Fostering engagement with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and the European Language Portfolio: Learning from good practice in university language centres

Carson, Lorna

doi:10.1515/cercles-2016-0013

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 1 publication

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“…Due to its meticulously developed and flexibly tailorable components as well as its underlying methodological considerations (Little, 2012;Nagai et al, 2020), the European Language Portfolio (ELP) offers a readily adaptable framework (cf. Carson, 2016;Gori, 2013;Schärer, 2011) for portfolio projects of the kind described in this study. As this research is about enhancing cooperation skills at universitylevel business English courses, the following brief literature review on portfolio research focuses on student autonomy, cooperation, project work and business English in connection with the ELP.…”

Section: Portfolio Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving university students' cooperation skills through portfolio projects: A pilot study

Bánhegyi

Fajt

2023

JALKI

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In the autumn semester of the academic year 2019/2020, a portfolio approach was introduced and piloted in one of the ESP courses offered by Budapest Business School's Faculty of Finance and Accountancy. Besides developing ESP skills, the portfolio tasks developed for the purpose of this research and introduced during the research project reported herein were intended to improve students' cooperation skills, which are essential in the job market. At the beginning of the same semester in order to forecast how successful this portfolio approach could be, we intended to obtain insights into our students' initial attitudes towards cooperation with peers and wished to look into the likelihood of participants' positive reception of cooperation-purpose portfolio tasks. To this end, a quantitative questionnaire study was carried out through an online platform amongst 49 Hungarian university students. This paper presents the results of this study. First, the relevant theoretical background is presented, namely, cooperation as a soft skill and its subskills. Then the possibilities and opportunities of improving cooperation skills during ESP classes are discussed: in the scope of our study, relying on the methodological approach offered by of the European Language Portfolio, cooperation skills were developed through cooperation-purpose portfolio tasks. Next, our study describes the quantitative questionnaire study, its administration and the resulting data. Our results show that students have a positive initial attitude towards cooperation with peers and cooperation-purpose portfolio tasks, and it has been found that the portfolio approach used in this research project seems to be a useful strategy for developing participants' cooperation skills.

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Section: Portfolio Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving university students' cooperation skills through portfolio projects: A pilot study

Bánhegyi

Fajt

2023

JALKI

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“…For example, Walsh and Rísquez (2020) found that students with EAL engaged less in flipped classroom activities in the virtual learning environment than their native English-speaking peers, while the use of gamification, involving English language learning activities, to support the initiation of Chinese students in an Irish university has proved effective (Zhang et al, 2017). A study into the use of online tools to assess short presentations also accentuates the affordances of technology for assessment in the EAP context (Carson, 2016). The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a move to predominantly online learning in HE, and early indicators, such as the annual Student engagement survey point to challenges this has raised for international students (HEA, 2021) and the need for further research into language-related issues in the digital learning environment.…”

Section: Higher Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language teaching and learning in Ireland: 2012–2021

et al. 2022

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The language teaching landscape in Ireland has changed considerably over the last 30 years as a result of substantial and sustained inward migration into the country during this period. These social and demographic developments have added to the country's already bilingual context and created a much more varied multilingual landscape than had existed in previous decades. They have also impacted various aspects of language teaching policy, provision and methods for both indigenous and foreign languages. This article reviews research on language teaching and learning in Ireland published during the period 2012–2021. We discuss relevant work disseminated primarily in peer-reviewed journals (national and international), as well as in books, commissioned reports and chapters in edited volumes. The research and policy documents presented concern the teaching and learning of Irish, English and Modern Foreign Languages as second and/or additional languages across all levels of education. They address language teacher training contexts as well. We believe that this review of research demonstrates the extent to which recent inquiries in these domains have advanced knowledge and practice in the Irish context, and have also informed the international research community more generally.

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“…It is important to consider how the CEFR/ELP, which was designed as a common assessment framework across contexts, can be translated into context-relevant forms (Byrnes, 2007) because their application requires a shift in pedagogic routines to bring curricula, pedagogy, learning and assessment into productive interaction with one another (Little, 2007). Nevertheless, despite the wide application of the CEFR in different sectors of language education (Carson, 2016), its function as an assessment instrument in local contexts has remained under-explored (Jin et al, 2017; Runnels, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Co-constructing the assessment criteria for EFL writing by instructors and students: A participative approach to constructively aligning the CEFR, curricula, teaching and learning

Zhao

2020

Language Teaching Research

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The current assessment in language classrooms prevailingly utilizes the criteria provided by instructors, regarding learners as passive recipients of assessment. The current study drew upon sustainable assessment and the community of practice to highlight the importance of involving learners in co-constructing the assessment criteria and argued that using the criteria provided by instructors could lead to discrepancy between assessment, teaching, and learning. It adopted a participatory approach and investigated how to involve learners in co-constructing the assessment criteria with instructors in tertiary English writing instruction in China, based on the European Language Profile (ELP), an evolved version of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). Two writing instructors and 146 tertiary students played different, yet interactive roles in adapting the assessment criteria in the local context. Instructors drafted the criteria in line with curricula, teaching, learning and learners. Learners utilized the draft criteria in a training session and suggested possible modifications to the criteria in a survey. Suggestions were used to revise the descriptors alongside teachers’ reflections via reflective logs. A follow-up survey explored students’ perceptions of the feasibility and usefulness of the modified descriptors to investigate the effectiveness of co-constructing the assessment criteria for learning and reveal further improvement if necessary. Vigilant decision-making processes were thickly described regarding how assessment descriptors were selected, arranged, and modified to constructively align them with curricula, teaching, and learning. Statistical and thematic analyses were conducted to examine the accessibility, feasibility, and usefulness of the assessment descriptors prior to and after the modifications. Results substantiated the effectiveness and thus the importance of co-constructing assessment criteria for enhancing the quality of assessment criteria and developing learners’ cognitive and metacognitive knowledge of writing and assessment. Implications for language tutors regarding co-constructing assessment criteria in local contexts were deliberated on at the end of the article.

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Fostering engagement with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and the European Language Portfolio: Learning from good practice in university language centres

Cited by 3 publications

References 1 publication

Improving university students' cooperation skills through portfolio projects: A pilot study

Improving university students' cooperation skills through portfolio projects: A pilot study

Language teaching and learning in Ireland: 2012–2021

Co-constructing the assessment criteria for EFL writing by instructors and students: A participative approach to constructively aligning the CEFR, curricula, teaching and learning

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