Revisiting Communicative Competence in Korean EFL Education

The purpose of this paper is to discuss recent notions of communicative competence, especially as it is presented in Korean EFL education. Communicative competence has been modified and reinterpreted several times since the term was introduced by Hymes (1970). Paulston (1974) and Savignon (1983) focus on social interaction while Canale and Swain (1980) offer four categories of communicative competence: grammatical competence, discourse competence, sociolinguistic competence, and strategic competence. In addition, Tarone and Yule (1989) can be viewed as a systematic and comprehensive concept as well as a multi-dimensional mode (Bachman, 1990). Brown (2000) presents linguistic and functional aspects and Savignon's (1983) sociolinguistic competence has been transformed into sociocultural competence (Savignon, 2001). This study shows which aspects of Korean EFL education have been changed' and what needs to be accomplished for enhancing student's communicative competence.