COURSE 1-Module 3 Blog: My Definition of Competence

At the beginning of the module, I felt that competence was the ability to express oneself in reading, writing, and speaking so that people could understand approximately 70% of what was communicated and that the student could understand approximately 70% of what was communicated.

However, I've revised my definition so that competence includes not only being able to basically converse with someone, but it also includes sociolinguistic and strategic competence. These are often overlooked in considering competence. In my former definition, the emphasis was on discourse, and grammatical competence.

After reading the article by Bagaric and Djigunovic, I realized that one can have all the vocabulary and conjugation skills to speak, but if they cannot communicate it in a socially/culturally appropriate manner, and do not have the strategic competence to know what to do when they are stuck, they are lacking in true competence.