This collective work addresses the notion of "competence" by highlighting its appearance in the field of linguistics and its development in the field of language teaching, particularly with the emergence of the competence approach, which places the learner at the center of learning, and the actional perspective in language teaching. The authors, each according to his field of research, deal with the notion of competence in writing and speaking as well as the evaluation of skills in the Algerian context, from primary to higher education.