Canale and Swain’s 1980 model distinguishes grammatical, sociolinguistic, and strategic competence for language teaching and assessment. Canale’s later elaboration separates discourse competence, forming a related four-component account that must remain distinct from both the original model and Hymes’s four judgments about communicative use.
- FamilyModel
- Category of its source unitConcepts & Constructs
- DomainConversation & Relationships
What these mean
Editorial orientation · Family
Model
In this series, Model names the editorial family primarily used to understand and explain communication: theories, frameworks, effects, traditions, principles and other conceptual resources. It is an umbrella for a route into the field, not a claim that every included object is a predictive model.
Editorial orientation · Category
Concepts & Constructs
Delimits an entity, property, relation or condition relevant to understanding communication. Its principal contribution is to clarify what something means, which features constitute it, and how to recognize or distinguish it.