We have adopted the term ‘communicative competence’ to refer to the relationship and interaction between grammatical competence, or knowledge of language rules, and sociolinguistic competence, or knowledge of the rules of language use. Communicative competence is to be distinguished from communicative performance, which is the realization of these competencies and their interaction in the actual realization of utterances.
We think it is important to maintain these basic definitions for second language teaching and testing purposes. For example, if a communicative approach to language teaching is adopted, then principles of syllabus design must integrate aspects of both grammatical competence and socio-linguistic competence. Furthermore, teaching methodology and assessment instruments must be designed so as to address not only communicative competence but also communicative performance, i.e. the actual demonstration of this knowledge in a real second language situation and for an authentic communication purpose.
(CANALE, M. Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics, 1/1, 1980.)
“Methodology”, “approach” and “syllabus” are terms frequently found in discussions about language teaching and learning, and yet very easily misunderstood. In the fragment from the second paragraph “principles of syllabus design must integrate aspects of both grammatical competence and socio-linguistic competence”, the term “syllabus” means the
