Common European Framework of Reference for Languages

Theoretical background

The CEFR divides general competences in knowledge, skills, and existential competence with particular communicative competences in linguistic competence, sociolinguistic competence and pragmatic competence. This division does not exactly match previously well-known notions of communicative competence, but correspondences among them can be made.

The CEFR has three principal dimensions: language activities, the domains in which the language activities occur, and the competencies on which a person draws when they engage in them.

Language activities

The CEFR distinguishes four kinds of language activities: reception (listening and reading), production (spoken and written), interaction (spoken and written) and mediation (translating and interpreting).

Domains

General and particular communicative competencies are developed by producing or receiving texts in various contexts under various conditions and constraints. These contexts correspond to various sectors of social that the CEFR calls domains. Four broad domains are distinguished: educational, occupational, public and personal. These largely correspond to register.

Competencies

A language user can develop various degrees of competence in each of these domains and to help describe them, the CEFR has provided a set of six Common Reference Levels (A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2).

Common reference levels

The Common European Framework divides learners into three broad divisions that can each be further divided into two levels; for each level, it describes what a learner is supposed to be able to do in listening, reading, writing and speaking.

These descriptors can apply to any of the languages spoken in Europe and there are translations in many languages.

Relationship with duration of learning process

Educational bodies for various languages have offered estimates for the amount of study needed to reach levels in the relevant language. This assumes learners with European languages as their native language, the typical profile within the European Union.

Certification and teaching ecosystem enabled by the CEFR

Multiple organisations have been created to serve as an umbrella for language schools and certification businesses that claim compatibility with the CEFR. For example, the European Association for Language Testing and Assessment (EALTA) is an initiative funded by the European Community to promote the CEFR and best practices in delivering professional language training. The Association of Language Testers in Europe (ALTE) is a consortium of academic organisations that aims at standardising assessment methods. Eaquals (Evaluation and Accreditation of Quality in Language Services) is an international association of institutions and organisations involved in language education, active throughout Europe and following the CEFR.

In France, the Ministry for Education has created a government-mandated certificate called CLES, which formalises the use of the CEFR in language teaching programmes in French higher education institutions.

In Germany, Telc, a non-profit agency, is the federal government's exclusive partner for language tests taken at the end of the integration courses for migrants, following the CEFR standards.

Comparisons with other scales

General scales

ACTFL

The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages has published a one-directional alignment table of levels according to its ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines and the CEFR levels. It is based on the work of the ACTFL-CEFR Alignment Conferences that started in 2010. Generally, the ACTFL is stricter with regard to receptive skills than productive skills, compared to the CEFR. The following table may not be read as an indication of what ACTFL level follows from taking a CEFR-aligned test.

For convenience, the following abbreviations will be used for the ACTFL levels:

• NL/NM/NH – Novice Low/Mid/High
• IL/IM/IH – Intermediate Low/Mid/High
• AL/AM/AH – Advanced Low/Mid/High
• S – Superior
• D – Distinguished

Similar correspondence has been proposed for the other direction (test aligned to CEFR) in a panel discussion at the Osaka University of Foreign Studies by one of the coauthors of the CEFR, Brian North. He stated that a "sensible hypothesis" would be for C2 to correspond to "Distinguished," C1 to "Superior," B2 to "Advanced-mid" and B1 to "Intermediate-high" in the ACTFL system.

This agrees with a table published by the American University Center of Provence giving the following correspondences according to "estimated equivalencies by certified ACTFL administrator":

The following table summarises three earlier proposed equivalences between CEFR and ACTFL. Some of them only refer to one activity (e.g. speaking).

ILR

The Chartered Institute of Linguists presents the following equivalence:

A study by Buck, Papageorgiou and Platzek addresses the correspondence between the difficulty of test items under the CEFR and ILR standards. The most common ILR levels for items of given CEFR difficulty were as follows:

• Reading—A1: 1, A2: 1, B1: 1+, B2: 2+, C1: 3
• Listening—A1: 0+/1, A2: 1, B1: 1+, B2: 2, C1: 2+ (at least)

Canada

As Canada increasingly uses the CEFR, Larry Vandergrift of the University of Ottawa has proposed Canadian adoption of the CEFR in his report Proposal for a Common Framework of Reference for Languages for Canada published by Canadian Heritage. This report contains a comparison of the CEFR to other standards in use in Canada and proposes an equivalence table.

The resulting correspondence between the ILR and ACTFL scales disagrees with the generally accepted one. The ACTFL standards were developed so that Novice, Intermediate, Advanced and Superior would correspond to 0/0+, 1/1+, 2/2+ and 3/3+, respectively on the ILR scale. Also, the ILR and NB OPS scales do not correspond despite the fact that the latter was modelled on the former.

A 2007 document by Macdonald and Vandergrift estimates the following correspondences (for oral ability) between the Public Service Commission levels and the CEFR levels:

Language schools may also propose their own equivalence tables. For example, the Vancouver English Centre provides a comprehensive equivalence table between the various forms of the TOEFL test, the Cambridge exam, the VEC level system, and the CEFR.

Language-specific scales

Difficulty in aligning the CEFR with teaching programmes

Language schools and certificate bodies evaluate their equivalences against the framework. Differences in estimation have been found to exist, for example, with the same level on the PTE A, TOEFL, and IELTS, and is a cause of debate between test producers.

Non-Western areas and languages

The CEFR, initially developed to ease human mobility and economic growth within the highly multilingual European Union, has since influenced and been borrowed by various other areas.

Non-Western learners

In Japan, the adoption of CEFR has been encouraged by academics, institutional actors (MEXT), politicians, business associations, and by learners themselves. Adoption in Malaysia has also been documented. In Vietnam, adoption of the CEFR has been connected to recent changes in English language policy, efforts to reform higher education, orientation toward economic opportunities and a tendency for administrators to look outwards for domestic solutions.

Noriyuki (2009) observes the "mechanical" reuse of the European framework and concepts by Japanese teachers of mostly Western languages, missing the recontextualisation part: the need to adapt the conceptual vocabulary to the local language and to adapt the framework to the local public, its language and practices.

Around 2005, the Osaka University of Foreign Studies developed a CEFR-inspired project for its 25 foreign languages, with a transparent and common evaluation approach. While major languages had long had well-defined tools for the Japanese public, able to guide teachers in teaching and performing assessments in a methodic way, this project pushed the adoption of similar practices to smaller languages, as requested by students.

In late 2006–2010, the Keio University led the ambitious CEFR-inspired Action Oriented Plurilingual Language Learning Project to favour multi-campus and inter-language cooperation in creating teaching materials and assessment systems from child to university levels. Since 2015, the "Research on Plurilinguistic and Pluricultural Skill Development in Integrated Foreign Language Education" has followed up.

Non-European languages

The framework was translated into Chinese in 2008. In 2011, French sinologist Joël Bellassen suggests the CEFR together with its metalanguage could and should be adapted to distant languages such as Chinese, with the necessity to adapt and extend it with relevant concepts proper to the new language and its learners. Various efforts on adaptation to Chinese have been made. In 2018, Italian linguist Annamaria Ventura proposed an A0 level for Arabic language taking into consideration diglossia in Arabic, introducing the concept of diglossic switching.

Companion Volume

The CEFR Companion Volume (CEFR-CV) is an extension and update of the original CEFR. It provides new and extended illustrative descriptors covering a wider range of communicative activities, including online interaction, mediation, plurilingual/pluricultural competence, and sign language competencies. It also introduces various communicative language activities and strategies. Additionally, existing descriptors have been refined to more accurately reflect the nuances of language use and to address any identified gaps since the original CEFR publication. The Companion Volume also emphasizes inclusivity, and includes descriptors for online interaction. The Council of Europe gave the new version of the CEFR (published in 2020) the title "Companion Volume", as it quotes central passages from the original CEFR and explains them. At the same time, it redefines the underlying construct (i.e. "language as social action").

"Mediation"

In the 2001 edition, "mediation" meant translating, interpreting, summarizing, reporting, etc. As such, it had become part of the foreign language curricula of secondary schools in Germany, Austria and other European states. In the CEFR-CV, however, mediation now refers to processes employed by multiple language users when jointly constructing meaning.

A distinction is made between "Cognitive Mediation" and "Relational Mediation". The scales on Cognitive Mediation describe the process of facilitating access to knowledge and concepts. In contrast, the scales under Relational Mediation focus on the processes of establishing and maintaining interpersonal relationships to create a cooperative environment.

No native speaker standards

Unlike in 2001, all references to a native speaker standard have disappeared in the CEFR-CV. In the 2001 edition, the use of 'native speaker' sometimes led to misunderstandings. In the CEFR-CV, pronunciation at C2, for example, is described as follows:

Can employ the full range of phonological features in the target language with a high level of control – including prosodic features such as word and sentence stress, rhythm and intonation – so that the finer points of their message are clear and precise. Intelligibility and effective conveyance and enhancement of meaning are not affected in any way by features of accent that may be retained from other language(s).

Descriptor scales

The CEFR's 54 descriptor scales had been reduced to a single scale, i.e. the "Global Scale". This misunderstanding is documented by the use of a six-step staircase to illustrate the competence model suggested by the CEFR. In the CEFR-CV, the descriptor scales are intended to describe context-specific, differentiated competence profiles.

The illustrative descriptors are one source for the development of standards appropriate to the context concerned; they are not in themselves offered as standards. They are a basis for reflection, discussion and further action. The aim is to open new possibilities, not to pre-empt decisions. The CEFR itself makes this point very clearly, stating that the descriptors are presented as recommendations and are not in any way mandatory.

— Council of Europe

Literature

• Alderson, J. C., Figueras, N., Kuijper, H., Nold, G. Takala, S., Tardieu, C. (2004): The development of specifications for item development and classification within The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment: Reading and Listening: Final report of The Dutch CEF Construct Project. Lancaster University (unpublished).
• Council of Europe (ed.) (2001): A Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. Strasbourg. Deutsch: Goethe-Institut, et al. (Hg.) (2001): Gemeinsamer europäischer Referenzrahmen für Sprachen: Lernen, lehren, beurteilen. Munich, Berlin. J. Trim, B. North, D. Coste, J. Sheils. Translated by J. Quetz, et al.
• Debray, C.; Spencer-Oatey; H. (2022): Co-constructing good relations through troubles talk in diverse teams. Journal of Pragmatics (2022), 85–97.
• Vogt, K. and Quetz, J. (2021): Der neue Begleitband zum Gemeinsamen europäischen Referenzrahmen für Sprachen. Berlin, Germany.