Once the definition and the main functions of language have been presented, it may be appropriate here to develop the concept of communicative competence, which refers to individuals' ability to use language for effective communication in a variety of contexts.
Noam Chomsky (1957) was the first author that developed the concept of competence as “the inner, and ultimately innate knowledge of grammar that everyone has in their minds”. He thought that it was impossible for people to acquire a language by simple repetition and reinforcement, but that an able speaker has a subconscious knowledge of the grammar rules of his/her language, which allows him/her to make sentences in that language.
However, Dell Hymes (1972) thought that Chomsky has missed out some very important information: the rules of use. At this point, he argued that a normal child acquires knowledge of sentences, not only as grammatical, but also as appropriate; so he introduced the concept of “communicative competence” and established that language is one mode of communication among others, and full communication involves mastery of all the codes.
Moreover, he distinguished four aspects of communicative competence: Systematic potential (potential for creating a lot of language), Appropriacy (knowing what language is appropriate in a given situation according to the context), Occurrence (knowing how often something is said in the language and acting accordingly) and Feasibility (knowing whether something is possible in the language).
Afterwards, Canale and Swain’s theory appeared (1983), being the first authors that introduced the four components of communicative competence, which are: Grammatical competence (producing a structured comprehensible utterance), Sociolinguistic competence (knowledge of the sociocultural rules of language and discourse); Discourse competence (shaping language and communicating purposefully in different genres, using cohesion and coherence); and Strategic competence (enhancing the effectiveness of communication and compensating for breakdowns).
Nevertheless, Sandra Savignon (1983) was the first author to propose a possible relationship between those four components and to describe how they interact. For her, the communicative competence is a dynamic concept which depends on the negotiation of meaning between two or more people who share so come degree the same symbolic system, so it is an interpersonal trait.
Finally, we can see that the concept of communicative competence is also present in our educational system. The goal of language teaching is to develop students’ communicative competence, and for that, the Organic Law of Education highlights the importance of developing both oral and written skills in the six different years of Primary Education; and the methodology defined in RD126/2014 and in D89/2014 revolves around a communicative competence with plentiful production and interaction in various situations.
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