The Council of Europe's new CEFR COMPANION VOLUME
What is Intercultural Competence exactly?
Detailed specifications of what exactly intercultural competence means in practice are provided by the Council of Europe’s Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR 2001), albeit that the relevance of this has often been underestimated.
In 2020, after involving a large number of European experts, the Council of Europe’s Language Policy Division published the CEFR-Companion Volume. Acknowledging that some of the skills described in the original CEFR had lead to misunderstandings and controversial discussions, new descriptors for
- Plurilingual repertoire
- Pluricultural repertoire
- Mediation
- Pronunciation
and others were developed. These prove helpful for defining the interculturally effective use of language, among them English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), and for designing practical training concepts.
Should you be interested in finding more detailed information about the new CEFR-COMPANION VOLUME and how it connects with intercultural competence, you may want to watch a SIEATAR webinar on "THE MISSING LINK: THE CULTURE-LANGUAGE CONNECTION and HOW TO DEAL WITH IT IN TRAINING".