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practical aspects. And through communicative activities, this approach can effectively assist in enhancing students' communicative competence. 3.1 Communicative Competence The notions of competence and performance was first proposed by Chomsky in the nineteen sixties. For Cho}sky, competence refers to a speaker's intuitive knowledge of the rules of his native language, and performance refers to_what is actually produced by applying these rules. "For Chomsky, then, competence in grammatical knowledge is a deep-seated mental state below the level of language. It is not an ability to do anything. It is not even the ability to compose or comprehend sentences" (Widdowson, 1989: 128). Linguistics such as .Hymes and Gumperz think that Chomsky's ideal speaker-listener in a completely homogenous speech community takes no account whatever of any social- cultural features, of the fact that we talk to different people in different situations about different things. Hymes views this as sterile. He argues that language does not occur in isolation, it occurs in a social context and reflects social rather than linguistic purposes. A child acquires knowledge of sentences not only as grammatical, but also as appropriate to the context in which they are made. "He knows when and when not to speak, what to talk about with whom, when, where and in what manner"似ymes, 1972: 277). He has communicative competence as well as linguistic competence. Hymes believes a linguistic theory should provide a more constitutive role for sociocultural factors, and take language users and language use into consideration. Therefore, "for Chomsky, competence is 16 Teaching Strategies of Oral Class Interaction knowledge. For Hymes, competence is knowledge and ability" (Widdowson, 1989: 132). Hymes "views competence as the overall underlying knowledge and ability for language use which the speaker-listener possesses" (Brumfit words, communicative competence contains "ru.}es and Johnson, 1979: 13). In Hymes 刀五刀几 O0 of use without which the rules grammar would be useless" (1979: 45). ,Co>r.}ared with Choms材's conception competence, Hymes' concept of communicative };ompetence goes further, since it covers aspects of language other than the narrowly gram}.hatical. It accounts for the fact knowing how to use“language involves more than knowing how tc compose correct sentences. Considering what competence is from Hyme f view, Brumfit and Johnson find "it is similar to c which underlie communicave systems other than language" (1979: 14). When linguistic theory is to be integrated wig红theory of communication and culture, four items are listed by Hymes toward communicive competence.{ r) whether (arid to what degree) something is fonnaLy possible. ii) whether (and to what degree) something is:feasible in virtue of the means of implementation available. iii) whether (and to what degree) something is appropriate (adequate, happy, successful) in relation to a context in which it is used and evaluated. iv) whether (and to what degree) something is in fact done, actually performed, and what its doing entails. 似ymes, 1972: 281) The first item is similar to Chomsky's notion of grammatical knowledge. It is concerned with whether a language permits a structure as grammatical or rejects it as ungrammatical. The second item talks about feasibility. Some sentenc