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

assessor-oriented scales guide the rating process. Statements are typically expressed in
terms of aspects of the quality of the performance expected. Here assessment in the sense
of summative, proficiency assessment of a particular performance is meant. Such scales
concentrate on 
how well the learner performs and are often negatively worded even at high
levels, particularly when the formulation is norm-referenced around a pass grade for an
examination:
Disconnected speech and/or frequent hesitations impeded communication and
constantly strain the listener.
Certificate in Advanced English 1991 (University of Cambridge Local Examinations
Syndicate), Paper 5 (Oral) Criteria for Assessment: Fluency: Band 1–2 (bottom of 4 bands) 
Negative formulation can, however, be to a great extent avoided if a qualitative develop-
ment approach is used in which informants analyse and describe features of key perfor-
mance samples.
Some assessor-oriented scales are holistic scales, offering one descriptor per level. Others
on the other hand are analytic scales, focusing on different aspects of the performance
such as Range, Accuracy, Fluency, Pronunciation. Table 3, presented earlier in this
chapter, is an example of a positively worded analytic assessor-oriented scale drawn from
the CEF illustrative descriptors.
Some analytic scales have a large number of categories in order to profile achievement.
Such approaches have been argued to be less appropriate for assessment because asses-
sors tend to find it difficult to cope with more than 3–5 categories. Analytic scales like
Table 3 have been therefore described as
diagnosis-oriented since one of their purposes is
to profile current position, profile target needs in relevant categories and provide a diag-
nosis of what needs to be covered to get there. 
Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: learning, teaching, assessment
38
2
All the scales mentioned in this chapter are reviewed in detail with full references in North, B. (1994) Scales of lan-
guage proficiency: a survey of some existing systems, Strasbourg, Council of Europe CC-LANG (94) 24.

---

(c)