Putting the CEFR at the centre of classroom assessment in a global teaching program

Since its publication in 2001, the CEFR has generated a strong body of good practice in alignment to standards for assessment. Courses in teaching and learning contexts, however, have not always matched this evidence-based approach to alignment. In 2022, a cohort of international collaborators published a Handbook on Aligning Language Education with the CEFR to offer a corrective to this paradigm.

This workshop will report on a researcher-teacher collaboration to implement ideas in the Handbook to improve a large-sale classroom language programme offered across multiple countries and regions for secondary school-age students. The programme is structured around sets of lessons targeting a CEFR level with each set including thematically-linked tasks and activities culminating in a project. It will then go on to demonstrate through examples how the assessment approach uses checklists to help teachers evaluate students’ progress in the productive skills during projects. By the end of the session, participants will understand how to ensure assessments can be meaningfully linked to course materials and demonstrably linked to the CEFR.

Webinar facilitator:
Aidan Holland is working as Global Assessment Solutions Manager, Wider Europe. He has been working for the British Council in a variety of roles since 2009. He has over 20 years international experience in teaching and teacher training and almost a decade of experience in academic management positions. He holds an MA in TEFL/SL from the University of Birmingham and is currently halfway through a second MA in Language Testing with the University of Lancaster. He is currently based in Spain.