The influence of communicative competence
In speech therapy it justified an increased emphasis on social knowledge and skills in addition to deficiencies in grammar and pronunciation. In translation it strengthened the case for seeking an equivalent effect rather than only formal and literal equivalent.
The biggest single influence however, as is so often the case in applied linguistics has been upon the teaching of English as a foreign language. There were a number of contributory factors. Some advocates of the communicative approach found common cause with the so-called ‘natural’ approach and the idea, the foreign-language learner can repeat the child’s acquisition of language through use and exposure alone. In this version of CLT, the emphasis did not really shift away from grammar as the sole yardstick of success, there was just a different route to attaining that end.
In addition, CLT often over-reacted against the past. The new emphasis, mention above, was almost exclusively upon appropriateness, while the other elements of communicative competence received little attention. Focus upon what is possible was rejected as old-fashioned, while the notions of feasibility and attestedness, being more difficult to grasp, had little or no impact.
A typical ‘communicative’ activity might involve simulating the successful ordering of a meal in a restaurant in London or New York, or knowing how to make polite requests and apologies at a party. Communicative competence remains, however, an extremely powerful model for applied linguistics, not only in language teaching but in every area of enquiry. It moves beyond the rarefied atmospheres of theoretical linguistic and traditional language teaching, and while itself also an idealized model, can aid the process of referring linguistic abstraction back to the actually from which it is derived.
It has also contributed to a growing interest in the analysis of language use, not only as a source of examples illustrating an underlying system but also as social action with important effects both at the micro level of personal experience and at the macro level of social change.