A “Curriculum Framework for Romani” (CFR) has been developed to support the teaching of Romani. It was designed for practitioners as well as for manual designers and policy deciders. The CFR concerns age groups 4-16 and can be adapted to local contexts and needs. After a piloting phase a revised version was published in 2008.
To supplement the CFR, additional tools were produced to help more specifically teachers of Romani: two European Language Portfolio models (for age groups 6-11 and 11-16) accompanied by a Handbook for teachers.
These documents are available in English and in Romani. More...

The Language Policy Unit in Strasbourg launched this activity with a view to promoting social cohesion in the follow-up to the 3rd Summit of Heads of State and Government (Warsaw, May 2005). It is concerned with the development of effective skills in the language(s) of instruction which are essential for successful learning across the whole curriculum.
This project deals with the language(s) of instruction in school which is most often the national or official language(s) and also the mother tongue of the majority of students; in a number of contexts this language is of course their second language where they have a different mother tongue. Within the wider concept of plurilingualism and respect for linguistic diversity, the project will also address the needs of these learners with regard to competence in the national/official language. More...

Council of Europe assistance with self-evaluation of national and regional policies

The Language Policy Unit offers expertise to assist member States who so wish in reflecting upon their language education policy. More...

The Language Policy Unit has developed a Guide for the production of RLDs aimed at assisting teams in developing an RLD for a national or regional language. It contains a series of examples that will be supplemented as further RLDs are finalised. A questionnaire is provided to enable teams to report on their work during the development of their reference level and to submit it in due course to the Council of Europe. More...

The descriptions must comprise the following common features:

• because the description of each level for each language emanates from the same document: the CEFR;
• because, together with the CEFR, the Manual for relating language examinations to the levels of the CEFR) and the videos/CD-Roms giving samples of levels for the setting of certification tests), these descriptions are one of the anchor points proposed by the Council of Europe’s Language Policy Unit for the development of language programmes that are consistent with one another, from one language to another and also with the common tools which already exist;
• because their convergence alone can give them credibility and make it worth people’s while to use them. It is unrealistic to imagine that the development of these reference descriptions, which select and distribute a certain verbal material by level of competence, can be based solely on “scientific” procedures: their audience will also depend on the consensus they are able to generate among the professionals concerned, especially as the Framework leaves decision makers the responsibility of specifying the morpho-syntactic material (See user box on page 115 in the English edition (CUP) of the CEFR).

Similarly to and following on from the threshold level, these CEFR level description by language are intended to provide extra legitimacy for languages which need to demonstrate that they can be taught and that their teaching can be defined in clear technical terms. More...

Launched in 2001, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages marked a major turning point in describing specifications of language-learning targets; they were no longer designated as ‘threshold” or “Vantage level” etc, but by the appropriate level of the CEFR scale (A1 to C2).
The CEFR has been disseminated far and wide and has been translated into approximately 40 languages. It has now become a common reference instrument for organising language teaching and certification in many member States. More...

In order to meet the teaching and certification requirements, the level concept as defined was extended to cover specification of levels lying immediately below and above the threshold level. In the light of the developments in this field, particularly as regards the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), some of which emerged at around the same time as the latter, other levels were formulated for a number of languages, paying particular attention, for instance, to socio-cultural components or learner autonomy, by pinpointing a possible definition for the concept of “learning to learn”. A lower level (Waystage) was created for English, as was a level situated above the threshold, also starting with English (Vantage Level). Other language versions then followed. The three ascending level descriptions (Waystage, Threshold and Vantage) provided a basis for designing programmes and producing multimedia courses and were developed in parallel with the CEFR. These proficiency levels constitute one of the origins of the six-level scale of the CEFR.
Learning target specifications (for the threshold and/or other levels) have been produced or updated for Basque, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovene, Spanish, and Welsh. More...

A Compilation of Introductions and Prefaces to the series of level descriptions developed over a period of 30 years (1975 to 2005) provides an insight into how this tool has been developed and has been adapted for individual languages. These specifications were developed by national teams, and in the majority of cases, with guidance from Dr J.L.M. Trim, Director of Council of Europe Modern Languages projects from 1975 to 1997. More...

The first specification of this “threshold level” was formulated for the English language (Threshold level, 1975), quickly followed by French (Un Niveau Seuil, 1976). These two instruments have been used de facto as models for the same type of reference instruments that were produced subsequently for other languages, but they were adapted to suit the peculiar features of each language. These threshold levels have also gradually changed, and they still play a major role in language teaching, often serving as the basis for new national teaching programmes. They help make the textbooks more motivating and facilitate development of more realistic and transparent evaluation systems. More...

Some of the instruments produced within the Council of Europe have played a decisive role in the teaching of so-called “foreign” languages by promoting methodological innovations and new approaches to designing teaching programmes. They have facilitated a fresh approach to communicating these teaching methods in a manner potentially more conducive to operational appropriation of unknown languages and therefore to “freedom of movement of persons and ideas”. Accordingly, from around the mid-1970s onwards, specialists worked out an operational model for abilities which specific groups of learners (tourists, businesspersons, migrants, etc) require for using a language for independent communication in a country in which this language is the everyday medium for communication. By thus identifying these groups’ language needs they were able to pinpoint the knowledge and know-how required for attaining this communication “threshold”. More...