3.3 How can teachers find out what competences students have? Competence and performance

Competences refer to abilities and potentials “inside” us. They are therefore invisible. Then how can teachers find out what competences their students have?

Here is an example. Noam Chomsky, a linguist, described the language competence of a native speaker. Native speakers permanently create and understand sentences that they have never spoken or heard before. We cannot see the language competence, but we perceive the native speaker’s performance, and we must assume that the competence to communicate fluently must be there.

There is no competence without any visible performance, but also no kind of action without competences. Teachers assess their students’ competence development by judging their performance – what they are capable of doing. Task-based learning enables students to train their competences, and teachers to assess their students’ learning achievements and identify their learning needs. This applies not only to EDC/HRE, but to teaching and learning in general.