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

A2
Can copy out short texts in printed or clearly handwritten format.
A1
Can copy out single words and short texts presented in standard printed format.
Users of the Framework may wish to consider and where appropriate state:
•
with which text types the learner will need/be equipped/be required to deal 
•
a) receptively, b) productively, c) interactively, d) in mediation.
Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: learning, teaching, assessment
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Sections 4.6.1 to 4.6.3 confine themselves to text types and the media which carry them.
Matters often dealt with under ‘genre’ are treated in this Framework in 5.2.3 ‘pragmatic
competences’. 
4.6.4
Texts and activities
The output of the process of language production is a text, which once it is uttered or
written becomes an artefact carried by a particular medium and independent of its pro-
ducer. The text then functions as the input to the process of language reception.
Written artefacts are concrete objects, whether carved in stone, handwritten, typed,
printed or electronically generated. They allow communication to take place despite
the complete separation of producer and receiver in space and/or time – a property on
which human society largely depends. In face-to-face oral interaction the medium is
acoustic, sound waves which are normally ephemeral and irrecoverable. Indeed, few
speakers are able to reproduce in exact detail a text they have just uttered in the course
of conversation. Once it has served its communicative purposes it is discarded from
memory – if indeed it has ever lodged there as a complete entity. However, as a result
of modern technology, sound waves can be recorded and broadcast or stored in another
medium and later reconverted into speech-waves. In this way, the temporo-spatial sep-
aration of producer and receiver is made possible. Furthermore, recordings of sponta-
neous discourse and conversation can be transcribed and analysed at leisure as texts.
There is necessarily a close correlation between the categories proposed for the descrip-
tion of language activities and the texts resulting from those activities. Indeed the
same word may be used for both. ‘Translation’ may denote either the act of translating
or the text produced. Similarly, ‘conversation’, ‘debate’ or ‘interview’ may denote the
communicative interaction of the participants, but equally the sequence of their
exchanged utterances, which constitutes a text of a particular type belonging to a cor-
responding genre. 
All the activities of production, reception, interaction and mediation take place in
time. The real-time nature of speech is apparent, both in the activities of speaking and
Users of the Framework may wish to consider and where appropriate state:
•
whether and, if so, how, the differences in the medium and in the psycholinguistic
processes involved in speaking, listening, reading and writing in productive, receptive
and interactive activities are taken into account a) in the selection, adaptation or com-
position of the spoken and written texts presented to learners, b) in the way that the learn-
ers are expected to handle the texts, and c) in the evaluation of the texts which learners
produce;
•
whether and, if so, how learners and teachers are made critically aware of the textual char-
acteristics of a) classroom discourse b) testing and examination rubrics and answers, and
c) instructional and reference materials;
•
whether and, if so, how learners are brought to make the texts they produce more appro-
priate to: a) their communicative purposes, b) the contexts of use (domains, situations,
recipients, constraints), c) the media employed.
Language use and the language user/learner 
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listening and in the medium itself. ‘Before’ and ‘after’ in a spoken text are to be taken
quite literally. In a written text, which is usually (excluding ‘scrolled’ texts) a static spatial
artefact, this is not necessarily so. In production, a written text can be edited, passages
inserted or deleted. We cannot tell in what order the elements have been produced,
though they are presented in a linear order as a string of symbols. Receptively, the
reader’s eye is free to move over the text in any way, possibly following the linear
sequence in strict order, as a child learning to read will generally do. Skilled, mature
readers are much more likely to scan a text for highly information-bearing elements in
order to establish an overall structure of meaning and then return to read more closely
– and if need be to re-read a number of times – such words, phrases, sentences and para-
graphs as are of particular relevance to their needs and purposes. An author or editor
may well use paratextual features (see section 4.4.5.3) to steer this process and, indeed,
plan the text in accordance with the way in which it is expected to be read by the audi-
ence for which it is intended. Similarly, a spoken text may be carefully planned in
advance so as to appear to be spontaneous, yet to ensure that an essential message is
effectively conveyed under the different conditions that constrain the reception of
speech. Process and product are indissolubly linked.
The text is central to any act of linguistic communication, the external, objective link
between producer and receiver, whether they are communicating face to face or at a dis-
tance. The diagrams below show in a schematic form the relation between the
user/learner, on whom the Framework is focused, the interlocutor(s), activities and texts.
1.