Vivian Cook "The
Common European Framework, Abstract: Language teaching in recent years has tended to concentrate on 'external' goals relating to the world outside rather than on the traditional 'internal' goals of the student's self-development. This is illustrated through the Common European Framework, which has established an assessment scale, a description of language targets and the European Language Portfolio, intended to be used across Europe. Its basis is a set of communicative language competences including linguistic competences, sociolinguistic competences etc. The main idea of multi-competence is that the L2 user is a person who is distinctively different from a monolingual native speaker in many ways. The implications of multi-competence for language teaching goals and syllabuses such as the Common European Framework are then that they should not be based exclusively on the knowledge, behaviour and standards of the native speaker but should include those of the successful L2 user, using language appropriately for their own distinctive purposes. Teaching should present L2 user role models, situations and uses, not those in which native speakers are necessarily involved. Proposals such as the Common European Framework need also to foster internal goals, whether general educational values, self-development, cognitive training, a way-in to the first language, development of understanding of language itself, understanding of foreign cultures, 'promoting inter-cultural understanding and peace', and so on. The overall goal of language teaching is to produce successful L2 users, complete with internal and external uses of language. |