Foreign Language Learning Competence or:
Task-Based Language Knowledge and Language Skills
The keynote speech aims at specifying the term foreign language learning competence and intends to exemplify the relevant aspects that need to be considered when designing foreign language learning competence tasks.
Foreign Language Learning Competence is a term that has newly been introduced into the Education Standards for A-Level Examinations in Foreign Languages (English / French) by the German Assembly of Ministers of Education in 2012.
Foreign Language Learning Competence is nourished by two sources: language knowledge on the one hand and language skills on the other. Being relevant for English and French as foreign languages, this concept can doubtlessly be extended to other modern languages. But what does the term Foreign Language Learning Competence actually mean?
Competence orientation, the interdisciplinary pedagogic hypernym, has – often unnecessarily – been exhaustively discussed and written upon. The semantic inexactness of the term largely derives from the difficulty to define competence (and its perception) which was only vaguely explained by the European Council (2001) in the Common European Framework of Reference: learn – teach – assess.
The Framework of Reference for Pluralistic Approaches towards Foreign Languages and Cultures, released by the European Council in 2007, tries to clarify semantic inexactness in the fields of intercultural learning, inter-comprehension or reflexive language learning and language awareness by establishing an operational competence model regarding foreign language learning, which is reflected in the term Foreign Language Learning Competence.
The educational standards exceed the limitations of the competence model by combining foreign language learning competence with the communicative skills of listening and speaking, reading and writing. As each of these skills has its own mental programme and consists of its own resources, suitable tasks relating to foreign language learning competence need to be specified.
The keynote speech aims at specifying the term foreign language learning competence and intends to exemplify the relevant aspects that need to be considered when designing foreign language learning competence tasks.
Keynote Speaker:
Professor Franz-Joseph Meißner - Biodata
Professor emeritus of Romance Language Methodology (Gießen University)
Research fields:
- Multilingualism / Romance intercomprehension , foreign language learning competence
- History of foreign language teaching
- Language politics
- Quantitative and qualitative language research
- Development of linguistic standards
- Methodology of intercultural understanding, tertiary language acquisition (Spanish, Italian)
- Co-author of CARAP/FREPA (FRAMEWORK OF REFERENCE FOR PLURALISTIC APPROACHES) and other publications by the Institute for Quality Development in Education (IQB)
More information on: http://www.uni-giessen.de/cms/meissner
