Significance and development of students' communicative language ability in learning English for specific purposes

To communicate efficiently in a foreign language is the valid objective of the foreign language teaching and learning process. The concept of communicative language ability is in the focus of communication-oriented foreign language teaching and learning. Communicative language ability is the ability to apply the knowledge of a foreign language in communication; it also involves mental capacity of applying language knowledge in contextualized communicative language use and connecting language knowledge with present socio-cultural knowledge. The aim of the research is to determine the level and possible development of communicative language ability of students studying English language for specific purposes. The research variables include the following: communicative language ability, its psychological-pedagogical factors (self-evaluation of speaking skills in foreign language, use of speaking skill strategies in foreign language, students’ beliefs about foreign language learning, anxiety in foreign language learning) and educational-demographic variables (the teaching programmes, the sex, the length of the instruction in English for specific purposes, total duration of learning English language, students’ achievement manifested as the passed examination in the previous year of study). The research methods illustrate the measures of the experiment carried out with four experimental groups. The methods involve the application of the research instruments, students’ presentations decoding and statistical data processing. The research instruments are: Background questionnaire, Communicative language ability scale, Self-evaluation of foreign language speaking skills inventory, Speaking skills strategies inventory, Beliefs about language learning inventory and Foreign language classroom anxiety scale. The students’ presentations (180 of them, in three communication contexts) are transcribed orthographically. The data obtained by the application of the research instruments are processed statistically (descriptive statistics, analysis of variance, correlation analysis). The sample consists of 60 students studying English language in the field of biotechnology, particularly agronomy, food technology, and agroeconomy. The research was carried out at the Faculty of Agronomy in Čačak, University in Kragujevac, in the period 2007-2010 (the experiment was carried out in 2007/2008). The obtained results indicate that continual communication-oriented teaching programmes of