The paper observes that grammatical competence has been interpreted as the ability to judge grammaticality ever since the employment of communicative competence as the core basis of curriculum design in the 6th national English curriculum of Korea. It contends that this interpretation is different from what has been widely accepted in the literature on grammatical competence, that is, the ability to understand and express propositional meaning of utterances. The study suggests that a new and fresh look at grammatical competence needs to be taken in developing and implementing the national English curriculum which is to provide English learners in Korea with more potential opportunities for success in acquiring communicative competence.