THE UNSTATED IMPLICATIONS OF THE COMMON EUROPEAN FRAMEWORK THAT CAN BE FOUND ON CLOSE READING.

02.1 COMMON EUROPEAN FRAMEWORK Background

02.2 Talk on Framework at British Council 2003 teacher conference. Arcireale

02.3 Quotations and extracts from Framework considered

From those that endlessly sell "language competence", this on page 9 of the "Common European Framework" is extraordinarily inept: even stupid.

PAGE 9. "Approach adopted" Chapter 2. .."Any form of language use and learning could be described as follows: Language use, embracing language learning, comprises the actions performed by persons who as individuals and as social agents develop a range of competences, both general and in particular communicative language competences. ( these 3 lines are just saying: "Language is moulded by the individual and society") They draw on the competences at their disposal in various contexts under various conditions and under various constraints (isn't this obvious?) to engage in language activities involving language processes (you use "language processes" when you "engage in Language activities" ie when you SPEAK!! -" WOW!!) to produce and/ or receive texts (texts? what need for this wierd use of text to also mean words said?) in relation to themes in specific domains, activating those strategies which seem most appropriate for carrying out the tasks to be accomplished. (this is a rehash of the previous incompetent expression! = A person's language ability both conditions and is conditioned by his present understanding and by his place in the world.) The monitoring of these actions by the participants (jargon! Why can't they say "the speaker's awareness" instead of "the monitoring of the participants"!) leads to the reinforcement or modification of their competences".( yet another repetition of the opening! How unpleasant is this ubiquitous "competences" in prose so incompetent)
What hope for English in Europe! This is the Ebola disease of our language!! What I find most shocking about the prose in which The Framework is written (and Portfolio too) is that it betrays a mind set that could not appreciate a humanistic notion of education. Its robotic talk of skills and competences.

The CEF, at one level, is a harmless enough - if mad - endeavour to categorise language use. Mad? On page 46 it deals with what it defines as the 4 domains of language use. In each of these domains, it distinguishes what it calls themes. It gives 14 examples of possible themes for one of the domains, each of which it subdivides into 8 possible sub-categories. Each of these sub-categories is divided into a further sub-sub-category. Were the other three domains no further divided, you would end with a total of 4 x 14 x 8 x 6 = 2,688 categories. The CEF rather charmingly admits "this particular selection and organisation of themes, sub themes and specific notions is "not exhaustive". Well, how modest! 2688 is "not exhaustive"!

Now the CEF states (p.8) that it has "no intention of being prescriptive about methods of language teaching: non dogmatic, not irrevocably attached to any one of a number of competing linguistic or educational theories or practices". However the sheer scale of the 33 grids is a massive for-closure on didactics. They will be taught to. They are already conditioning text books.

despite the "no intention.." this on P. 18 sounds rather menacing!! "An open "neutral" framework of reference does not of course imply an absence of policy". AND " but CEF also deals with processes of language acquisition and learning as well as teaching METHODOLOGY". (all this I presume done in a "neutral" fashion!).

P. 19 "Chapters 4 and 5 are mainly concerned with the actions and competences required of a language learner . in order to communicate". No modest neutrality there! The trouble is that CEF is so literal minded, it cannot work by indirections. School kids are expected to seriously describe in French their "daily routines" because that is "real life". Is it however a serious didactics, and is it any surprise if self respecting school kids don't learn languages?

Chapter 6 deals with the plurilingual, pluricultural approach. (one of those politically correct notions that are barely relevant to the pupils I've seen.) Apparently this "approach" entails a "paradigm shift". What a canting appropriation of a serious intellectual concept in order to SPEAK BIG. It is obvious, has always been obvious that learning another language lets one in to another "forma mentis", lets you see out of previously walled up windows in the human experience. Up to a point! But I've heard fluent English speakers of Italian still talking with the mind set of Britannia! So it's a "paradigm shift", this "plurilingualism"? Something big like Galileo or Newton's "paradigm shift"? No, this "paradigm shift" is typical of the inflated tone of the CEF. Out with multi-lingual and in with plurilingual!

P.21 "a conceptual grid which users of the CEF can exploit to describe their system"!! BUT this is ingenuous. If such a "conceptual grid" becomes central and referential for description of any system it will become THE system: and surely that is precisely the aim. The makers of the CEF did not spend all that time and money just making a check list. In fact I was present in Sicily at a presentation of a NEW course book by Longman, in which the authors were boasting of how it "delivers" the necessary language "competences" to satisfy the CEF. It looked a mortifying book for the pupil and the poor teacher will have to progressively tick a passage through various grid labyrinths.

P.21 "the description also needs to be based on THEORIES OF LANGUAGE COMPETENCE", but whose definition of competence and whose valid theories were referred to by this European committee? They will resemble those of the guiding wisdom - the importance given to "functions" and all the language use possible within this or that "domain". (the framework for language teaching in the last 20 years has been according to "functions" and everyday situations). The trouble is that, whereas though these "functions" made for boring banal situations, they were at least manageable and linited in number, the CEF, while repeating this boring "paradigm" of language, is "functions" with knobs on!

02.1 COMMON EUROPEAN FRAMEWORK Background

02.2 Talk on Framework at British Council 2003 teacher conference. Arcireale

02.3 Quotations and extracts from Framework considered