We are happy to announce that the ISBN version of the CEFR Companion Volume, which has been received with such interest since it was made available online in February 2018 in English and French, is about to go to press. This final version which now has one unified set of descriptors for signing competences, will be available in English by the end of the year and will be followed by the French and other language versions soon thereafter.
The Companion volume aims to do several things. It provides a user-friendly summary of the aims and main principles of the CEFR. For many practitioners, this helpful summary will be all that is needed even though it does not, of course, replace the full CEFR, which will remain the reference text.
It updates the CEFR descriptors and extends them to include areas such as mediation, plurilingual/pluricultural competence as well as descriptors for younger learners. There are also more descriptors at levels A1 and C. These additions will contribute to the quality inclusive education for all, and the promotion of plurilingualism and pluriculturalism.
Not least, the new volume adds an important dimension to the CEFR in that it includes descriptors for signing competences.
In addition, this new edition of all the descriptors is modality and gender neutral.
No simple title could possibly outline all of these purposes and there has been some discussion around the final title. In the end, we have decided that the working title Companion Volume (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment: Companion Volume with New Descriptors / Cadre européen commun de référence pour les langues : apprendre, enseigner, évaluer : Volume complémentaire avec de nouveaux descripteurs), which has already been disseminated quite widely, will be the final title of the publication.
The Council of Europe is confident that this new work will make an important contribution to the development of language education.
Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) website
