aspect is an adequate judgment of a
situation in more general cultural context, that is, in a
context of available cultural patterns of understanding,
relation, assessments of such kind of situations;
- a problem-practical aspect is an adequacy of
recognition of situation, an adequate statement and
effective performance of purposes, tasks, norms in this
situation;
- a communicative aspect is an adequate
communication in such kind of situations and in an
occasion of such situations with the account of the
corresponding cultural patterns of communication and
interaction. A person can’t possess general cultural
competency if he isn’t competent (in three above
mentioned aspects) in situations beyond the scope of his
profession. Except that, if problem-practical aspect plays
a leading (but not only) role in professional competency,
semantic and communicative aspects play a leading role
in general cultural competency [4].
Having identified the essences of the concepts
«competency-competence» and the coherence between
them, we will pass to analyze the structure of the concept
of “informational communicative competence”. This
term began to be widely used in the theory of innovative
training technologies connected with teaching foreign
languages. It is certainly an important concept for
us since it reflects the final purpose, planned result of
studying a foreign language.
The concept of “informational communicative
competence” was entered by sociolinguists to expand
a circle of analysis of the concept «speech» which
is reduced by traditional linguistics to the studying
of linguistic competence, understood as speaker’s
knowledge of the language system.
In foreign researches, informational communicative
competence is understood as an ability to communicate
orally or in written form with a native speaker in real
situations, herewith preference is given to the transfer
of sense and the form of presenting information, more
precisely, the correctness of language means is minor in
relation to the meaning of utterances.
E.M.Vereshchagin and V.G.Kostomarov define the
concept “informational communicative competence”
through an opposition to the concept «linguistic». If
linguistic competence is an ability to form grammatically
correct phrases, communicative competence is
understood as a set of social, national-cultural rules and
values which determine what, when and how it is possible
to speak. On the basis of accentual-morphological
paradigms, grammatically correct phrases can be formed
by a discursive logical way, but communicatively-
correct phrases arise due to the possession of a set of
social instructions existing in a definite cultural and
linguistic community. Linguistic competence doesn’t
provide an opportunity of adequate participation in
communication with the help of studied language. An
adequate communication (not in classroom conditions,
but in the real environment, in a free communication with
native speakers) is possible only due to communicative
competence.
L.L.Fedorova defines informational communicative
competence irrespectively to the concepts “native//
nonnative language” as the sum of language skills and
knowledge of speaker// listener about the use of language
in changing situations and speech conditions. Тhat is, the
concept of informational communicative competence
means an ability of speaker to be the full member of a
certain speech collective (certainly, the hard-achieved
purpose in teaching a nonnative (foreign) language). The
considerations of L.L.Fedorova represent an interest for
the characteristics of formation stages of the concept of
informational communicative competence and reflect the
difficulty of formation of this ability [5].
By the term “informational communicative
competence”, it is accepted to understand not only an
ability to form a correct sentence, which is provided by
linguistic competence, but also the knowledge of using
this or that sentence under specific communication
conditions as well as an ability to interpret oral and written
texts correctly by taking into account informational
communication conditions. In this regard, for example,
F.Denningkhauz considers in the following way: «Speech
competence is not equal to communicative competence.
The concept «to know language» purely designates
a speech ability to build and understand infinite (or
almost infinite) number of grammatical and intelligent
sentences. A new communicative representation speaks
about an ability to use a speech in social interrelations for
the achievement of speech effect» [6].
In her book «Modern Method of Teaching Foreign
Languages», N.D. Galskova defines informational
communicative competence as an ability to organize
own verbal and nonverbal behavior adequate to
communication tasks. According to N.D. Galskovoy’s
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statement, development of an ability to communicate
happens when an ability to use linguistic means in
various communication situations is developed with
the purpose of establishing interaction as well as an
ability to evaluate, analyze a communication situation,
evaluate own communicative potential subjectively and
accept a necessary decision. Communication ability is
connected with such concept as social competence which
is understood as an ability to act in social situations
independently [7].
Psychology, psycholinguistics always addressed
and address to the identity of a person and each of them
is doing it from their positions. In designing new systems
of teaching foreign languages, first of all, a reliance on
the activity theory of assimilation, provisions of the
theory of speech activity, the communication theory
and the general pedagogical provisions about education,
upbringing which may be different in different countries
is carried out. It is known that the psyche of a person,
feature of his functioning and development of his psychic
functions act as an object of research in psychology.
The knowledge of these regularities allows specialist
studying foreign languages to build assimilation process
of knowledge, skills and abilities more effectively and
productively.
In their works, M. Canale, M. Swain and L.Bachman
write that there are four components of informational
communicative competence: grammatical, discursive,
sociolinguistic and strategic competence.
Grammatical competence includes the knowledge
of lexical units, rules of morphology, syntax, phonology
and semantic rules of grammar sentences.
Discursive competence reflects an ability to connect
sentences in a holistic statement and to form a coherent
text from the number of separate statements.
Grammatical competence has a deal with grammar
at the level of sentence, but discursive competence is
engaged in the coherence between sentences in a text.
Sociolinguistic competence includes in itself the
knowledge of sociocultural linguistic rules and rules of a
discourse, i.e. speech behavior.
Strategic competence has a connection with those
verbal and nonverbal strategies of communication which
can be brought into action in order to compensate for
failures in communication, arisen because of unforeseen
changes in real situations of communication or due to
insufficient competence [8].
S.Savinyon believes that the purpose of training
includes in itself not only that one which is necessary to
acquire, but also the level of acquisition of what has been
mastered. The success in the solution of communicative
tasks depends on readiness, a favor of a person to self-
expression, resourcefulness, an ingenuity in the use of
lexical and syntactic units which he knows [9].
In the book «Communicative competence: the
theory and practice of training» S.Savinyon describes four
components, constituting informational communicative
competence (Figure 1):
As we see, many researchers represent the structure
and the content of informational communicative
competence differently, isolating language, speech,
linguistic, ethno-cultural, pragmatic, sociolinguistic,
discursive,
cultural studies, etc.
Therefore,
informational
communicative
competence can be understood as an integrated personal
characteristic of specialist including knowledge, abilities
and personal qualities ensuring successful performance
of his professional activity.
Figure1 – Components of informational communicative competence (according to S.Savignon)