The Council of Europe's new CEFR COMPANION VOLUME
Specifying intercultural competence
Detailed specifications of what intercultural communicative 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.
Involving a large number of European experts the Council of Europe’s Language Policy Division published the CEFR-Companion Volume in 2020. Acknowledging that some of the skills described in the original CEFR had lead to misunderstandings and discussions, new descriptors for
- Plurilingual repertoire
- Pluricultural repertoire
- Mediation
- Pronunciation
and many more were developed. These prove particularly helpful for defining the interculturally effective use of language, among them English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), and for designing practical training concepts.
You can find more detailed information about the new CEFR-COMPANION VOLUME and how it connects with intercultural competence by watching a SIEATAR webinar on "THE MISSING LINK: THE CULTURE-LANGUAGE CONNECTION and HOW TO DEAL WITH IT IN TRAINING".