The Common European Framework of Reference: The Globalisation of Language Education Policy ed. by M. Byram and L. Parmenter (review)

This is an important book: the first attempt to gauge the impact of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) by means of case studies rather than a questionnaire survey. The editors have recruited contributions from 11 countries, four in Europe (France, Germany, Bulgaria, Poland), three in America (Argentina, Columbia, the United States), and four in the Asia-Pacific region (China, Japan, Taiwan, New Zealand). The CEFR has, of course, found its way to many more than 11 countries – according to the Council of Europe’s website it exists in 39 languages; but the countries chosen for inclusion here are ones in which it has had an acknowledged impact on policy development and/or academic discussion of language teaching and learning.

With the exception of China and Japan, where there has been academic interest in the CEFR but no evident impact on policy, the book contains two case studies from each country, the first written from a policy and the second from an academic perspective. To facilitate comparison across the case studies, the editors invited authors contributing from a policy perspective to consider the following questions (pp. 8–9):

• • How is curriculum usually developed in your country?

• • How did the CEFR come to the notice of curriculum developers, and why was it considered important?

• • To what extent have policy-makers and curriculum developers been influenced by the adoption of the CEFR in other nations?

• • What are the main areas of debate and negotiation in discussions of the CEFR in your national context?

• • What was the actual process of taking account of the CEFR?

• • How was the CEFR made known to teachers – and to what degree of detail – as part of curriculum innovation?

Authors contributing from an academic perspective were asked to consider these questions (p. 9):

• • Which aspects of the theoretical basis of the CEFR have been accepted/criticized/adapted/emphasized? What might be the explanation with respect, for example, to intellectual traditions in your country?

• • Which aspects of the CEFR have been ignored or downplayed in education policy in your national context? Why?

• • What are the motivations for incorporating aspects of the CEFR in education policy and practice in your national context?

• • What are the restraints that limit the influence and adoption of the CEFR in education policy and practice in your national context?

The book is given overall coherence by the editors’ introduction, commentaries on the European and non-European case studies, and conclusion.

Standing outside this general scheme, the first chapter provides essential background. It was written by the late John Trim, for whom the CEFR was the culmination of more than 30 years’ work directing the Council of Europe’s successive language education projects. For anyone interested in the historical and cultural background to the CEFR, the Council of Europe’s involvement in language education, and the CEFR’s intended purposes, Trim’s chapter is essential reading and worth the price of the book alone. His discussion of the Council of Europe’s approach to language teaching and learning in terms of a series of contrasts between “classical” and “modern” paradigms is especially illuminating and should be the focus of extended consideration in programs of language teacher education everywhere.

Overall, the book brings together a wealth of information that is always illuminating and often challenging. There are, however, three respects in which it falls short. The first has to do with the language(s) in which the CEFR is received in a particular country and the challenges posed by translation, especially the translation of key concepts. The book itself contains evidence of the kind of problems that can easily arise. In the English version we are told that the CEFR adopts an “action-oriented approach” to the description of language use, while the French version uses the term “perspective/approche actionnelle.” But in both French contributions to the book...