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

from Waystage than they needed to reach Waystage. They will then probably need more than twice as long to reach Vantage Level from Threshold Level than they needed to reach Threshold Level from Waystage, even if the levels appear to be equidistant on the scale. This is because of the necessary broadening of the range of activities, skills and language involved. This fact of life is reflected in the frequent presentation of a scale of levels with a diagram like an ice cream cornet – a three-dimensional cone which broadens towards the top. Extreme caution should be exercised in using any scale of levels to calculate the ‘mean seat time’ necessary to meet particular objectives.

2.3Language learning and teaching

2.3.1Such statements of learning objectives say nothing about the processes by which learners come to be able to act in the required ways, or the processes by which they develop/build up the competences that make the actions possible. They say nothing about the ways in which teachers facilitate the processes of language acquisition and learning. Yet, since it is one of the principal functions of the Framework to encourage and enable all the different partners to the language teaching and learning processes to inform others as transparently as possible not only of their aims and objectives but also of the methods they use and the results actually achieved, it seems clear that the Framework cannot confine itself to the knowledge, skills and attitudes learners will need to develop in order to act as competent language users, but must also deal with the processes of language acquisition and learning, as well as with the teaching methodology. These matters are dealt with in Chapter 6.

2.3.2The role of the Framework in respect of language acquisition, learning and teaching must however be made clear once more. In accordance with the basic principles of pluralist democracy, the Framework aims to be not only comprehensive, transparent and coherent, but also open, dynamic and non-dogmatic. For that reason it cannot take up a position on one side or another of current theoretical disputes on the nature of language acquisition and its relation to language learning, nor should it embody any one particular approach to language teaching to the exclusion of all others. Its proper role is to encourage all those involved as partners to the language learning/teaching process to state as explicitly and transparently as possible their own theoretical basis and their practical procedures. In order to fulfil this role it sets out parameters, categories, criteria and scales which users may draw upon and which may possibly stimulate them to consider a wider range of options than previously or to question the previously unexamined assumptions of the tradition in which they are working. This is not to say that such assumptions are wrong, but only that all those responsible for planning should benefit from a re-examination of theory and practice in which they can take into account decisions other practitioners have taken in their own and, particularly, in other European countries.

An open, ‘neutral’ framework of reference does not of course imply an absence of policy. In providing such a framework the Council of Europe is not in any way retreating from the principles set out in Chapter 1 above as well as in Recommendations R (82) 18 and R (98) 6 of the Committee of Ministers addressed to member governments.

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