Developing communicative competence in university language programmes

This article deals with university language teaching in the perspective of its shift from linguistic competence towards communicative competence, and presents some aspects of the underlying process. It analyses the findings from a survey conducted within the Leonardo project "Transparency in the Acquired Language Competences" (TALC; SK/05/B/F/LA-177427). This survey was organised using a genre-based approach to identify language needs in real professional contexts. Its results point to the need to focus on integrated skills in course design. Ideally, learning should model the processes linked to the genres typically used by in-group members of an academic/professional field, which generally involve coordinated use of two or more skills. This integrated skills model of professional language use provides a sound basis for language programme design. The article presents examples of language programmes of various different lengths.