Communicative Competence and Language Teaching

[Francis M Hult]

I wonder if anyone on the list has a knowledge of the historical
development of communicative competence in language teaching.  In
particular, I'm interested in finding out if anyone knows the 'behind the
scenes' thinking of Canale and Swain(1980)/Canale (1983).

The timing of their work leads me to think they were operating largely with
the findings of people that were doing work in language socialization
(e.g. Ochs and Schieffelin), following on Hymes' work in the 60's and
70's on communicative competence and the ethnography of communication.  What
I'm mainly curious about is the extent to which they were responding
particularly to Hymes or more so to the language socialization folks.

Francis