The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching,

assessment – Companion volume broadens the scope of language education, reflecting

academic and societal developments since the CEFR publication in 2001. It presents the
key aspects of the CEFR for teaching and learning in a user-friendly form and
contains the complete set of extended CEFR descriptors, replacing the 2001 set.
These now include descriptors for mediation, online interaction,
plurilingual/pluricultural competence, and sign language competences. The
illustrative descriptors have been adapted with modality-inclusive formulations for
sign languages and all descriptors are now gender-neutral.
This publication marks a crucial step in the Council of Europe’s engagement with
language education, which seeks to protect linguistic and cultural diversity, promote
plurilingual and intercultural education, reinforce the right to quality education
for all, and enhance intercultural dialogue, social inclusion and democracy.
The new version updates and extends the CEFR 2001, which was designed to provide a
transparent, coherent and comprehensive basis for the elaboration of language
syllabuses and curriculum guidelines, the design of teaching and learning materials,
and the assessment of foreign language proficiency.

Language is seen as a process or as a complex adaptative system.

In any communicative situation, general competences (for example, knowledge of the

world, sociocultural competence, intercultural competence, professional experience if
any) are always combined with communicative language competences (linguistic,
sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences) and strategies (some general, some
communicative language strategies) in order to complete a task.

With its communicative language activities and strategies, the CEFR replaces the
traditional model of the four skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing), which has
increasingly proved inadequate in capturing the complex reality of communication.

With its communicative language activities and strategies, the CEFR replaces the traditional model of the
four skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing), which has increasingly proved inadequate in capturing
the complex reality of communication. Moreover, organisation by the four skills does not lend itself to
any consideration of purpose or macro-function. The organisation proposed by the CEFR is closer to
real-life language use, which is grounded in interaction in which meaning is co-constructed. Activities
are presented under four modes of communication: reception, production, interaction and mediation

four modes in which the CEFR model organizes communication. Learners seen as
social agents engage in receptive, productive, interactive or mediation activities or,
more frequently, in a combination of two or more of them.