The concept of "communicative competence" has generated a litany of theoretical
models that formulate what are involved in competent language use and predict L2
development. Nonetheless, the analytic literature has yet to represent adequately the
realities of language use that are infested with an unforeseen range of variants and
occasional contingencies. I contend that theoretical formulations of communicative
competence always rely on the pre-given theoretical constructs and analytic categories,
which naturally gloss over actual practices of competent language use embedded in
talk-in-interaction. What we need are more procedural accounts of communicative
competence, looking into actual occasions of language use, questioning what occurrences
of language behavior would count as a competent case of language use, before subjecting
them to conceptual formula.
Following the analytic policies of ethnomethodology, the present study finds
communicative competence in practical details of L2 interaction. Rather than relying on
the general accounts of language phenomena that the competence theories propose, the
present study focuses on furnishing descriptive accounts of the members' own
undertaking of what goes on. Retrieving the member's own undertaking of their own
discourse is pursued by looking into the sequential order and production of their actions.
Given that interactional exchanges consist of sequences of actions, the investigation of
how one action is made relevant to another within a sequential and temporal domain
makes it possible for analysts to describe the members' methods of talking and order of
activities through which the teacher and her students accomplish their classroom
activities.
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