Linguistic Competence vs. Performance

Competence refers to a speaker’s internalized, subconscious knowledge of their language’s rules—grammar, syntax, phonology, etc. It’s what allows someone to understand and produce language correctly, even if they don’t always do so in practice

Performance, on the other hand, is the actual use of language in real situations. It can be affected by factors like memory limitations, distractions, or stress, which means someone might make mistakes even if they “know” the rules

Think of competence as knowing how to play the piano perfectly in theory, and performance as how well you actually play during a concert