Multilingual glossary of key terms in language education

The capacity to call upon one’s personal resources, consisting of knowledge, attitudes and skills, to perform a task. In the use of languages, communicative competence draws on linguistic (lexicon and functioning of the language), sociolinguistic (social rules in use of the language) and pragmatic components to perform a communicative task. Communicative competence is therefore based on knowledge about the functioning and use of languages, skills in implementing that knowledge and the capacity to adopt a favourable attitude to communication (e.g. ability to listen, desire to exchange with others, etc.).

See competence

There are multiple areas of knowledge. i.e. declarative knowledge (savoir) is understood as knowledge resulting from experience (empirical knowledge) and from more formal learning (academic knowledge).

Sociocultural knowledge is knowledge of the society and culture of the community or communities in which a language is spoken.