| (a) Grammatical competence | (i) refers to interpretation of individual message elements in terms of their interconnectedness and how meaning is represented in relation to the entire text |
| (b) Socio-linguistic competence | (ii) refers to coping strategies that communicators employ to initiate, terminate, maintain, repair, and redirect communication |
| (c) Discourse competence | (iii) refers to an understanding of social context in which communication takes place, including role relationships, the shared information of the participants, and the common purpose of their interaction |
| (d) Strategic competence | (iv) refers to Chomskyan linguistic competence and is the domain of grammatical and lexical capacity |