Europian Language Portfolio
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EUROPIAN LANGUAGE PORTFOLIO
Anke Fedrowitz
Europe is primarily defined by the democratic development of the individual European states, by its diversity of languages and cultures and by the ability and willingness of European citizens to communicate across cultural and linguistic borders.
The Council of Europe's European Language Portfolio documents the skills necessary to communicate in a multilingual Europe in such a way that they are readily accepted and understood in different countries.The Portfolio contains three parts:
The Language Passport indicates the level of proficiency reached in all the languages spoken by the holder of the Passport.
Language knowledge and skills are differentiated in line with the Council of Europe's competence levels for the teaching and learning of foreign languages.Furthermore, the Language Passport contains information regarding, for example, certificates and diplomas which have been awarded, type and length of language learning, stays abroad in areas where the target language is spoken and projects concerning intercultural and cross-border learning.
The Language Passport can inform interested parties what the learner can do in different languages and can be used for example when applying for a job, starting a new job, changing schools or educational institutions, taking further education courses.
The Language Learning Biography documents the holder's personal language and intercultural learning history and progresses and supports self-assessment. It encourages dialogue with teachers and helps young people to organise and take responsibility for their own language learning. At the end of each educational level the data from the Language Learning Biography is summarised and recorded in the Language Passport.
The Dossier contains a listed collection of all types of personal work which the holder of the Portfolio considers to be especially successful. Any kind of work can be brought together in the Dossier-examples of written work in the languages contained in the Language Learning Biography, recordings of oral communication, special productions on audio or video cassette, diskette or CD-ROM. The Dossier has a double function- on the one hand it helps to make the learner conscious of learning progress, on the other hand it can be used to document skills ,for example when applying for a job.
The acquired skills in each language are described in terms of areas of use and levels of competence.
Areas of use: Listening / Reading / Spoken interaction / Spoken production / Writing
Language Competence Level: A1=breakthrough / A2=waystage / B1=threshold / B2=vantage/ C1=effective proficiency / C2=mastery.
The Portfolio is published by CILT and is available by mail order from: Central Books Ltd, 99 Wallis Road London E9 5LN / email:
Working with the Portfolio
I have been working with the Portfolio since 2001 in English and in German as a second language - but always with migrantchildren, who are at least bilingual, at the age of 10 to 13.They attend school in Osnabrueck / Niedersachsen, class 5 and 6 - the so called and, from next term on, abolished Orientierungsstufe.
The first reason for introducing the Portfolio was my personal anger about the arrogance towards the children's multilingual competence - as long as their first language is not one of the traditional school foreign languages English, French and perhaps Italian or Spanish. All the other languages - at our school for example Russian, Turkish, Portuguese, Albanian, Bosnian, Arabic and Polish - seem to be second rate and not worth being mentioned, sometimes even seen as a handicap for the task to succeed in our school system. There are teachers who talk about "sprachlose Kinder" meaning children who don't speak German yet. It's ridiculous, because we would live on a rather quiet planet if all „Non-German - speakers" were really "sprachlos". The lack of respect as far as the migrant children’slanguage abilities are concerned still makes me angry - even a few months before my retirement.
One of the most important questions in this context is of course:What is multilingualism / plurilingualism?
In recent years the concept of plurilingualism has grown in importance in the Council of Europe's approach to language learning. Plurilingualism differs from multilingualism, which is the knowledge of a number of languages, or the co-existence of different languages in a given society. Multilingualism may be attained by simply diversifying the languages on offer in a particular school or educational system, or by encouraging pupils to learn more than one foreign language or by supporting existing mother tongues (Muttersprachen).
Beyond this the plurilingual approach emphasises the fact that as an individual person's experience of language in its cultural contexts expands, from the language of the home to that of society at large and then to the languages of other peoples (whether learnt at school or college , or by direct experience) , he or she does not keep these languages and cultures in strictly separated mental compartments, but rather builds up a communicative competence to which all knowledge and experience of language contributes and in which languages interrelate and interact.
In different situations a person can call flexibly upon different parts of this competence to achieve effective communication. For instance, partners may switch from one language or dialect to another, exploiting the ability of each to express themselves in one language and to understand the other, or a person may call upon the knowledge of a number of languages to make sense of a text, written or even spoken, in a previously "unknown" language, recognising words from a common international store in a new guise.
From this perspective, the aim of language education is profoundly modified. It is no longer seen as simply to achieve „mastery" of one or two, or even three languages, each taken in isolation, with the "ideal native speaker" as the ultimate model. Instead, the aim is to develop a linguistic repertoire in which all linguistic abilities have a place. This implies, of course, that the languages offered in educational institutions should be diversified and students given the opportunity to develop a plurilingual competence.
Furthermore, once it is recognised that language learning is a lifelong task, the development of a young person's motivation, skill and confidence in facing new language experience out of school comes to be of central importance.
The recent developments in the Council of Europe's language programme have been designed to produce tools for use by all members of the language teaching profession in the promotion of plurilingualism.In particular, The European LanguagePortfolio provides a format in which language learning and intercultural experiences of the most diverse kinds can be recorded and formally recognised. The Portfolio makes it possible for learners to document their progress by recording learning experiences of all kinds over a wide range of languages, much of which would otherwise be unattested and unrecognised.
The difficulty for normal teachers (whoever they are) is that introducing the Portfolio costs a lot of time, especially with younger pupils. Working with fixed material - book, cassettes, computer-programmes etc. - is problematical enough, especially if one has to reach a certain level and a certain amount of units in a given book have to be worked through in very different classes of increasing numbers. But the pupils love working with the Portfolio because it includes a lot of discussion and individual work. But they want it to be correct and well presented, that means a lot of extra correcting-work for the teacher, and not everybody has got that time and energy.
I could and can only take a small group of migrant children to deal with the Portfolio because of the time-factor for me and the pupils. We spent several extra hours with it - at school in the afternoons or sometimes at my house with hot chocolate and biscuits. But it is fun and highly worthwhile - not just because of the biscuits! It is fascinating to hear the children talking about languages - they all deal with several of them in different situations. Here are some of their quotes:
"When I think about it, I am sure that I forgot all my Russian. But when I phone my grandma in Kazakhstan I speak it, because she can't speak German. The words come all by themselves!" (Viktor, 12)
"I didn't speak Georgian for quite a while, because I speak Russian at home and German at school with my friends and teachers. But I am not worried about it - I am sure that the Georgian language is in my head somewhere." (Nino, 11)
"I have to go to the Turkish lessons because my grandfather would be furious if I would make mistakes in our family language. He would get at my parents for not bringing me up properly - we can't risk that." (Mehmet, 12)
"Sometimes there is a big knot in my head - a knot of words and languages. I have to take a deep breath then to calm down. It can be really worrying and the worst bit is if anybody just turns to me and says:" What does that word mean in Portuguese?" Sometimes I can answer, but sometimes I can't especially when I get the feeling that the other person wants to test me proving or at least trying to prove that I don't really master two languages." (Lara, 12)
"Lara is right! It is so important how I feel - with a friendly person I can talk endlessly - in Russian or German. Sometimes I don't even notice which language I'm using. But as soon as I feel under pressure, I start stuttering, searching for words." (Olga, 11)
"Perhaps that's the reason why it is so easy to talk to my Grandma in Russia. I know she is interested in me and does not wait for mistakes. We simply want to communicate." (Milana, 12)
I have got some of the children's Portfolios - in English and in German. The kids preferred the German ones, not because of the language but because of their age: The English Portfolio is for younger children- 12-year-olds want to be taken more seriously... But nevertheless: It was great fun to work with it! And we all felt great dealing with different languages!
The children are all going to change school at the end of this term - and they are going to take their Portfolio with them. I can only hope that some teachers will be interested in this sort of work and go on with it! Some of "last-year-Portfolio-kids" went on their own - phoning from time to time and joining the "hot-chocolate-and-biscuit-group" to show the results and discuss them. But I'm afraid that won't last (see "time-factor") - unless the European Language Portfolio becomes part of the curriculum - so that is not exotic but a normal in day-to-day school life.
Contact: Anke Fedrowitz, Intercultural Advisor
Blumenthalstr.2, 49076 Osnabrück / Germany
e-mail: