Grammatical competence is the ability to understand and produce well-formed phrases and sentences. It involves understanding the internal organization of words including roots, affixes, and word classes as well as the categories, elements, structures, and processes for building phrases and sentences according to grammatical rules.

2.  Grammatical competence is the ability to
understand and express meaning by
producing and recognising well-formed
phrases and sentences.

3. Elements Processes
classes
morphs (descriptive)
morphemes- nominalisation
*open
roots and Structures affixation
word
affixes Categories suppletion
classes
words number compoun gradation
case, d and transposition
*closed
gender complex transformation
word
classes words

4. Shows only
Maintains limited control of Uses some
consistent a few simple simple
grammatical grammatical structures
control of structures correctly
complex
language
Uses
*high degree reasonably
of grammatical accurately a
accuracy repertoire of
frequently used
*Good ‘routines’
grammatical Shows a relatively
control high degree of
grammatical
control

6. Deals with the internal organisation of words
Words may be classified into
classed as
*roots, or simple complex
compound
stems; words words
* affixes words
(prefixes, containing
*root only *root
suffixes, infixes) more than
• Six *affixes,
one root,
• tree, *unbrokenly
for example
*break *sixes
evening
dress

7. irregular zero
• vowel consonant forms forms
alteration modification bring/bro suppletion sheep/sh
sing/sang lend/lent ught, go/went eep,
catch cut/cut

8.  categories,
 elements
 classes  The ability to organise
sentences to convey
 structures
meaning is a central aspect
 processes and of communicative
relations involved, competence.
often presented in the
form of a set of rules