Teaching English (eBook)

1.2.1 The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages

A common frameworkThe CEFR has served to redefine language learning policy in Germany. The objectives of the CEFR are quite comprehensive, straddling the general divide between pragmatic and educational aims of language learning:

The CEFR claims not to tell teachers what to do but is committed to educational reform with the specific agenda of “enabling learners to act in real-life situations” (2001: 29). The CEFR advances concepts of the learner as a social agent and language as (inter-)action. The CEFR favors an action-oriented approach to language and a task-based one to learning through interaction and collaboration. Individual members of society are understood as social agents, who use all of their competences to solve tasks together with other people in particular circumstances:

Competence is a comprehensive and fuzzy term. The CEFR merges and goes beyond the conventional linguistic concepts of competence as knowledge of the language system and performance as its usage. The CEFR subsumes knowledge, know-how, ability, and skills under the heading of competences, as the following list reveals (cf. CEFR 2020: 32–35; see chs. 6.1, 7.2.2)CEFR competences.

Competence and knowledge in learning and teachingIn order to avoid confusion, ‘competence’ will be used henceforth as a superordinate category including knowledge and performance, such as communicative or intercultural competence, and ‘skill’ as a subordinate category that refers to listening, speaking, reading, writing, and mediating.

Psychology and Pedagogy define ‘knowledge’ in detail. Declarative knowledgeof facts is distinguished from procedural knowledge of know-how. Declarative knowledge is usually explicit, procedural knowledge implicit (or tacit). You know how to speak, but explaining how speech is produced is difficult (see ch. 5.1.2). Episodic knowledge results from experience and has a great impact on subjective theories, i.e. conceptions of how learning and teaching work. Subjective theories are deeply ingrained and need critical reflection to be developed. Explicit conceptual knowledge is applied to reflect where learning and teaching routines run into difficulties (cf. Feryok 2018; Viebrock 2020).

Reference levelsApart from the competences summarized above, the CEFR established six reference levels, which are specified in ‘can do’-descriptors (2020: 175; see fig. 1.5):