ALIGNING LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT WITH THE CEFR. A PRACTICAL FRAMEWORK

The CEFR has had a more profound impact than originally anticipated on teachers, learners and researchers from a diversity of linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Due to the sophisticated theoretical framework underlying it, the interpretation and implementation of the CEFR may be challenging to language teaching practitioners outside Europe, especially those who are English as a foreign language (EFL) learners themselves and are used to more traditional teacher-centered language teaching and learning. The main purpose of this paper is to discuss the use of the CEFR in the field of language assessment, with a particular focus on issues related to the alignment of assessments with the CEFR. Before discussing alignment issues, however, it is important to first consider the work that led to the development of the CEFR and its levels, which is presented in the next section