The descriptive scheme covers domains of language use, communicative language activities, strategies, and communicative language competences for analyzing what is involved in language use and language learning.
Bachman (1990) describes "communicative language ability" (p. 84) in terms of language competence, strategic competence and psychophysiological mechanisms.
In this model, strategic competence can be characterized as the mental repertoire for implementing the components of language competence in contextualized communicative language use.
The focal construct to be assessed in a paired task is interactional competence (Young 2000, 2008), which, according to the model of communicative language ability, is an integral part of strategic competence (Bachman 2007; Bachman and Palmer 1996; Chapelle 1998).
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) engages learners in authentic communication to develop their communicative competence.
The conceptual framework of our work underlines the importance of some language characteristics and communicative strategies used by adults when interacting with children in different contexts for the development of language competence.
When the construct of English language proficiency was conceived, the project team drew on the theory of communicative competence (Canale and Swain 1980; Hymes 1972) and Bachman and Palmer's model of communicative language ability (Bachman 1990; Bachman and Palmer 1996).
Models of communicative competence in a second language invoked in defining the construct of widely used tests of communicative language ability have drawn largely on the work of language specialists.
For many language educators and researchers, the evaluative aspect of language has been most popularly established in the theory of Communicative Competence (Savignon 1983, Canale and Swain 1980, Celce-Murcia, Dörnyei, and Thurrell 1995), the basis for the Communicative Language Teaching approach, which has been one of the most common approaches in many parts of the world.
