ABSTRACT

The objectives of this research are to identify the contribution of sociolinguistic competence in communicative language teaching.

This research belongs to qualitative research with the type of library research. The researcher collected the theories of sociolinguistic competence and communicative language teaching from several books, journals, articles and web sites. The theories were then critically analyzed by explaining them on the second and third chapter. As the conclusion, the researcher made synthesis from those theories and answered the research problem.

In education system has gone several changes to adapt the world changes. In language teaching, older method such grammar translation and audiolingual are considered incompatible with the communication needs. Moreover, the system emphasises the importance of character building based learning. Thus, communicative language teaching is become significant approach since the educators value students fluency over accuracy.The result of the research shows the role of sociolinguistic competence within the communicative language teaching can already be seen from the nature of communication. As what experts explained, sociolinguistic competence is the key role in multicultural communication. In other words, to succeed in foreign language communication, the participants should be equipped with sociolinguistic ability.

The conclusion of the research is that sociolinguistic competence has significant roles in communicative language teaching, that is providing the understanding about the importance of understanding the surroundings and the social context in communication. This ability later is used by the teachers to identify the students’ environment and cultural background to provide appropriate teaching and learning models to enhance the communicative language teaching.

Keywords:Sociolinguistic competence, communicative language teaching, library research