CEFcult project on language skills
 | On the 1st of November 2009 the European project CEFcult will start. The project aims at online CEF-based assessment of oral language proficiency for intercultural professional communication. CELSTEC is one of the partners of this project. |
Proficiency in languages
Language skills are becoming more and more important, especially in intercultural professional communication. The Council of Europe has developed a Common European Framework (CEF) of Reference that describes the levels of proficiency in languages. CEFcult will build on the results of the WebCEF project and will develop an online environment that helps to assess the oral proficiency in languages, and more specifically the oral proficiency for intercultural professional communication. This way CEFcult brings together the worlds of higher education and enterprise. This online environment will be making optimal use of web 2.0 possibilities.
Output
The project intends to develop several concrete outputs, including:
- a modular, customizable web-environment that allows for self-, peer-, and expert- assessment, integrating CEF-scales with other rating scales for language and intercultural competence
- a set of authentic communication tasks (scenarios) through which learners can assess their speaking skills for intercultural professional purposes in different European languages
- training materials for self-, peer- and expert assessment in education and enterprises
- research-supported guidelines for foreign language teaching and educational policy based on observed international inter-rater differences.
- viable and tested model(s) for collaborative assessment among higher education institutes, enterprises, and various partnership brokers.
The environment can be used by:
- employees
- those about to (re-)enter the workplace
- language teachers
- in-company trainers.
EU Lifelong Learning Programme
The project will be funded by the EU Lifelong Learning Programme of the Education, Audiovisual & Culture Executive Agency (key activity 2: Languages).
The coordinator of the CEFcult project is Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium).
