ABSTRACT
Virtually all foreign language teaching practices aspire for learners to foster communicative competence. What the speakers should have in order to communicate in a given language not only includes linguistic competence (knowledge on linguistic structure and vocabulary) but also sociolinguistic competence (knowledge on proper use of the language in various social settings and contexts, including who you speak to and about), discourse competence (knowledge on how to produce coherent and cohesive utterances and texts beyond the sentence level), and strategic competence (knowledge on how to monitor and modulate in collaboration and negotiation of conveyed meanings” to communicate successfully). The proficiency-oriented practices represented in the ACTFL proficiency guidelines has been criticized as overlooking interactional competence, there have been efforts to address how to develop and enhance learners’ strategic competence, which is an essential component of interaction in communication. Such an effort is noticeably scarce in current language pedagogy and language course curriculums in Korean language education. This chapter will illustrate how, compared to native speakers, learners of different proficiency levels manifest strategic components of interactional competence (e.g., listeners’ responses, repairs [self- or other-initiated], turn-taking, marking epistemic and affective stances, etc.) and will suggest possible ways of assessing interactional competence.
