Introduction to the CEFR

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What is the CEFR? 🧠

The CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment) is a reference document produced in the mid 1990s in a period of geopolitical opening, first published in 2001 and extended in an updated edition in 2020 (CEFR Companion Volume). It offers two aspects:

  1. a set of ‘common reference levels’ (A1, A2, B1, B2, C1 and C2) which can be subdivided and which are defined in ‘can do’ descriptors for an array of different types of real-life language activities (plus strategies and competences).
  2. a pluralistic and action-oriented vision of language education that encourages users to reflect on and perhaps broaden their curricula and ways of teaching. 

The CEFR comes from the Council of Europe, the world’s oldest Human Rights organisation, founded just before the United Nations and considerably before the European Common Market, which then became the European Union, all of which were founded after World War II in an attempt to avoid future wars. Many conflicts in the world originate in language differences, the concept of one nation one language, and the suppression of linguistic/ethnic minorities.

The Council of Europe is dedicated to increasing international understanding, democracy and the rule of law. Its direct involvement in language education goes back to 1964 and it spearheaded the communicative approach (Communicative Language Teaching) in the 1970s and 1980s through a series of international projects that were the forerunner of the CEFR. Those projects, like the CEFR itself has done, resonated outside Europe and have helped the further development of language education.

The key concepts in the CEFR can be summarised as:

  1. seeing language learning and use as embodied, integrated activities rather than as discrete skills and elements;
  2. transparency and coherence: defining clear aims in terms of what people ‘can do’; using the same approach in the teaching of different languages in the institution concerned;
  3. action-orientation: action rather than perfection should be foregrounded, with a focus on acting as a social agent doing real things through language; the so-called ‘native speaker’ is not the goal of language learning;
  4. plurilingualism: valuing each person’s developing language repertoire, seen holistically as including and valuing all their languages/varieties/registers;
  5. mediation: understanding (of new knowledge, of other perspectives) is constructed socially, often by building bridges and by anticipating or resolving misunderstandings.

Take a moment to watch this 5-minute video on the The user/learner as social agent, which comes from the CEFR website.

Once you have watched it, read this short text (CEFR Companion Volume, Section 2.1) explaining the aims of the CEFR (just over one page). Now that you have an idea of the CEFR, you can decide to explore more on it and on practical applications by going to CEFR & Language Learning and Use.

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