On Roles and Features of Context in CLT/ Caracteristique Et Importance Du Contexte Dans L'enseignement de Methodologie Communicative (Report‪)‬

1. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS Communicative competence was first proposed by Dell Hymes in his paper 'Competence and Performance in Linguistic Theory', published in 1971. The concept of communicative competence has important implications for language learning and teaching. Within the definition of communicative competence, the content of what a speaker needs to know depends on the social context in which he or she is or will be using the language and the purposes he or she will have for doing so. From this perspective, we see that understanding of the context within which the communication takes place is the most important overriding skill in improving communicative competence. Only with enough encyclopedic knowledge and awareness of context, the hearer could infer the meanings presumably intended by their authors.