In simple words, it is just like "Knowledge vs practice".

Dear Idrees Zebari,

I think the following website may povide answers to both your questions.

https://sites.educ.ualberta.ca/staff/olenka.bilash/Best%20of%20Bilash/competencyperformance.html

Is that of any help?

Best,

Isabel

Simply put, competence is knowing the rules of grammar of language; performance is applying/using them for everyday speech.

It is a reflection of Saussure langue and parole. Competence according the Chomsky means the knowledge in linguistics (including grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, etc) that we have in your mind where as performance stands for the application of that knowledge in real communication. However, these terms are developed by Hymes to become communicative competence.

you can check this https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338371866_Communicative_Competence_in_Teaching_English_at_Secondary_Schools_A_Critical_Investigation_in_Yaff'ae_District_of_Yemen

Competence is the knowledge one has of a language (in terms of phonology, syntax, morphology etc) whereas performance is the ability to use that knowledge.

Chomsky only used the term competence. Later, Hymes argued that Chomsky's idea of competence is incomplete and he added performance. He coined the term communicative competence to cover both.

Let me give you an example:

I am a lecturer. Many of my students are learning English as their second or third language. Sometimes I have the students who know all the grammatical rules; their vocabulary is also good, but the problem is they are unable to speak English. In other words, they have the competence but they lack the ability to use it (performance)

Performance is the realization/exteriorization of competence.

Linguistic competence is the grasp of grammatical rules, i. e. the speaker’s knowledge of the language, which enables them to recognize grammatical mistakes. Some refer to it as the “realm of perfection”, in opposition to linguistic performance, which is referred to as the “linguistic fall”. Linguistic performance refers to the actual, real use of language. During the linguistic performance, we sometimes use ungrammatical sentences, because our memory is limited, our attention fluctuates, we make changes to our intended sentences as we speak and, in bilingual situations, the linguistic systems of the two languages may interfere with each other.

Competence is simply the learning or acquisition of language abilities which can be measure in the four language skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. This can be measured orally or through writing.

Performance is the functionality aspect in language. How well can an individual use/apply the said skills. Can we one competently listen/understand, speak, read or write in a communicative way.

Thank you Wanjohi Githinji for your elaboration concerning the two terms.

Competence is the unconcious idealized knowledge that native speakers have of their language.

Performance is the actual use of that language by its native speakers.

Linguistic Competence By Noam Chomsky is somewhat similar to Saussure’s concept of language and parole. Competence, by Chomsky,refers to the native speaker’s knowledge of his language, the system of rules, his ability to produce and understand.. Performance on the other hans is the study of the system of rules; performance is the study of actual sentences themselves, of the actual use of the language in real-life situation. So the speaker’s knowledge of the structure of language is his linguistic competence and the way in which it is uses his linguistic performance. Refined as before, competence is an underlying mental system underlying actual behavior, linguistic institution ability to analyze language, ignoring mistakes, understanding new sentences, even producing new sentences. In short, competence is a set of principles which a speaker masters, performance is what a speaker does. As competence is a kind of code, performance is an act of encoding or decoding. Competence concerns the kind of structures the person has succeeded in mastering and internalizing, whether or not he utilizes them, in practice, without interference from the many of the factors that play a role in actual behavior. For anyone concerned with intellectual processes, or any question that goes beyond mere date arranging, it is the question of competence that is fundamental. Obviously one can find out about competence only by studying performance. In this ways the abstract, internal grammar which enables a speaker to utter and understand an infinite number of potential utterances is a speaker’s competence.

Dear Idrees, in addition to what had been said, the language performance of a speaker can be affected by different extralinguistic factors such as fatigue, etc which do not affect the competence of such speaker in any way. Of course, language impairments or disorders can affect both. While competence can be seen as the Internalized Language (I-language), performance is seen as the External Language (E-language). So basically, the output of one is the input of the other. I hope this helps!

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.   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.  

I suppose the comparison between competence and performance is effective initially because it allows those studying a language to differentiate between a speech error and not knowing something about the language. To clarify this comparison, it is helpful to think about a time when you've made some sort of error in your speech. For example, let's say you are a native speaker of English and utter the following:

They swimmed in the river yesterday.

Is this error due to competence or 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 systematically.

Competence by Chomsky refers to native speaker-hearer's knowledge of the language, while performance is the realization of such knowledge in actual use.

الكفاية هي استعداد فطري لتكوين الكلمات وتوليدها بينما الأداء مدى قدرة الطفل أو المتكلم بعامة على صنع الكلام وفق قواعده السليمة فهما مصطلحان مرتبطان بإنتاج اللغة وصناعتتها فالمصطلحان متعلقان بالفطرة والاكتساب ا.

@ د. سالمة صالح العمامي

د. سالمة صالح العمامي added an answer to this discussion thread on October 6, 2020, as follows:

الكفاية هي استعداد فطري لتكوين الكلمات وتوليدها بينما الأداء مدى قدرة الطفل أو المتكلم بعامة على صنع الكلام وفق قواعده السليمة فهما مصطلحان مرتبطان بإنتاج اللغة وصناعتتها فالمصطلحان متعلقان بالفطرة والاكتساب ا

Translation in English, as follows: "What 'performance' means is the ability of a child or speaker in general to make speech according to his or her rules. On a higher, more formal level, , 'competence' specifically refers to the ability of a child or speaker in general to make speech according to its proper rules. 'Performance' and 'competence' are two terms related to the production and manufacture of the language, and both of these two terms are related to the nature and acquisition of language."

I edited, by adding words and phrases, to the English translations I obtained when I consulted the Artificially Intelligent Translator on the Internet.

rules represent competence but when you write a literary extract or a poem you will definitely violate those rules and that is performance.

we can also say usage is the rules or competence while use is the practice or performance.

This is the same as De Saussure's contrast between "langue" and "parole." Competence is theoretical. Performance is practical. Chomsky only studies competence, because he thought that performance was too complicated--too many variables. It's the formal linguists who study competence, and the sociolinguists who study performance. Here is a PowerPoint about competence (syntax), and one about performance performance, (linguistic humor and language play). Enjoy:

Noam Chmosky, while dealing with the Generative Grammar Theory, defines competence as the innate underlying knowledge, capacity or capability of the native speakers about their own language for example, linguistic, socio-linguistic, discursive and strategic. On the other hand, he defines performance as the ability to produce actual utterances. These two concepts can also be understood in terms of langue and parole as discussed in structuralism by Ferdinand de Saussure.

Also check Saussure's parole and langue

Weihua Shi: Thanks for your suggestion. You're right; Saussure's "parole" and "langue" were much earlier than Chomsky's "surface structure" and "deep structure" or Fillmore's "deep cases." Thanks again.

Pitambar Behara: You're right. Chomsky gave us "Competence" vs. "Performance." "Competence" was considered by Chomsky, and other M.I.T. professors to be much more significant than was "Performance," because "Competence" was rigorous, and was more useful in the development of the field of Artificial Intelligence. Therefore Socio-Linguists came up with the term "Communicative Competence." Communicative Competence was studied by H. P,. Grice (Conversational Implicatures), and by Austin and Searle (Speech Acts), and was also useful in such playful (non-rigorous) fields as Satire, Parody, Paradox, Irony, Linguistic Humor, and Language Play.