Grammatical Competence

Grammatical competence is knowledge of the formal properties of a language: its phonological, morphological, syntactic, and lexical systems. In Canale and Swain's (1980) model of communicative competence, it is the foundational component, necessary for communication but not sufficient on its own.

Scope

Grammatical competence encompasses:

Domain	What it covers
Phonology	Sound system: phonemes, stress, intonation
Morphology	Word formation: inflection, derivation
Syntax	Sentence structure: word order, clause combination
Lexicon	Vocabulary: word meaning, collocations
Orthography	Writing system: spelling, punctuation

A grammatically competent speaker can produce and recognise well-formed sentences. They can distinguish grammatical from ungrammatical strings and understand the literal meaning of utterances.

Position in Communicative Competence Models

Canale and Swain (1980) and Canale (1983) placed grammatical competence alongside three other components:

1. Grammatical competence: accuracy and form
2. Sociolinguistic competence: appropriateness to context
3. Discourse competence: coherence and cohesion beyond the sentence (added by Canale 1983)
4. Strategic competence: compensation for breakdowns

Bachman (1990) later reorganised this as "organisational competence" (grammatical + textual), distinguishing it from "pragmatic competence" (illocutionary + sociolinguistic). The core idea persists across models: formal linguistic knowledge is one component of a larger communicative system.

Grammatical Competence vs Grammatical Knowledge

Canale and Swain drew a distinction between competence (underlying knowledge) and performance (actual use). A learner may possess grammatical competence, knowing that English requires subject-verb agreement, yet produce errors in real-time speech due to processing limitations, Working Memory constraints, or attentional demands.

Teaching Implications

• Grammatical competence remains a legitimate teaching goal, but it should not be the only one. The communicative revolution's central insight was that grammatical accuracy without discourse, pragmatic, and strategic competence produces speakers who can construct correct sentences but cannot communicate effectively
• Approaches like Focus on Form integrate attention to grammatical competence within meaning-focused instruction, rather than treating it as a prerequisite
• Assessment of grammatical competence should be balanced against assessment of other competencies; over-reliance on discrete-point grammar tests misrepresents the construct of communicative ability

References

• Canale, M., & Swain, M. (1980). Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics, 1(1), 1–47.
• Canale, M. (1983). From communicative competence to communicative language pedagogy. In J. C. Richards & R. W. Schmidt (Eds.), Language and Communication (pp. 2–27). Longman.
• Bachman, L. F. (1990). Fundamental Considerations in Language Testing. Oxford University Press.