Communicative Competence in a Second Language

Communicative competence is an essential language skill, the ability to adjust language use according to specific contexts and to employ knowledge and strategies for successful communication.

This unique text offers a multidisciplinary, critical, state-of-the-art research overview for this skill in second language learners. Expert contributors from around the world lay out the history of the field, then explore a variety of theoretical perspectives, methodologies, and empirical findings, and authoritatively set the agenda for future work.

With a variety of helpful features like discussion questions, recommended further reading, and suggestions for practice, this book will be an invaluable resource to students and researchers of applied linguistics, education, psychology, and beyond.

Author Biography

Matthew Kanwit is Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Pittsburgh, USA. His research on communicative competence and functional approaches to L2 acquisition has appeared in Applied Linguistics, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Language Learning, The Modern Language Journal, and the Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Sociolinguistics.

Megan Solon is Lecturer in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University, USA. She researches the acquisition of phonetics/phonology, including sociolinguistically variable features. She is co-editor of the Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics book series and co-author of The Acquisition of Spanish as a Second Language: Foundations and New Developments.