ITS AMBIGUITY. IS IT JUST A TEST SYSTEM: A LIST OF "COMPETENCES", OR A WHOLE DIDACTICS? MOST EXPERTS AND THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT REGARD IT AS A WAY TO BETTER LANGUAGE LEARNING. ITS SOURCE, THE COMMON EUROPEAN FRAMEWORK, SAID THAT IT HAD NO PREFERENCES ABOUT METHODS. HOWEVER, IN REALITY IT TOO IMPLIED A DIDACTICS

IN MY VIEW ITS JUJST THE PLAN OF A PHRASE BOOK

03.1 EUROPEAN PORTFOLIO OF LANGUAGES. Background

03.2 Talk on Portfolio at British Council 2004 conference. Venice

03.3 "Can't we work with Portfolio" answered?

03.4 Critique of a set of Portfolio boxes

 

Last year in Sicily I criticised the "Common European Framework". I wrote the article on 03.2 after the conference in Venice in 2004. I spoke there about the Portfolio, but gave most of the time to a DVD of lessons done in Italian schools. I therefore felt I would like to expand on what I had only a limited time to express at Venice.

The Portfolio is both bureaucratic and vague (viz, the rubbery "descriptors"). The didactic principle is the failed distinction, "acquire" and "learn" a language. In schools this muddies the water terribly and has caused a DISASTER! The alternative that I showed on the DVD of school lessons was based on GRAMMAR, but grammar of a sort that IS NOT USED. (It's talking grammar!) To counter the theologians of the conventional wisdom, I dealt in facts: the real lessons on DVD, the companion lesson material that I handed out, and the anonymous comments of pupils in schools. These anonymous comments are a good indicator of what students see as valid. They are often very shrewd about what makes effective teaching. Though I abbreviated them, I left out no pupil.(see 06.4 - 06.8 for these comments). In the week long intensive courses that my wife and I do in Italian schools, we always ask students to write anonymous comments.

INTRODUCTION (for conference paper see next section 03.2)

What is wrong with The European Portfolio of Languages ts claims of novelty. It dresses up what is basically a testing system (that is difficult tio teach to), as a tool of qualitative improvement - in learning and teaching. Pure fantasy Its needless confusion of teachers. Is it a whole system of teaching, or just a test sustem. "Experts" disagree. Its funds obliterate alternatives and enforce validation of what is an illusory system. The gaderene rush of state employers (teachers) to please superiors and window dress the school with "The Europoean Portfolio of Langauges". The funds, and thus its bullying power, its busy bureaucrats, its merely presentational appeal to distracted politicians and head teachers ("dirigenti" in Italy) has made it a gigantic house of cards. Recently after being present for a celebratory "conference" on "vehicular" English teaching, a trade unionist told me that he was having to meet those very teachers because they were furious about the negative effects of what they were in a sense forced professionally to celebrate that day! The Portfolio uses humanistic warm wards about "autonomy of the student" but given the dullness of its language content as implied by the A1 A2 etc descriptors", it is an insult to teenagers that they should be "empowered" to be "autonomous" about something so boring and ineffectual.

It gives second life to what has disastrously failed in 20 and more years. The "communicative approach" which was based on the supposition that at school you imitate the natural "acquisition" of L1 learners

See my section 04 on "A radical alternative". What I think, after 35 years of experience, needs to be the basic format of teaching. For detailed consideration of Portfolio see 03.2 Talk on Portfolio at British Council 2004 conference. Venice

03.1 EUROPEAN PORTFOLIO OF LANGUAGES. Background

03.2 Talk on Portfolio at British Council 2004 conference. Venice

03.3 "Can't we work with Portfolio"?

03.4 Critique of a set of Portfolio boxes