The Common European Framework of Reference

The Globalisation of Language Education Policy

Michael Byram, Lynne Parmenter

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781847697295
• eBook ISBN: 9781847697325
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages was published a decade ago and has been influential ever since, not only in its European 'home' but throughout the world. This book traces the processes of the influence by inviting authors from universities and ministries in 11 countries to describe and explain what happened in their case. There are everyday factors of curriculum development – which sometimes include coincidence and happenstance – and there are also traditions of resistance or acceptance of external influences in policy-making. Such factors have always existed in bilateral borrowing from one country to another but the CEFR is a supra-national document accessible through globalised communication. The book is thus not only focused on matters of language education but is also a Comparative Education case-study of policy borrowing under new conditions.

Part 1

THE CEFR IN EUROPE

France

The authors:

Francis Goullier has been a General Inspector of National Education since 1997 and in this capacity he is associated with changes in language education policy in France. In particular, he was appointed specialist adviser for modern languages to the minister of education from 2000 to 2002.

As an expert with the Language Policy Division, he has been involved in various Council of Europe projects and was chair and then vice-chair of the European Committee for the validation of the European Language Portfolio.

Véronique Castellotti is a Professor in Language Sciences and Language Education at the University François Rabelais in Tours (France), where she has been teaching since 1998, first in the department of French as a foreign language, then in the department of Sociolinguistics and Language Education.

She chairs the Master’s programme ‘Languages, Education, Francophonies’ and the Tours Research Team DYNADIV (Dynamics and challenges of diversity: languages, cultures, formation). Her research interests focus on the study of migrations, international mobility, multilingualism and multi-culturalism in various situations of contact, language learning and teacher training, from the points of view of sociolinguistics, language education and epistemology.

2 Policy Perspectives from France

Francis Goullier

In France, the CEFR has become the reference document for the teaching of foreign languages as a consequence of a governmental decree of August 2005. This decree officially adopts the CEFR for three purposes: first for defining the level of competence it is expected pupils will achieve at different stages in their schooling; second for introducing modes of assessment linked to these levels of competence (certification linked to the countries concerned for each foreign language); and third for recommending a new kind of organisation of language learning groups which takes into account the actual competences of pupils rather than the number of years they have learnt a particular language (‘competence groups’).

This high-level of political decision-making is very rarely concerned with questions dealing with a discipline; more often it is focused on the general organisation of the educational system. It has been reinforced since then by important new regulations or even new laws. These decisions of a political nature have had a rapid effect: the evolution which began in 2002 in the curricula has accelerated, and since then all the texts defining the contents of teaching for foreign languages for all stages of the education system have introduced references to the CEFR. No text dealing with the teaching of languages or the assessment of what has been learned in this discipline is without reference to this Council of Europe document.

This coherence between regulatory and pedagogical texts (curricular documents) is not surprising insofar as the decision to renew curricula is the responsibility of ministerial authorities, and texts and documents written within this framework are necessarily validated by the same authorities; with respect to the contents of teaching, the French education system is highly centralised. The rapidity with which texts that organise language teaching pedagogically have been made to conform with legal texts clearly shows the importance that the ministry attaches to this reference to the CEFR.

Entry into the CEFR Took Place Through the Scales of Levels of Competence

The introduction of the CEFR into language teaching began, almost exclusively, as the contents of the governmental decree mentioned above show, by reference to the levels of competence. This can be explained quite easily. Language teaching in France does not achieve the results that society expects of it. The relatively recent realisation in this country of the importance of a mastery of languages was accompanied by concern about the actual level of competences of pupils leaving the education system. This concern has to be understood in the light of the ambition of the education system in France to ensure that all pupils of a particular age group acquire competences in at least one foreign language, and that the majority do so in two foreign languages. The vague feeling of inadequate performance in the education system led the ministry to undertake international comparisons which only confirmed the ‘suspicion’ that France was lagging behind in the overall results in languages in comparison with pupils of other European countries. This preoccupation with comparison to legitimise the effort required in the mastery of languages is probably also the origin of French support for the implementation of the indicator of linguistic competence of young Europeans, which was decided at the European Union’s Barcelona summit.

The publication of the CEFR and of its scale of language competences in 2001 happened at the very moment when the French Ministry of Education was looking for a means to give new impetus to the teaching of languages. It quickly saw in this scale of levels a response to its expectations of a tool, which at the same time provided comparability and a check on the results achieved.

Thus like most European countries, France fixed the linguistic objectives of its teaching with the help of the levels of the scale of competences of the CEFR. However, it is important to note the perspective from which this was undertaken. It is not a question here, in contrast to what has happened in other countries, of fixing these levels in relation to the actual competences achieved by pupils in the classes in question, but rather of clarifying the nature of the ambition which each teacher and each school should have for the pupils in their care. These levels, fixed for each stage of schooling, are not levels required for passing into the next class above or for success in an examination, but rather the levels that are aimed at. Let us take one example: whilst the level aimed for at the end of obligatory schooling is level B1 in the first foreign language, the requirement for obtaining the diploma which noindentertifies this stage of schooling is level A2. The levels aimed at are an expression of the collective need for a noticeable improvement of the general level in foreign languages in France and a ‘horizon’ towards which all language teachers and their pupils should progress.

The rapid and enthusiastic adoption of the CEFR in the French education system is thus due essentially to a chronological coincidence of the political and collective realisation of a need, and the provision for member states of the Council of Europe of this scale of levels of competence. In large part it was motivated by reasons different from those that underpinned the development of the CEFR. One might even risk saying that this adoption was decided upon without a detailed analysis of the contents of this document and of its pedagogical and didactic implications.

For a long period of time and for most of those involved, the CEFR was thus limited to its scale of levels of competence. But the scale of levels proposed by the CEFR offered the additional, valuable advantage of emphasising the notion of competences and of making the development of these competences measurable. Foreign languages were from that point onwards destined to play a pioneer role in the implementation of European recommendations concerning basic competences to be taught during obligatory schooling, which were translated in France into a ‘common core of knowledge and competences’. This interpretation of this particular role attributed to the adoption of the CEFR is supported by the fact that, from 2008, partial mastery of this ‘common core’ has been assessed for all pupils only in the subject foreign languages; the assessment of other components of the common core is planned for later.

The Convergence of Political Purposes and Considerations of a Pedagogical and Didactic Nature

If this succinct analysis explains the political decision and the rapid commissioning of new curricula, it does not in itself allow us to understand the reasons for the success of this decision in the collective representations of all those involved in the teaching of foreign languages in France.

This success is due in a very obvious way to the very strong convergence of the preoccupations of political decision-makers on the one hand, with the analyses, the discourse and the documents produced by recognised authorities on the teaching of foreign languages in France on the other. The interconnecting of the country through a dense network of language inspectors made it possible to make all teachers aware of the convergence of views between these two levels of responsibility, and thus to give these political decisions the credibility and effectiveness that might have been lacking noindentn the contrary case, and which might have reduced their impact on the teaching and assessment of languages.

The people who are the ‘bearers of pedagogical discourse’ saw in the CEFR and in its scales of levels of competence elements of a response to the difficulties of language teaching in France that had been recognised for some time. These can be summarised as follows: weak motivation for language learning among a substantial number of pupils, due in large part to a lack of confidence in their own ability to learn a foreign language effectively; lack of ability in the discipline to formulate clearly what it proposed to teach all pupils, which led to a naive collective evaluation of the results of teaching based on a comparison with an expected level of almost ‘perfect’ mastery of the languages studied; difficulty in elaborating and assessing progression in the operational mastery of a language; reluctance to take account of the different degrees of progression of pupils with respect to different linguistic activities of comprehension and expression, and as a result, missed opportunities to valorise progression and to make pupils aware of it; and attempts, sometimes vain, to go beyond the artificial character of the use of a foreign language in formal education and to make its use in class meaningful.

It is easy to identify the specific contribution of the CEFR for each of these problems: the definition of levels which legitimate an intermediary degree of competences which no longer needs to be valued in relation to its distance from that of the native speaker; strongly positive assessment of competences emphasising success, even partial; use of the scale of levels for each linguistic activity independently and recognition of the naturally uneven character of the individual’s linguistic profile; and an action approach.

Over the course of time it is moreover noticeable that the focus on the levels of competence – which was probably excessive – is giving way in the teaching and in the discourse on the CEFR to the dimensions of the action approach. Debates in the community of language teachers in France now focus essentially on the understanding of this pedagogical approach and the means of its implementation in the school situation.

Different and complementary discourses have thus been grafted onto the promotion of the CEFR and have had the effect of making this document and its scale of levels of competence a sine qua non. The doubts and resistance that were evident in the early stages have rapidly given way to acceptance of the necessity of these tools for all concerned.

The most obvious sign of this rapid evolution and of its overall acceptance by teachers is the process of ensuring that all pedagogical materials published by educational publishing companies conform. Thus textbooks and accompanying documents for teaching and learning claim to be based noindentpon the action approach which underpins the definition of competences in languages in the CEFR. They usually make reference to one of these levels of competence to define the level of expectation at which they aim, and they quote descriptions of these levels to formulate the objectives pursued in a unit of learning or in proposing activities for self-assessment. The adoption by private publishing companies of this reference can only be motivated, in addition to the didactic convictions of the authors, by acceptance of this reference by the body of language teachers who, in France, are the ones who have the exclusive right to choose textbooks in an educational establishment without interference by the institution.

Taking into Account the Specificity of Modern Language Teaching in France

In order to facilitate such a profound and rapid evolution in representations concerning levels of competence, assessment and pedagogical approaches to the teaching of languages, it was of course necessary to take into account the concerns that appeared. The first, and undoubtedly the most important, concerned the exclusively operational character of the definition of levels of competence in the CEFR. It is clear that even if it is an important element of the purpose of language teaching in schooling and university education, the mastery of linguistic pragmatic and strategic skills in the languages learnt does not cover all the objectives of this teaching. It does not take into account the contribution of this discipline to the general education of pupils or the indispensable nature of cultural contents and intercultural competencies that must be acquired by pupils in the course of this teaching. This explains the importance of a strong initiative taken at the national level, from the moment of introduction of reference to the CEFR in texts determining the teaching of languages, to substantially reinforce the emphasis on these cultural contents in the curricula of the primary school, of the lower secondary school (collège) and of the upper secondary school (lycée). The link between language and culture has always been emphasised in the teaching of languages in France, but since 2002 these contents have been reinforced and made explicit for each stage of schooling. It would be wrong to see in this merely a means of counteracting possible reticence from teachers with respect to the CEFR. On the contrary, it is based on the conviction that only these cultural contents, linked to the action approach, can give teaching the meaning necessary to win the interest and commitment of pupils.

Let us note, however, that the weight given to cultural content in the teaching of languages does not explicitly include the intercultural noindentimension recommended in the CEFR and in the publications of the Council of Europe. It is a matter essentially in the language curricula in France of giving all pupils cultural knowledge that allows them to identify and understand explicit or implicit cultural references in a text, or in the individual or collective behaviour of speakers of the language being learnt. The next step, which consists of seeking, on this basis, in a focused and structured way to develop a tolerant and responsible attitude towards the expression of diversity, and to contribute in this way to the educational purposes of the school is undertaken by many teachers, but is not explicitly included in the objectives given to the teaching of cultural contents.

In an area close to that which we have just commented upon, one also notes another choice being made from the different contents of the CEFR. The very innovative definition of plurilingualism as a single competence of the individual, a repertoire of knowledge and skill in different languages and cultures at diverse levels of competence, has not yet been included in what has been borrowed from the CEFR in France. Even though almost all pupils in schools are obliged to learn at least two foreign languages for a part of their schooling, and even though the vast majority of those who are in general and technical secondary education continue learning both languages until the final examination, there is no trace in the current curricula of strong encouragement to exploit the convergences between the languages learnt, to develop competencies in the linguistic activity of mediation or to help pupils manage in an effective way their individual plurilingual repertoire. The choice was made, perhaps in order to take account of the capacity of the education system to implement the formulated recommendations, to limit the focus to the separate teaching of each language.

Reactions to some Misunderstandings in the Introduction of the CEFR into the Practice of Teaching and Assessment

The introduction of the CEFR into the practice of teaching and assessment, forcefully supported by political and pedagogical authorities on language teaching, created an enormous demand for explanations from teachers. The latter were split between an understandable concern about the required evolution in their practices by reference to an instrument known by very few on the one hand, and enthusiasm for a text to which many tended to attribute, almost with a sense of ‘magical thinking’, all the qualities of innovation on the other.

Efforts made to ‘train’ language teachers for the CEFR – which in fact consists of presenting them with the main arguments of the text and, in many cases, above all the levels of competence – were immense. They facilitated the creation of a common discourse for all teachers of all languages and the de-dramatisation of its introduction.

These efforts also removed certain misunderstandings as to the nature of the document to which some people wrongly – in order to criticise its introduction – attributed an obligatory dimension for all member states of the Council of Europe, which is often confused with the European Commission. This training also contributed to the demystification of this text, which some people had difficulty in understanding as a basis for mutual and formalised reflection in Europe at a given point in time.

Another confusion was more difficult to eradicate, namely that be...

Table of contents

• Coverpage
• Titlepage
• Copyright
• Contents
• A note on the publication of the CEFR
• Series Editor’s Preface
• Introduction
• The Common European Framework of Reference: Learning, Teaching, Assessment
• Part 1: The CEFR in Europe
• Part 2: The CEFR beyond Europe
• Conclusion