Lecture 1: General problems of Foreign Language teaching

Pragmatic competences are concerned with the user/learners’ knowledge of the principles according to which messages are:

1. 
   organized, structured and arranged (‘discourse competence’);
   
2. 
   used to perform communicative functions (‘functional competence’)
   
3. 
   sequenced according to interactional and transactional schemata (‘design competence’).
   

Discourse competence is the ability of a user/learner to arrange sentences in sequence so as to produce coherent stretches of language. It includes knowledge of and ability to control the ordering of sentence in terms of:

• 
  Topic/focus:
  
• 
  Given/new:
  
• 
  ‘natural’ sequencing: e.g. temporal:
  

He fell over and I hit him, as against
I hit him and he fell over.

• 
  Cause/effect (invertible)-prices are rising-people want hire wages.
  

Schematic organization;
Coherence and cohesion;
Logical ordering;
Style and register;
Rhetorical effectiveness:
Functional competence.This component is concerned with the use of spoken discourse and written texts in communication for particular functional proposes. Conversational competence is not simply a matter of knowing which particular functions (micro functions) are expressed by which language forms. Participants are engaged in an interaction, in which each initiative leads to response and moves the interaction further on, according to its purpose, through a succession of stages from opening exchanges to its final conclusion. Competent speakers have an understanding of the process and skills in operating it. A micro function is characterized by its interactional structure. More complex situations may well have an internal structure involving sequences of micro functions, which in many cases are ordered according to formal or informal patterns of social interaction.
Against this Framework, any formal exam, certificate or syllabus can be matched. In other words, any aspect of learning, teaching or testing a language can – given time and effort – be put somewhere on this table.

Self-assessment grids

To make this easier for learners to understand, they also created a "Self-assessment grid", where learners can compare what they can do - in reading, writing, speaking and listening - with the CEFR levels. For example, when speaking to people, which describes you best?

• 
  I can take part effortlessly in any conversation or discussion and have a good familiarity with idiomatic expressions and colloquialisms. (C2)*
  
• 
  I can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible (B2)*
  
• 
  I can interact in a simple way provided the other person is prepared to repeat or rephrase things at a slower rate of speech and help me formulate what I'm trying to say. (A1)*
  

Making progress

Individual learners will progress differently depending on many factors, such as exposure to the language and culture, knowledge of other languages, motivation, and so on.
As a rough guide, Cambridge exams estimate that each level is reached with the following guided learning hours: A2, 180–200; B1, 350–400; B2, 500–600; C1, 700–800, and C2, 1,000–1,200.