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Premiere Class privileges the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) for developing its language programs and customize them according to the learner’s profile. The CEFR serves as a comprehensive guide to develop lesson plans, select teaching and learning materials and assess the language skills of the students. Students are empowered to assess their own progress by asking themselves where they are in their learning and “what I can do in the language”. Teachers, in collaboration with their students, craft a learning plan that continuously evolves according to the students’ needs, interest and progress in fluency.
The CEFR is an international and valuable tool to describe, assess and track language proficiency. Over the past twelve years, professionals in education in Ontario and across Canada have mobilized to deepen their understanding of the CEFR and have come to value its ability to transform and enrich the teaching and learning experience. The CEFR describes what learners can do in the targeted language at different stages of their learning. One of the many elements of the CEFR useful to teaching and learning a language is a six-point scale from A1 for beginners, up to C2 for those who have become highly proficient in a language.
There are numerous ways in which the CEFR can inform teaching practice. A consortium of educators who have been studying the CEFR for years have summarized its key principles into ten big ideas that can help teachers access some of the theory behind the CEFR and find inspiration for their planning and practice. Here are five “big ideas” that we focus on at Premiere Class:
The action-oriented approach
The learner’s perspective: the learner views himself/herself as a social agent who has a genuine need to communicate in order to accomplish a goal or resolve a problem.
Educators consider the domains “personal, educational, public, and occupational” in which the learner may need to use his/her French.
Educators engineer opportunities for learners to apply their knowledge and skills in a personally relevant context, with a communicative goal.
Authentic tasks
Tasks are authentic, open-ended and related to real-life domains of the student.
The CEFR refers to different types of tasks “pedagogic tasks”, “real-life, target or rehearsal tasks”.
These tasks are associated with creating a communicative need, such as a problem to resolve, a decision to be made, or an objective to be accomplished. They often involve interaction or collaboration as students communicate for a specific purpose and under some element of constraint.
Interaction
Interaction plays a “central role in communication”. Opportunities to interact spontaneously in French increase student confidence.
Interaction is more than a sequence of reception and production activities.
Interaction pertains to both oral and written communicative situations.
Differentiation: the needs of the learner
The learners’ competencies and characteristics are taken into consideration, as well as “cognitive, affective and linguistic” factors.
Students need to practice, discuss and reflect on strategies. They use organized and purposeful actions to carry out a task which they set for themselves, are assigned or are faced with in their lives.
Educators consider the factors that will enhance success for all students.
Communicative competences
The emphasis is on the development of student competences: oral comprehension, oral interaction and production, written comprehension and written interaction and production.
Students develop proficiency in each competence through language activities ranging from structured to open-ended and those that require critical thinking. These activities support the ability to engage in spontaneous activities that involve students in applying their knowledge and skills in order to communicate.
Students also draw upon general competencies: “savoir”, “savoir-faire”, “savoir-être” and “savoir-apprendre”.
Source:
Bohlke D., Richards, J. (2011). Four Corners Student's Book
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