Mastering a language means to have
acquired a level of
Communicative Competence. A distinction has to be made between
that which a speaker of a language knows implicitly (competence),
and how he actually speaks the language (performance).
The term Communicative Competence was coined by Dell Hymes.
Hymes believed that competence alone was not enough to explain a
native speaker's knowledge, as a native can not only use
grammatically correct forms, but also knows when and where to
use them. Dr. Ian Miles.
