Concepts of Sociolinguistic Competence

1.2. Language Behavior and Social Communication
Walters (2012) presented another study. He examined M. Canale and M. Swain's 1980’s discussion of the grammatical, sociolinguistic, and strategic aspects of communicative competence. In his paper grammar, meaning, and sociocultural appropriateness in second language acquisition, the interrelationships of the four aspects of communicative competence were investigated in 4 experiments with 123 English-speaking/Native Armenian, Hispanic, or Chicano children (6–15 yrs of age).
Cem and Alptekin (2014) introduced another determinant of sociolinguistic competence in their study on the question of culture: EFL Teaching in Non-English speaking countries. They discussed two conflicting pedagogical views in teaching EFL (English as a foreign language abroad). The first one is that English teaching should be done with reference to the socio-cultural norms and values of an English-speaking country. The second one is that English teaching should be independent of its nationality-bound cultural context. Their study suggests that cultural contexts which are familiar and relevant to students’ lives should be used in teaching English as a foreign language.
Pillar (2011) addressed the issue on a different perspective. He focused on the plethora of models offered for testing writing and comprehension proficiency. His paper proposes a framework and observation instruments which can be used as a basis for testing communicative competence in a second/foreign language. His framework aims to provide a more integrated assessment of a learner’s ability to communicate in spoken, interpersonal interaction. His research shows that integrative communicative approach of assessment is a very time consuming process, but the results are worthwhile in giving a more holistic, meaningful measure of the students’ interpersonal communicative skills.
This study ushers the theoretical assumption that the phenomenon of sociolinguistic competence is associated to the socio-cultural theory and social-psychological theory of second language acquisition. This is the reason for choosing a set of students with diverse nationalities as respondents of this study to set the conditions of exploring into a variety of socio-cultural contexts as represented by the foreign national college students.
Socio-structural perspective is characterized by attempts at dealing with the influence on bilingualism of ‘objective’ community characteristics. Both demographic and political aspects, together with socio-economic status are under this perspective (Gardner, 2012). In this study, these variables are age, sex, gender, and nationality. In here, Garner’s Sociopsychological Theory is applied.
On the other hand, socio-cultural theory (SCT) argues that human mental functioning is fundamentally a mediated process that is organized by cultural artifacts, activities, and concepts. Language use, organization, and structure are the primary means of mediation. The process through which cultural artifacts, such as language, take on a psychological function is known as internalization. This process, along with mediation, is one of the core concepts of SCT.
Vygotsky (as cited by Lantolf & Thorne, 2007), proposed that the key to internalization resides in the uniquely human capacity to imitate the intentional activity of other humans. In this study, this perspective comprises the number of years studied the English language, the length of stay in the Philippines, and the exposure to the English
language. Hence, Vygotsky’s Socio-Cultural Theory is applied in this perspective.
The third perspective is the language learning characteristics which consists of the attitude, motivation, and the Can-Do Tasks. Cognitive characteristics are individual differences in language learning that reflect differences in abilities or approaches to the task at hand (Gardner, 2012). In this study, the cognitive variable to be used is language learning strategies such as attitude, motivation, and Can-Do Tasks. These variables have shown appreciable relations to measures of achievement.
Attitude and motivation approach was originally conducted by Gardner and Lambert, who reported that achievement in the second language is loaded on two independent factors: social motivation and language aptitude.
Can-do tasks, on the other hand was used by English Testing Service in 2009 to administer a self-assessment inventory to TOEIC examinees in Japan and Korea and found out that the everyday language tasks in English of the respondents has a significant relationship with their TOEIC speaking test scores .
The reviewed literature and studies paved for the conceptualization of this study which aimed to determine the sociolinguistic competence of the respondents in terms of the following profile variables: socio-structural perspective (nationality, age, sex, native language), socio-cultural perspective (number of years studied the English language, length of stay in the Philippines, and exposure to the English language), and language learning characteristics (attitude, motivation, and can-do tasks).
The conceptual paradigm (Figure 1) shows a correlation between the profile variables of the respondents and their sociolinguistic competence-variable.

➢ Socio-structural Perspective (nationality, age, sex, native language) ➢ Socio-cultural perspective (number of years studied the English language, length of stay in the Philippines, exposure to the English language) ➢ Language Learning Characteristics (attitude, motivation, can-do tasks)		Sociolinguistic Competence (based on TOEIC Model Test)