Abstract

This article is an attempt to formulate and design a comprehensive rationale in formulating standard of communicative competence of English for Indonesian learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL). The study focuses on the perceptions of teachers and students on what communicative competence means, and how they perceive each component of the communicative competence of English. This research is a quantitative research concentrating on finding out the perceptions of English teachers and students on communicative competence in Indonesia. The participants consist of 31 English teachers of junior and high schools in Bandar Lampung, 37 non-English Language Teaching (non-ELT) students, and 56 English Language Teaching (ELT) Students. Fifty questions are designed to find out the teachers’ and students’ perception of communicative competence and its components. The questions were grouped into five categories: definition of communicative competence, linguistic competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence, and strategic competence. Through ANOVA statistical analysis, it was found that English teachers’ perceptions on definition of communicative competence and strategic competence were not significantly different from non-English Language Teaching (non-ELT) students and ELT students. Teachers differed significantly in perceiving the linguistic, sociolinguistic, and discourse competence from that of non ELT and ELT students

Key words: Communicative competence, English teachers, English Language Teaching (ELT) and non ELT students.