Teaching integrated language skills

according to CEFR
Transparency and coherence in the
classroom
 The descriptors in the CEFR Companion Volume facilitate
the linking of curriculum, teaching and assessment. They also
help make learning objectives transparent and coherent for
learners. We achieve quality in language education by setting
clear learning goals and helping learners to achieve them so
that they can develop their potential and fully participate in
the social, cultural, professional and political practices of
modern society.
Learners as social agents in the
classroom
 Languages are not only an instrument to obtain and exchange
information, but also to interpret the world and to build both
individual and collective knowledge through interaction and
dialogue. Language learning is, therefore, both a cognitive
and a social activity. It takes into consideration the
interactional and communicative realities, purposes and
contexts of real-world language use.
Action-orientation in the classroom
 The action-oriented approach is rooted in a constructivist
paradigm and takes task-based learning to a level where the
class and the outside world are integrated in genuine
communicative practices. In addition, the approach
emphasises learner agency.
Plurilingualism in the classroom
 Plurilingualism and pluriculturalism aim to capture the
holistic nature of individual language users/learners
linguistic and cultural repertoires. In this view,
learners/users seen as social agents draw upon all sorts of
resources in their linguistic and cultural repertoires and
further develop these resources in their trajectories.
Plurilingualism/pluriculturalism stresses the dynamic use of
multiple languages/varieties and cultural knowledge,
awareness and/or experience in social situations.
Mediation in the classroom
 Mediation is one of the 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. While interaction stresses the social
use of language, mediation encompasses and goes beyond that
by focusing on making meaning and/or enabling
communication beyond linguistic or cultural barriers. Both
types of mediation rely on collaborative processes.
Online interaction in the classroom
 Online interaction is characterized by changes in language
and increasing multimodality; it involves multiple remote
social actors flexibly remixing media and texts to support
messages in both synchronous and asynchronous modes. The
descriptors for online interaction form a basis for analysing
what learners do and need in the real world in order to serve
those needs in digitally-enhanced, action-oriented learning
scenarios.
Phonology in the classroom
 The new CEFR Phonology scale consists of three
subscales: Overall phonological control, intended for those who
wish a simple update of the 2001 holistic scale, Sound
articulation and Prosody. The scale broadens the scope of
phonological competence in comparison to the 2001 scale
and removes native-speakerism from it, with the overall aim
of providing more explicit support to teachers.