Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: learning, teaching, assessment

Paralinguistic communication should be carefully distinguished from developed sign languages, which fall outside the present scope of CEF, though experts in that field may find many of its concepts and categories relevant to their concerns.

Users of the Framework may wish to consider and where appropriate state:

•which target paralinguistic behaviours the learner will need/be equipped/be required to a) recognise and understand b) use.

4.4.5.3 Paratextual features: a similarly ‘paralinguistic’ role is played in relation to written texts by such devices as:

•illustrations (photographs, drawings, etc.)

•charts, tables, diagrams, figures, etc.

•typographic features (fonts, pitch, spacing, underlining, layout, etc.)

Users of the Framework may wish to consider and where appropriate state:

•which paratextual features the learner will need/be equipped/be required to a) recognise and respond to and b) use.

4.5Communicative language processes

To act as a speaker, writer, listener or reader, the learner must be able to carry out a sequence of skilled actions.

To speak, the learner must be able to:

•plan and organise a message (cognitive skills);

•formulate a linguistic utterance (linguistic skills);

•articulate the utterance (phonetic skills). To write, the learner must be able to:

•organise and formulate the message (cognitive and linguistic skills);

•hand-write or type the text (manual skills) or otherwise transfer the text to writing.

To listen, the learner must be able to:

•perceive the utterance (auditory phonetic skills);

•identify the linguistic message (linguistic skills);

•understand the message (semantic skills);

•interpret the message (cognitive skills).

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Language use and the language user/learner

To read, the reader must be able to:

•perceive the written text (visual skills);

•recognise the script (orthographic skills);

•identify the message (linguistic skills);

•understand the message (semantic skills);

•interpret the message (cognitive skills).

The observable stages of these processes are well understood. Others – events in the central nervous system – are not. The following analysis is intended only to identify some parts of the process relevant to the development of language proficiency.

4.5.1 Planning

The selection, interrelation and co-ordination of components of general and communicative language competences (see Chapter 5) to be brought to bear on the communicative event in order to accomplish the user/learner’s communicative intentions.

4.5.2 Execution

4.5.2.1Production

The production process involves two components:

The formulation component takes the output from the planning component and assembles it into linguistic form. This involves lexical, grammatical, phonological (and in the case of writing, orthographic) processes which are distinguishable and appear (e.g. in cases of dysphasia) to have some degree of independence but whose exact interrelation is not fully understood.

The articulation component organises the motor innervation of the vocal apparatus to convert the output of the phonological processes into co-ordinated movements of the speech organs to produce a train of speech waves constituting the spoken utterance, or alternatively the motor innervation of the musculature of the hand to produce handwritten or typewritten text.

4.5.2.2Reception

The receptive process involves four steps which, while they take place in linear sequence (bottom-up), are constantly updated and reinterpreted (top-down) in the light of real world knowledge, schematic expectations and new textual understanding in a subconscious interactive process.

•the perception of speech and writing: sound/character and word recognition (cursive and print);

•the identification of the text, complete or partial, as relevant;

•the semantic and cognitive understanding of the text as a linguistic entity;

•the interpretation of the message in context.

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Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: learning, teaching, assessment

The skills involved include:

•perceptual skills;

•memory;

•decoding skills;

•inferencing;

•predicting;

•imagination;

•rapid scanning;

•referring back and forth.

Comprehension, especially of written texts, can be assisted by the proper use of aids, including reference materials such as:

•dictionaries (monolingual and bilingual);

•thesauruses;

•pronunciation dictionaries;

•electronic dictionaries, grammars, spell-checkers and other aids;

•reference grammars.

4.5.2.3Interaction

The processes involved in spoken interaction differ from a simple succession of speaking and listening activities in a number of ways:

•productive and receptive processes overlap. Whilst the interlocutor’s utterance, still incomplete, is being processed, the planning of the user’s response is initiated – on the basis of a hypothesis as to its nature, meaning and interpretation.

•discourse is cumulative. As an interaction proceeds, the participants converge in their readings of a situation, develop expectations and focus on relevant issues. These processes are reflected in the form of the utterances produced.

In written interaction (e.g. a correspondence by letter, fax, e-mail, etc.) the processes of reception and production remain distinct (though electronic interaction, e.g. via the Internet, is becoming ever closer to ‘real time’ interaction). The effects of cumulative discourse are similar to those for spoken interaction.

4.5.3 Monitoring

The strategic component deals with updating of mental activities and competences in the course of communication. This applies equally to the productive and receptive processes. It should be noted that an important factor in the control of the productive processes is the feedback the speaker/writer receives at each stage: formulation, articulation and acoustic.

In a wider sense, the strategic component is also concerned with the monitoring of the communicative process as it proceeds, and with ways of managing the process accordingly, e.g.:

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