COMPETENCE AND PERFORMANCE

 Competence and performance are two words commonly used in many fields such as
human resources, education, skills development, training etc. However, due to the
proximity of the two words and the similarity of contexts in which they are utilized,
competency and performance are often used interchangeably despite their many
differences.
 The concept of competence versus performance is fundamental to the study of
language. This distinction recognizes that the “mistakes” people make when speaking
(performance) may not accurately reflect what they actually know (competence). We
all have made “slips of the tongue,” where we substitute a word or sound for another
or use a different grammatical form than intended, with sometimes humorous results.
For example, you might say you need to go “shake a tower” instead of “take a
shower,” ask someone to be “pacific” rather than be “specific,” or accuse someone of
telling a “lack of pies” rather than “pack of lies.” Performance errors can also be
found in comprehension, such as mishearing “just a position” for “juxtaposition.”
 These kinds of mistakes do not mean that we have an inaccurate knowledge of
language. Rather, a variety of conditions, both internal to the individual (i.e., memory
limitations or fatigue) and external (i.e., distractions or interruptions) can cause a
difference between what people know about their language and how they apply that
knowledge in real situations.
 Noam Chomsky defined competence as the underlying knowledge each speaker-
hearer has about the language of his or her community. As such, competence is an
ideal, which presupposes a “completely homogeneous speech-community.” It is
hypothesized as a psychological or mental property or function and therefore cannot
be directly observed. In contrast, performance refers to an actual communicative act
of speaking or hearing. In this distinction, performance is  an  incomplete  and 
inaccurate  demonstration  of what an individual knows about his or her language.
 The competence-performance distinction is an important one in linguistics. One of the
major goals of linguistic research is to discover how children develop language.
Another is to understand how language functions within the human brain. One
difficulty in conducting these types of language research is that actual speech contains
errors. In 1965, Noam Chomsky argued that the focus of linguistic theory must be on
the underlying language system (competence), not the act of speaking (performance).
While performance errors may illuminate how language is perceived and organized in
the brain, the goal of a theory of language is not a description of what people  actually
say. Rather, it is to describe the cognitive mechanism by which humans can produce
an infinite number of sentences, many of which they have never heard, from a finite
number of words and grammatical structures. Therefore, it is crucial to differentiate
between competence and performance.
 Chomsky’s distinction between competence and performance has undergone some
criticism, such as for the emphasis on grammar in his definition of competence.
Subsequently, Dell Hymes and others have introduced the concept of “communicative
competence,” which refers to an individual’s knowledge of how to use language
appropriately in different social and communicative contexts. The focus on language
use has emerged in recent years in a variety of areas, including language socialization
research. This type of study examines how children from different backgrounds are
 socialized to use language in culturally appropriate ways and how they develop
understanding of the social organization and  worldview  of  their  cultural  group
through  the development of their community’s language.
 The distinction between competence and performance remains important to many
areas of study (i.e., artificial intelligence and second language acquisition) and is
widely applied. Nonetheless, as with the theory of language for which this distinction
was originally proposed, many questions and controversies remain. Yet, for many,
this is a useful heuristic device that allows us to consider and explain how in terms of
our language abilities, as in many other areas of human cognition, we may know more
than we can demonstrate through our actions in daily life.
What is the difference between Performance and Competence?

As the two terms are often used in the study and application of human resources, performance
and competence help evaluate individuals and their true capabilities. However, several
differences between them set them apart.

• Competence is the ability of an individual to perform one’s duties or being adequately

qualified in order to do so. Performance is an activity or the accomplishment of a given task.

• Competence involves “knowing”. Performance involves “doing”.

• It is difficult to assess competence without evaluating the performance.