Updating the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR): Developing, Validating and Calibrating Descriptors for Mediation and Related Fields

Session Submission Type: Paper

Summary

This talk reports on a large-scale Council of Europe project extending the CEFR descriptors to cover crucial areas in SLE like mediation, online interaction and the plurilingual/pluricultural dimension.
The paper reports on the methodology used with three phases of qualitative and quantitative (Rasch) analysis (1250 informants from over 150 institutions).

Abstract

Since its publication in 2001 the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), translated into 40 Languages, has been used worldwide as a vehicle to foster change in Second Language Education (SLE). Almost two decades later, the Council of Europe commissioned an international 3-year project to extend the CEFR illustrative descriptors to include some challenging areas that have become crucial in SLE, particularly mediation, online interaction and the plurilingual/pluricultural dimension.

Partly due to research on complexity theory (Larsen Freeman, 2002, Verspoor, de Bot and Lowie, 2011) and sociocultural theory (Lantolf, 2000), mediation has become the object of growing interest in SLE as it involves a process of bridging between different elements and spaces at the individual and/or social levels. Mediation, as presented in the new CEFR descriptors, encompasses both relational and cognitive processes such as creating the space and conditions for communication and/or learning, constructing and co-constructing new meaning, and/or conveying received meaning, whilst adapting input in order to facilitate understanding.

The project further developed the methodology used to create the original CEFR descriptors (North 1993, 2000) in which descriptors are validated and then calibrated to a scale of language levels using the Rasch Rating Scale Model (Wright and Masters 1982, Linacre 2015). The project followed a sequential mixed methods design (Creswell & Plano Clark 2011) with qualitative and quantitative analysis in which some 1250 informants from over 150 institutions took part. After being developed by an authoring team, supported by a sounding board, the descriptors were evaluated by the informants for clarity, pedagogical usefulness and relevance to real world language use, with suggestions for improved formulation. Subsequently, the informants assigned descriptors to CEFR levels. Finally, difficulty values for the c400 validated descriptors were confirmed with data from the informants using them as criterion statements in assessment and self-assessment.

Strand

• Second and Foreign Language Pedagogy

Presenters

• brian Brian North north, Eurocentres

• Enrica Piccardo, OISE-University of Toronto