COMPETENCE AND PERFORMANCE
Teaching English as a Foreign Language I
HISTORY
Noam Chomsky: An
American linguist, first introduced the concept of “performance” and
“competence” as part of the foundations for his Generative
grammar.
DEFINITIONS
Person’s knowledge of his language.
• The system rules which a language user has mastered so that it would be possible for that user to produce
and understand an infinite number of sentences and recognise grammatical mistakes and ambiguities
COMPETENCE
PERFORMANCE
A term used in the linguistic theory of
transformational generative grammar,
refer to language is seen as a set of specific utterances produced by native
speaker.
COMPETENCE VS.
PERFORMANCE
How do we know that students have learned a language?
We can assess students using formative and summative assessments but
How do we know that students will actually be able to use their language in real-life, authentic situations?
In short,
How do we know that our students are competent in the target language?
One way to judge this competency is through students’ performance. However,
How do we know that this
performance is an accurate measure of what students actually know?
Q ue st io ns
What is the difference between competence and performance?
Chomsky separates competence and
performance; he describes 'competence' as an idealized capacity that is located as a
psychological or mental property or function and ‘performance’ as the production of
actual utterances.
What is the difference between competence and performance?
In short, competence involves “knowing”
the language and performance involves
“doing” something with the language. The difficulty with this construct is that it is very difficult to assess competence without
assessing performance.
Why is it important to make a distinction between competence and performance?
Noting the distinction between competence and performance is useful primarily because it
allows those studying a language to differentiate between a
speech error and not knowing something about the language.
To understand this distinction, it is helpful to think about a time when you've made some sort of error in your speech.
Why is it important to make a distinction between competence and performance?
For example, let's say you are a native
speaker of English and utter the following:
We swimmed in the ocean this weekend.
Is this error due to competence or
performance?
Why is it important to make a distinction between competence and performance?
It is most likely that as a native speaker you are aware how to conjugate irregular verbs in the past but your performance has let you down this time.
Linguists use the distinction between competence and performance to illustrate the intuitive
difference between accidentally saying swimmed and the fact that a child or non-proficient
speaker of English may
not know that the past tense of swim is swam and say
swimmed consistently.
How do competence and performance apply to the language classroom?
As we have learned, competence and performance involve
“knowing” and “doing”. In the recent past, many language
instruction programs have focused more on the “knowing”
(competence) part of learning a language where in words and
sentences are presented and practiced in a way to best help learners internalize the forms.
How do competence and performance apply to the language classroom?
The assumption here is that once the learners have
‘learned’ the information they will be able to use it through reading, writing, listening and speaking. The disadvantage of this approach is that the
learners are unable to use the language in a natural way.
How do competence and performance apply to the language classroom?
Having been trained to learn the language through
“knowing”, learners have
difficulty reversing this training and actually “doing” something with the language. In brief, it is difficult to assess whether the learners’ insufficient
proficiency is due to limitations of competency or a lack of
performance.
How do competence and performance apply to the language classroom?
In order to focus learners more on the “doing” part of learning, which allows a more accurate measure of learners’ language proficiency, a more
communicative approach to teaching can be used. This
type of approach concentrates on getting learners to do things with the language.
Implications of competence and performance in EFL teaching
Some teachers might understand, for instance, the nature of some mistakes in terms of interference from the L1.
Others might interpret mistakes as the lack of cultural and social knowledge of the target language. In any case, the important point is that teachers might be able to
understand better the nature of the learning process and apply certain orientations towards the syllabus design and classroom activities (Bell, 1981). Besides, a language
teacher who understands and distinguishes competence from performance necessarily has a different vision of the students difficulties when learning the L2 and, as so,
conceives the learners roles differently, e.g. not as a
passive learner, but as an active member of the teaching- learning process (Nunan, 1991; Nunan, 1999).
Some practical considerations to be observed in an EFL teaching setting
1) Contextualized activities: one of the problems that may be faced by students is that out-of-context activities might frustrate the development of linguistic and communicative L2 competences. It is, therefore, of paramount importance to promote authentic activities that
encourage students to see language as it actually works.
Some practical considerations to be observed in an EFL teaching setting
2) Interactive
activities: interaction is considered to be a key factor in the L2
classroom. Interaction of the sort student-teacher-student is of
paramount importance to the
development of the linguistic and communicative competences of students. However, such
interactivity must be
contextualized in actual language use situations so that students understand the real purposes of language.
Some practical considerations to be observed in an EFL teaching setting
3) Professor’s Feedback: it is relevant to
consider the effects of teachers’ feedback in the development of the linguistic and
communicative competences in the L2 classroom setting. However, a question arises in terms of the effectiveness of
correcting mistakes explicitly. In this sense, it is better that teachers explore the learning strategies of each student and try to
determine what they need. In any case, it is important to foster activities that involve students in cognitive processes that allow them to solve linguistic problems related to competence. At the end, they might not need explicit grammar instruction to learn the L2.
Some practical considerations to be observed in an EFL teaching setting
4) Contextual factors: it is important to account for contextual factors that are present in the teaching and
learning process, i.e. the
environment, the L1 linguistic
competence, the authenticity of the activities, the linguistic distance
between the L1 and the L2, among others.
Some practical considerations to be observed in an EFL teaching setting
However this list is in no way (and it does not attempt to be) the solution for helping students in developing
such competences. However, the most important issue here is to consider the importance of terms such
as competence and performance in real-life learning-teaching
environments and the L2 pedagogical implications they acquaint for.
REFERENCES
file:///C:/Users/K/Downloads/competencevsperformanceelt-1307140 02938-phpapp01.pdf
https://sites.educ.ualberta.ca/staff/olenka.bilash/Best%20of%20Bil ash/competencyperformance.html
https://www.monografias.com/trabajos39/competence-and- perfomance/competence-and-perfomance2.shtml
