Investigating the Problems Encountering Students in Developing Oral Communicative Competence

Abstract

The purpose of the research was to develop of oral communicative competence for English as a Second Language (ESL) students at the college level. This research first reviewed the current literature on the topic of communicative competence from the perspectives of linguistics and sociolingustics, discourse analysis, and speech communication. The literature on for communicative competence within the ESL and foreign language teaching fields was also reviewed. It was rated for three separate criteria: intelligibility, grammatical correctness, and appropriateness. Two different rates were used for each criteria; another rather rated for all criteria. A reliability study was conducted on the rates wherein the reliability of the rates was shown to be significantly high. The validity of the test was established by conducting face-to-face interviews with the trial and final subjects prior to their taking the taped tests. The results showed that the degree of association between the overall ratings on the taped test and the overall ratings on the interview was significant, though not significant for individual criteria. A correlation with the CELT listening comprehension test was not significant.