In the action-oriented approach advocated in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR, 2001) one of the key concept is the concept of "communicative language competence". Moreover, in Paradis (2004), whose theory serves as the main foundation of the neurolinguistic approach (NLA), the key concept is rather the concept of "verbal communicative competence". Conceptually, then, what is the difference between the linguistic communicative competence of the CEFR and the verbal communicative competence of Paradis? On analysis, it emerges that it is by resorting to one of the fundamental concepts of the ANL, the concept of "literacy", that one can then realize that it is truly on the pedagogical level that these two visions of communicative competence are different. One can therefore legitimately ask whether the action-oriented approach is a competence-based approach or a performance-based approach. These, then, are some of the questions that will be explored in this article.