2.3.4 Before adoption any particular methods or techniques, it is important to ‘know’
a language. As regards what is entailed in knowing a language, Keith Johnson puts it this
way, ‘‘…..‘knowing a language’ is not the same as ‘the ability to use language’…..’’ The
student who is communicatively incompetent is in fact, unaware of the use of language.
As Newmark expresses it, this student may know ‘‘the structures that the linguist teaches,
[Yet] cannot know that the way to get his cigarette lit by a stranger when he has no
matches is to walk up to him and say one of the utterances ‘‘Do you have a light?’’ or
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‘‘Got a match?’’…..’’ (Keith Johnson, Communicative approaches and communicative
processes).