It is probably unnecessary to point out that when we are teaching a public sex movies language we are trying to develop in the learner not just grammatical competence in the Mariah Milano sense, but communicative competence. We are teaching him not only what we call ‘the formation rules’ of the language, but in addition what Hymes has called ‘the speaking rules’. The learner must, it is true, develop the ability to produce and understand grammatical utterances, he must be able to distinguish grammatical from ungrammatical sequences, but he must also know when to select a particular grammatical sequence, the one which is appropriate to the context, both linguistic and situational. His utterance must be situation-related.
Or to put it in another public sex movies way, he must not only learn to talk grammatically in the target language, he must also talk coherently and to the point. Much of the ‘teaching of grammar’, particularly the drills and practice routines indulged in in modern teaching methods aim at developing simple grammatical competence and no more. The complaint, already referred to, which teachers often make, that their pupils perform well in practice in latina class but can’t use the language to any purpose outside can be explained by reference to the distinction between ‘grammatical’ and ‘communicative’ competence.
