The updated Common European Framework of Reference for Modern Languages (2020) and related Initiatives

Course content

All across Europe, people communicate in many languages, English plays a special role because it is so widespread. They communicate about feelings, day to day tasks, ideas, projects, pass on knowledge, take part in intercultural communication. The Common European Framework of Reference for Modern Languages is an abstract correlate of that communication. The authors intend to describe communication levels and patterns for all those languages in a general way that can be used all across educational institutions and the workplace. It has a huge impact on the classification (grading) of competences. Almost 20 years after the first publication in 2001, a massive update was published, based on the experiences of educational institutions, test makers, users, teachers, didactic experts, linguists. We will look at the new version. We will also look at other language-related initiatives of the Council of Europe and initiatives of the European Commission, e.g. entwining, the database about European education systems, exchange programmes. And we will discuss some critical evaluations of the concepts of competence, when applied to the learning of languages.