elc - European Language Competence - THE EUROPEAN APPROACH

Are we teaching the right things?

Two frameworks published by the Council of Europe, i.e. the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (2013) and the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages - Companion Volume (2020), complement each other in a meaningful way. Both focus on INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE and together they specify the primary aim of European education policy:

Promoting social cohesion in a linguistally and culturally diverse Europe.

THE AIM OF LANGUAGE EDUCATION

“It is no longer seen as simply to achieve ‘mastery’ of one or two, or even three languages, each taken in isolation, with the ‘ideal native speaker’ as the ultimate model. Instead, the aim is to develop a linguistic repertory, in which all linguistic abilities have a place.”

Council of Europe (2001). CEFR. p. 4 & Council of Europe (2020). CEFR-Companion Volume . p. 123

The CEFR's approach to language learning and teaching is based on a

SOCIAL-CONSTRUCTIVIST APPROACH

This can be illustrated as follows:

CO-CREATING MEANING IN SPECIFIC CONTEXTS:

Three points are important:

Language - i.e. a social construct - cannot adequately be described based on an individual language user's performance.

Instead, two or more language users' performance when Co-constructing Meaning need to be taken into consideration.

Communication includes the negotiation of interlocutors' Identities, Roles and Relationships.

Establishing sufficiently trustful relationships can be considered a precondition of successful communication.

In communication, Contexts always play a crucial role. Meaning does not lie in linguistic elements alone but in their context-based use. Contexts may include micro, meso, macro elements. They may also include aspects of status and power.

Contexts of Communication

Helen Spencer-Oatey, Dániel Z. Kádár (2021). Intercultural Politeness. Managing Relations across Cultures. p. 340

In international and intercultural encounters elements listed under MACRO LEVEL may play a crucial role in establishing trust and understanding - or the opposite!. The Council of Europe suggest including these in foreign language teaching to promote social cohesion in a linguistically and culturally diverse Europe.