Prior to the terms phonological competence and discourse competence are introduced, the term communicative competence was proposed by the sociallinguist Dell Hymes in 1974 as an alternative to Chomsky's linguistic competence. The term communicative competence is widely used to describe the ability to apply grammatical, discourse and cultural knowledge to communicate effectively in particular contexts for particular purposes. Since then, the terms are further elaborated with other jargons; such as phonological competence and discourse competence (Richards, Platt and Weber 1985, Cited in Nunan 1999:226).
The terms, phonological and discourse competences reveal the details of individual pronunciation work, that works with the segmental and suprasegmental aspects of the oral skills. Both terms deal directly with the ways how sounds are produced to decode meaning. The skills of pronunciation look into the features; such as segmental phonology (individual sounds) and suprasegmental phonology (stress, rhythm and intonation).
Pennington (1990:549) proposed that “the acquisition of phonological competence and discourse competence goes hand-in-hand”. Leather (1990, cited in Pennington, 1994:100) comments that without the opportunity for testing a developing prototype in perception and/or production, the learner might cease at early stage to exploit potential for progressively modifying or fine-tuning model of the acquired language. In other words, it is necessary for trainers to provide learners with the learning platform and tools to experiment both the phonological and discourse skills and knowledge in acquiring the English language.
To be able to speak and listen in a second language, it is clear that language learners need something other than a general phonemic correctness which is essential elements of communication. Learners need to further enhance the ability to comprehend and produce good pronunciation using appropriate stress, intonation, rhythm, and pacing, and to use gestures and body language appropriately; in other words, to have both linguistic and sociolinguistic competence (Celce-Murcia, Brinton, & Goodwin, 1996; Florez, 1999) while producing speech sounds.
To Hong Kong students, the communicative competence is the aspect that school training focuses on. The effective use on English functions is what the English curriculum puts emphasis on. The related language functions or uses stress their training on ways to communicate with friends, to make calls, to get information, to attend interviews, to talk to others, etc. It is still not common for school English teachers to work, so to enhance students' phonological competence and discourse competence. These deal with the sound and pronunciation patterns of the target language, i.e. the "standard" English, or even the pronunciation patterns of a unique English spoken by a unique group of speakers, such as Hong Kong ESL learners.
