The paper discusses and analyses the language competence construction for foreign language learners, which consists of four levels of linguistic knowledge, of language skills, of communicative competence, and of all-around development. The development of language competence can be implemented from the perspective of syllabus design. Grammatical syllabus, skill-based syllabus, topic-based syllabus, situational syllabus, functional-notional syllabus, and task-based syllabus are investigated to work as options available for the teacher.