This paper aims to highlight the importance of teaching sociolinguistic competence to ESL learners in Malaysian schools. Sociolinguistic competence is the knowledge of socio cultural rules of language and of discourse. This type of competence requires an understanding of the socio context in which language is used. It is proposed that carefully…

A study of how children acquire language suggests that schools and their structured classroom situations offer few opportunities for students to develop linguistic competence. Four approaches to increasing classroom communication are offered. (CB)