English Profile: Understanding Language Learners Melissa Good Cambridge University Press at British Council, Moscow 7 October 2009

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What is English Profile and how does it help us understand language learners?

English Profile What it is Who participates What it’s doing How it works

The 6 levels of the CEF (Common European Framework) A Basic User A1 Breakthrough A2 Waystage C Proficient User C1 Effective operational proficiency C2 Mastery B Independent User B1 ThresholdB2 Vantage

The 6 levels of the CEF A Basic User A1 Breakthrough A2 Waystage C Proficient User C1 Effective operational proficiency C2 Mastery B Independent User B1 ThresholdB2 Vantage

B2 Can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either party. C1 Can express him/herself fluently and spontaneously without much obvious searching for expressions. Can use language flexibly and effectively for social, academic and professional purposes... C2 Can understand with ease virtually everything heard or read. Can express him/herself spontaneously, very fluently and precisely... These descriptors can apply to any of the languages spoken in Europe, and ther

How English Profile will make the CEF can-do statements more objective Years of collective expert opinion and judgement (examiners, teachers) but not enough objective verification Using corpora we can look at large numbers of learners pre-assigned to levels and see how they really use language

Cambridge International Corpus Cambridge Learner Corpus

How English Profile will make the CEF can-do statements more objective Years of collective expert opinion and judgement (examiners, teachers) but not enough objective verification Using corpora we can look at large numbers of learners pre-assigned to levels and see how they really use language

English Profile What it is Who participates What it’s doing How it works

English Profile What it is Who participates What it’s doing How it works

English Profile partnership

English Profile network 1 core partners 2 network partners 3 public beneficiaries

English Profile What it is Who participates What it’s doing How it works

English Profile Wordlists and Cambridge Dictionaries

B2 Can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either party. C1 Can express him/herself fluently and spontaneously without much obvious searching for expressions. Can use language flexibly and effectively for social, academic and professional purposes... C2 Can understand with ease virtually everything heard or read. Can express him/herself spontaneously, very fluently and precisely... These descriptors can apply to any of the languages spoken in Europe, and ther

Other English Profile research strands RCEAL ‘criterial features’ CRELLA ‘functional progression’ (Volumes being published in 2011, along with Wordlists available on subscription)

English Profile What it is Who participates What it’s doing How it works

Join our global English Profile community Members of teaching community: contribute learner data to our corpus Academics: submit a research proposal All: use website to find out about English Profile news, events and publications

How does English Profile help us understand language learners? CEF becoming more widely used around the world We have a broad-brush description in the CEF, now we need specific criteria We need to make the criteria more concrete and more objective

English Profile: Understanding Language Learners