The Action-oriented Approach: A Dynamic Vision of Language Education

This book presents the background to the current shift in language education towards action-oriented/action-based teaching, and provides a theorization of the Action-oriented Approach (AoA). It discusses the concepts and theories that paved the way for the AoA and explores their relevance for the way language education is conceived and implemented in the classroom. In the process, it revisits the concept of competence and discusses the dynamic notions of mediation and plurilingualism. The authors explain the way in which the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) and its recent update, the CEFR Companion Volume, broaden the scope of language education, in particular in relation to the actional turn. The book provides scholars and practitioners with a research-informed description of the AoA, explains its implications for curriculum planning, teaching and assessment, and elaborates on its pedagogical implications.

Enrica Piccardo is a Professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, Canada; Head of the Centre for Educational Research in Language and Literacies (CERLL), OISE and Maître de conférences, Université de Grenoble-Alpes, France. She is a consultant for the Council of Europe.

Brian North is a researcher and consultant to the Council of Europe. After developing the CEFR levels and descriptors, he co-authored the CEFR itself, the prototype European Language Portfolio, and the manual Relating Language Examinations to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe, 2009), and coordinated the CEFR Companion Volume. Other project involvement includes Eaquals’ core inventories (English and French), and more recently, investigation of CEFR use in Canada and Switzerland, alignment of the Canadian Language Benchmarks to the CEFR, and the ECML’s CEFR QualiMatrix. Recent (co-)publications include The CEFR in Practice (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Language Course Planning (Oxford University Press, 2018) and The Action-oriented Approach (Multilingual Matters, 2019).