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

Upper secondary level:
•
FL1 and FL2 each continue in the same direction but at a more complex and
demanding level. Learners who opt for a third foreign language (FL3) do so pri-
marily for ‘vocational’ purposes and relate their language learning to a more
professionally-oriented or other academic branch of their studies (for example
orientation towards the language of commerce, economics or technology).
It should be stressed that in this second scenario, as in the first, the final plurilin-
gual and pluricultural profile of the learners may be ‘uneven’ to the extent that:
•
the level of proficiency in the languages making up plurilingual competence
varies;
•
the cultural aspects are unequally developed for the different languages;
•
it is not necessarily the case that for the languages in which linguistic aspects
received most attention the cultural aspect is also the most developed;
•
‘partial’ competences, as described above, are integrated.
To these brief indications it may be added that in all cases time should be allowed at some
point or other, in the case of all languages, for considering the approaches and learning
paths to which learners, in their respective development, are exposed or for which they
opt. This implies building into curriculum design at school scope for explicitness, the
Linguistic diversification and the curriculum
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progressive development of ‘learning awareness’ and the introduction of general lan-
guage education which helps learners establish metacognitive control over their own
competences and strategies. Learners situate these in relation to other possible compe-
tences and strategies and with regard to the language activities in which they are applied
in order to accomplish tasks within specific domains. 
In other words, one of the aims of curriculum design, whatever the particular curric-
ulum, is to make learners aware of categories and their dynamic interrelationship as pro-
posed in the model adopted for the reference framework.