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

parts of the tasks themselves. 
Classroom tasks, whether reflecting ‘real-life’ use or essentially ‘pedagogic’ in nature,
are communicative to the extent that they require learners to comprehend, negotiate and
express meaning in order to achieve a communicative goal. The emphasis in a communi-
cative task is on successful task completion and consequently the primary focus is on
meaning as learners realise their communicative intentions. However, in the case of tasks
designed for language learning or teaching purposes, performance is concerned both with
meaning and the way meanings are comprehended, expressed and negotiated. A changing
balance needs to be established between attention to meaning and form, fluency and accu-
racy, in the overall selection and sequencing of tasks so that both task performance and
language learning progress can be facilitated and appropriately acknowledged. 
7.2
Task performance
In considering task performance in pedagogical contexts it is necessary to take into
account both the learner’s competences and the conditions and constraints specific to a
particular task (which may be manipulated in order to modify the level of difficulty of
classroom tasks), and the strategic interplay of learner competences and task parameters
in carrying out a task.
7.2.1
Competences
Tasks of any kind require the activation of a range of appropriate general competences,
for example: knowledge and experience of the world; sociocultural knowledge (concern-
ing life in the target community and essential differences between practices, values and
beliefs in that community and the learner’s own society); skills such as intercultural
skills (mediating between the two cultures), learning skills, and everyday practical skills
and know-how (see section 5.1). In order to accomplish a communicative task, whether
in a real-life or a learning/examination setting, the language user or learner draws also
on communicative language competences (linguistic, sociolinguistic and pragmatic
knowledge and skills – see section 5.2). In addition, individual personality and attitudi-
nal characteristics affect the user or learner’s task performance.
Successful task accomplishment may be facilitated by the prior activation of the
learner’s competences, for example, in the initial problem-posing or goal-setting phase
of a task by providing or raising awareness of necessary linguistic elements, by drawing
on prior knowledge and experience to activate appropriate schemata, and by encourag-
ing task planning or rehearsal. In this way the processing load during task execution and
monitoring is reduced and the learner’s attention is freer to deal with any unexpected
Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: learning, teaching, assessment
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content and/or form-related problems that may arise, thereby increasing the likelihood
of successful task completion in both quantitative and qualitative terms. 
7.2.2
Conditions and constraints
In addition to user/learner competences and characteristics, performance is affected by
certain task-related conditions and constraints which can vary from task to task, and the
teacher or textbook writer can control a number of elements in order to adjust the level
of task difficulty upwards or downwards.