Guest editors: Ariadna Strugielska and Katarzyna Piątkowska (Nicolaus Copernicus University).
In 2001 the Council of Europe published the CEFR (2001) with a view to creating a common basis for language learning and teaching across Europe as well as promoting plurilingual and intercultural education. Sixteen years later a CEFR Companion Volume with New Descriptors (2017) was published to further strengthen coherence in language education in Europe. Adopting an action-oriented approach, the CEFR focuses on language learning facilitated by general and communicative language competences, providing sets of key concepts and illustrative descriptors for communicative language activities, strategies and competences. No less important for effective intercultural communication, however, are other areas which go beyond functional language abilities. Though apparently related to skill-based actions, these aspects (including competences for democratic culture, (inter)cultural competences, schematic competence, mediation and plurilingualism) and underspecified at the approach level of the CEFR (2001) and/or unevenly developed in its descriptors.
The aim of the special issue is to explore in what ways areas outside the action-oriented functional core of the CEFR 2001 can be expanded beyond their original conception and whether this evolution is predicted by the direction(s) taken in the modified 2017 version at the level of both key notions and illustrative descriptors.
Papers are invited on (but not limited to) the following areas:
− beyond the action-based approach of the CEFR (Council of Europe 2017) in the light of the latest research on second language acquisition/learning
− the learning, teaching and assessment of ‘beyond action-based skills’
− the nexus between ‘beyond action-based skills’ and functional language abilities
Submission information
Planned date of print publication: February 2021
All papers will be published online as soon as they are accepted and finalised for publication.
Papers should be submitted to the guest editors by 31 December 2019
For expressions of interest and further details, please contact the guest editors at