Descriptors for Intercultural Competence:
The Council of Europe's new CEFR COMPANION VOLUME
How can you define intercultural competence in practice – i.e. defining it more specifically than in general terms as has been common both in academia and in the intercultural training field?
Detailed specifications of what intercultural communicative competence means have been 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.
Since 2014, the Council of Europe’s Language Policy Division has involved a large number of European experts in a revision project of the CEFR. Acknowledging that some of the skills described in the CEFR had lead to discussions and misunderstandings, 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 the SIEATAR webinar on
"THE MISSING LINK: THE CULTURE-LANGUAGE CONNECTION and HOW TO DEAL WITH IT IN TRAINING".