The Common European Framework in its political and educational context What is the Common European Framework?

European Language Portfolio with international currency is now
under consideration. The Portfolio would make it possible for learners to document their
progress towards plurilingual competence by recording learning experiences of all kinds
over a wide range of languages, much of which would otherwise be unattested and unrec-
ognised. It is intended that the Portfolio will encourage learners to include a regularly
updated statement of their self-assessed proficiency in each language. It will be of great
importance for the credibility of the document for entries to be made responsibly and
transparently. Here reference to CEF will be particularly valuable.
Those professionally involved in test development as well as in the administration and
conduct of public examinations may wish to consult Chapter 9 in conjunction with the
more specialised Guide for Examiners (document CC-Lang(96)10 rev). This guide, which
deals in detail with test development and evaluation is complementary to Chapter 9. It
also contains suggestions for further reading, an appendix on item analysis and a glos-
sary of terms.
Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: learning, teaching, assessment
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3
Common Reference Levels
3.1
Criteria for descriptors for Common Reference Levels
One of the aims of the Framework is to help partners to describe the levels of proficiency
required by existing standards, tests and examinations in order to facilitate comparisons
between different systems of qualifications. For this purpose the Descriptive Scheme and
the Common Reference Levels have been developed. Between them they provide a con-
ceptual grid which users can exploit to describe their system. Ideally a scale of reference
levels in a common framework should meet the following four criteria. Two relate to
description issues, and two relate to measurement issues: