Linguistic Competence in English Conversation

The command of English means that the speaker has mastered the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing_ The basis of the four skills is linguistic competence which is acquired before puberty by native speakers of English. English has been taught since American missionaries came to Korea in 1883. Modern method cal1ed the Audio Lingual Approach, however, was introduced after Fulbright and East-West scholarships were available in the 1960 s. The method attracted many teachers and scholars as well as students. But people found that learning English was not that simple. Language mastery is accomplished by internalizing deep structure on the basis of linguistic competence while the Audio-Lingual method concerns with surface structure, emphasizing rote practice, habitualization, etc. The process of rote practice and habitualization abolishes creative aspect of language use in the learners mind. An example of developing deep structure is shown here. The concept of meaning is important even at the beginning stage of learning a language. The more perfect meaning would be in a sentence which should be understood as a whole. The words in the sentence can be internalized with meaning and usage