Becoming Bilingual: A View Towards Communicative Competence Lilla Musyahda E nglish D ep artment- F ac ulty of Letters Airlangga University Abstract: The phenomenon of foreign language mastery shall always be the main issue in the pedagogy since it has numerous advantages in human life, especially in terms of economic value. The definition of bilingualism is connected with the speaking of two languages or expression in trn'o languages and it can be used to describe societies or individuals (Lyon, 1995). The way that a bilingual adapts to a certain condition leads to a certain phenomenon, wfuch is quite interesting to arnl1ze. The texture of the bilingual's creativity is essentially the result of the process of translation and hanscreatiorL and insightful approaches to stylistics-its theory and methodology must be take into consideration. When people speak more than one languages, they may have different levels of proficiency in each of the languages, and use them for very different social purposes and in different situations. The languages that a bitingual speaks affect each other in various ways, so much that there is a regular study of what happens when one language comes into contact with another. In educational setting it is important to know how a bilingual's fust language may affect the function of other languages. The paper will discuss the phenomenon of bilingual and the implication towards communicative competence which would consists, minimally, of four areas of knowledge and skills; gammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence. Key words: bilingual, communicative competence I2 LillaMusyahda, Becaming Bilingual: A View Towards Cornmunicative 13 English as a foreign language has been used for various reasons in certain communities in this country. The phenomenon creates a certain condition, which leads to the fact that some people use it as the second language. For instance in the academic level, some of the scholars are quite familiar with English and use it as the minor means for communicating. Another fact shows that the people involveed in the main level of management also use code-mixing and code-switching in lndonesian and English as media to conduct their daily activities relates to their occupations. According to Weinreich (1963), the ideal bilingual switches from one language to the other according to appropriate changes in speech situation. On the individual level, usually, if adult speakers have to learn another language, they try to learn it in its entirety. Typically, this results in a foreign accent and errois in discourse, syntax, and vocabulary (Chaika, 1994\. Commonly a first language is used as filter to acquire a sec.ond ianguage. Therefore the accent of the target language is quite different in some respects. As Krashen stated: The amount of formal education the speaker has received does not seem to be a determining factor in whether or not an accent is retained, although the amount of formal instruction specifically in the new language may be, apparently because adults need somewhat simplified input to help them to acquire the second language (Krashen 1973, n Chaika, 1994). According to Brown (1980), the second language learners set a certain process in which compared to the first language learners: "Th€ learner was looked on not as a producer of malformed, imperfect language replete with mistakes, but as an intelligent and creative being proceeding tfuough logical, systematic stages of acquisition, creatively upon his linguistic environment as he encounters its f,orms and functions in meaningful contexts. By a gradual process of trial and error and hypothesis testing, the learner slowly and tediously succeeds in establishing closer ad closer approximations to the system used by native speakers ofthe language". 'Iaking into account this complexity, the effort involved, and great vaiety of circumstances in which learners find themselves, it is not surprising that many if not most leamers may not find that pushing on towards a pcrfect command of the language is simply too much. As the American