When Right Goes Wrong

The 4 C’s of English Proficiency

Contributed by Joshua Genesis DC. Miralles – Teacher I, Luakan National High School

When does being correct become a mistake? Does this irony really happen?

The answer to the said question is YES. In English communication, not everything that is grammatically correct is right. A word, a phrase, a sentence, or a stream of speech may be correctly constructed but still be perceived as an error or a gap in communication. These grammatically correct constructions, as a product of linguistic competence, might be incorrect in terms of appropriateness, intelligibility or understandability, clarity, accuracy, and cultural sensitivity.

Using the pronoun ‘he’ for generic statements is grammatically correct but politically incorrect as it is supposed to be ‘s/he’ which is more gender-sensitive. Nowadays, sexes have become more and more equal in roles, benefits and opportunities. Thus, in adherence to gender and development (GAD) writers and speakers of English ought touse generic nouns such as ‘police officer’ and ‘representative’ instead of their sexist counterparts, ‘policewoman’ and ‘congresswoman’.

Moreover, if grammatically correct questions, commands and statements are addressed to the wrong person, for the wrong position, and at the wrong place, time and situation, the rules on subject-verb agreement, pronoun-antecedent agreement, word conjugation, verb tenses and the like would just go down the drain. Imagine the reaction of an old maid being asked of the question, “How old are you?” or that of a respected city mayor or a guidance counselor hearing his/her subordinate or client saying, “Hey, howyadoin, man? By the way, feel free to give me a buzz when you ain’t busy ha.” For sure, their faces would turn red as they ought to be greeted formally or at least with respect like in the expression, “Hello, Sir/Ma’am. How are you doing?” or “Sir, Ma’am, I’d be glad to help you. Please do not hesitate to ask.”

How about the reaction of an eight-year old kid being told by his teacher what to do saying, “You are obliged to finish deciphering the jumbled characters and match each term with its illustration.” Whooo, the kid would either not react at all or cry a river out of cluelessness. Why not just say, “You have to finish jumbling the letters and match each word to its picture.”?

The same case would apply to a foreign American English speaker using the words, ‘television’, ‘elevator’, ‘toilet’, ‘truck’, ‘candy’ and ‘principal’ in London. The British speakers would probably have him/ her say, ‘telly’, ‘lift’, ‘loo’, ‘lorry’, ‘sweets’ and ‘headmaster’, respectively for better understanding. All these examples boil down to ‘appropriateness’in terms of purpose, relative social status of speakers, topic area and situation which are given utmost importance by those possessing socio-linguistic/pragmatic competence.

At the same rate, linguistically correct statements and utterances are, sometimes, misinterpreted or fail to serve their purposes because of the speakers’ and listeners’ inability to link or read between or beyond sentences with implied meanings. For instance, a speaker may indirectly express his/her discomfort through the statement, “It is hot in here.”

If the listener has discourse competence, he would most probably say, “I’ll get an electric fan or I’ll turn the air conditioner on” or as common sense dictates, s/he would just turn on the fan or air conditioner without saying a word. Same applies to the situation when a teacher asks for help asking, “Can you open the door, please?”, a witty student with competence in discourse would not say, “Yes, I can open the door” but rather just open the door as a positive response.

Lastly, having a good command of grammar does not give anyone a hundred percent assurance that s/he would communicate flawlessly. At times, statements expressed aren’t enough to put one’s message across and that is when modulated volume, repetition, tone, direct request for help, oilers, fillers, topic avoidance, circumlocution and paraphrasing come in.

For example, if a person needs to explain a complicated matter, what he has to do is to explain things in simpler, lighter, more pleasant, approximated and more familiar terms. Sometimes, a person wouldn’t say “I do not want to talk about this topic.” Instead, s/he would simply make a series of pauses and afterwards shift to another topic.

There are several ways on how to put our message across without even relying solely in grammar. Our ability to express what we mean and keep the communication going using different techniques at times of communication breakdown is referred to as strategic competence.

English language learning, like any language learning area, aims to make every learner proficient in communication. Language proficiency is a complex concept not limited to linguistic proficiency. Having a good command of grammar gives a person an edge to communicate better than others but it isn’t the sole factor to be successful in being clearly understood.

One has to be holistic in language learning – that is possessing linguistic, socio-linguistic/pragmatic, discourse, and strategic competence leading to communicative competence.

Reference:

http://elearning.la.psu.edu/aplng/802/lesson-3/5.2-four-areas-of-communicative-competence