注意到能力和表现之间的区别是有用的，主要是因为它允许那些学习语言的人区分演讲错误和不知道理解这种区别，思考你在演讲中犯了某种错误的时候是有帮助的。例如，假设你的母语是英语，并说以下话：这个周末我们在海里游泳。语言学家用能力和表现之间的区别来说明偶然说游泳和说英语的孩子可能不知道游泳的过去时是游泳和游泳之间的直觉区别。Noting the distinction between competence and performance is useful primarily because it allows those studying a language to differentiate between a speech error and not knowing to understand this distinction, it is helpful to think about a time when you’ve made some sort of error in your speech. For example, let\u0027s say you are a native speaker of English and utter the following: We swimmed in the ocean this weekend. Linguists use the distinction between competence and performance to illustrate the intuitive difference between accidentally saying swimmed and the fact that a child or non-proficient speaker of English may not know that the past tense of swim is swam and say swimmed consistently.