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The concept of communicative competence is one of the most influential theoretical developments in language education as it helped redefine the objectives of L2 instruction and the target language proficiency. While acknowledging these contributions, this paper asks if the conceptual formulation of communicative competence has other relevancies for our understanding of the realities of language use in L2 instructional settings. Classroom interaction itself is an occasion of language use that relies on the competence of the parties to the interaction; the competence that is already in the room is then a constitutive feature of the work-practices of teaching and learning. Informed by Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, this paper proposes that communicative competence may be as much the condition of L2 instruction, one that makes L2 instruction possible in the first place, as its target outcome. Brief analyses of transcripts from ESL classrooms are offered to demonstrate how the communicative competence found in L2 classrooms is a contingent resource for language teaching and learning.
