Carl James’s scientific contributions

... They came up with "a broader notion of competence and that is communicative competence which includes not only grammatical competence (or implicit and explicit knowledge of the rules of grammar) but also contextual or sociolinguistic competence (knowledge of the rules of language use)" (Canale & Swain 1980, p. 1). The communicative competence leads to the integration of both grammatical competence and sociolinguistic competence in syllabus designing, teaching methodology and assessment (the actual demonstration of knowledge in real life situations and for authentic communication purposes (Allen, 1978;Candlin, 1978;Munby, 1978;Stern, 1978;Morrow, 1977;Wilkins, 1976). Savignon (1983) proposed an 'inverted pyramid' classroom model to represent communicative competence that consists of grammatical competence, discourse competence, socio-cultural competence, and strategic competence. ...

Reference:

Creating a Communicative Language Teaching Environment for Improving Students’ Communicative Competence at EFL/EAP University Level