Work Package 3: The Didactic Model (23.5.2009)
Partner 6, University of Helsinki
The Didactic Model
Advanced Information
In modern pedagogical thinking, it is very often underlined that the earlier teaching–learning process is not quite enough. Instead, many foreign language teachers have started to talk about the Teaching–Studying–Learning (TSL) process, in which all three components are equally important.
This is also the starting point in the WebCEF project. In addition, as the main focus is on evaluation, we have extended the TSL process to also cover the Evaluation component, leading to a Teaching–Studying–Learning–Evaluation (TSLE) process.
In foreign language education, enough attention should normally be paid to all four components of this process: teaching, studying, learning and evaluation, and not only to any single one of them. It would be possible to ‘model’ the whole TSLE process at different levels of abstraction. Studying, for instance, could be thought of as practice, consisting of pedagogically-sound communicative tasks that then lead to learning. The overall pedagogical rationale behind the TSLE process is in Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) or, more recently, in Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) or Task-Supported Language Teaching (TSLT), which we will discuss in other parts of the MindBook.
In the WebCEF project, the TSLE process will provide an overall context for all the partners, but the practical work in the work packages will concentrate more directly on the following aspects:
(i)(creating and) assessing pedagogically-sound communicative tasks that
*are likely to promote meaningful and effective language learning (as well as reflective teaching and purposive studying), and
*which can be related to the CEF descriptors (and national/regional additions and adaptations) and testing/assessment procedures derived from these descriptors.
(ii)taking into account salient features of transcultural communication and its impact on the communicative tasks, the ways of implementing them and on the ways used when they are assessed in different cultures and contexts.
The asset of WebCEF may profit considerably from contrastive comparisons made between the partners, leading to better understanding of the educational systems in which evaluation is an integral part. It would, for instance, be important and educational to learn if or to what extent the partner countries have already adopted the communicative language proficiency as described in the CEF, including the language proficiency scales in their national or regional curricula in junior/senior secondary education. (This information is available on Drupal at
The CEF should be taken into account as a whole, not only the language proficiency scales. The concept(ion) of communicative language (proficiency) in particular should be borne in mind.