Question:

Submitted by Deborah, Israel

Dear Professor Richards,
I am reading some of your excellent articles on grammar and have a question about terminology.
Grammatical knowledge, grammatical ability, grammatical competence and communicative competence.
You have explained the first two terms very clearly in Richards and Reppen 2014. Is grammatical knowledge synonymous with grammatical competence? Is grammatical ability synonymous with communicative competence (Richards, 2006 on CLT)?

Dr. Richards responds:

Yes, I think it is fair to say that grammatical knowledge and grammatical competence refer to the same thing.  Grammatical ability refers to knowing how grammar is used in communication. Communicative competence in the Canale and Swain model includes three dimensions:

• Grammatical competence: the knowledge of grammar, lexis, morphology, syntax, semantics and morphology
• Sociolinguistic competence: the knowledge of the sociocultural rules of language and rules of discourse
• Strategic competence: the knowledge of how to overcome problems when faced with difficulties in communication.