Summary of Article 1

Japan and Puerto Rico have something in common.  Both countries are trying to improve English language teaching in their education systems.  The main goal is to improve the communicative competence.  This article helped me to understand the meaning of some theoretical communicative concepts and their applications to language and methods of teaching language.
Hymes said there are two kinds of competence:  linguistic and communicative.  The linguistic competence deals with writing and understanding grammatically correct sentences.  The communicative competence is writing and understanding sentences that are appropriate for a particular situation.  Widdowson views the language as acquiring the ability to use language to communicate. 
Knowing a language is more than how to understand, speak, read, and write sentences, but how sentences are used to communicate.  The main purpose is be able to communicate.  The perfect example is here in Puerto Rico, 10 or 12 years of instruction in English does not guarantee normal language communication. 
Stern, (1981) said that language teaching should be through the study and practice of structural, functional, and sociocultural aspects.

 We need to create opportunities inside our classroom to live the language through direct contact with the target language community.