CLT using CEFR and EIL in Southeast Asia and East Asia in the English language classroom

Abstract

This article discusses language teaching and the move from a predominantly psycholinguistic to a more sociolinguistic approach through Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), the Common European Framework of Reference Languages (CEFR) and English as an International Language (EIL). The context is four plurilingual and pluricultural societies in Southeast Asia and East Asia, (Thailand, Japan, Vietnam and China). These countries were chosen as they had similarities in the development of CEFR and consequently there were common factors that needed to be addressed in implementing CEFR. According to the English Proficiency Index (2020) a number of countries in the region have been described as being in the category of low or very low with regard to proficiency. To help improve such a situation, given the need for economic development, CEFR was introduced by various Ministries of Education in addition to the already existing official CLT syllabuses. English as an international language has also been widely proposed by a number of researchers, in terms of making teachers, students and educators aware of English as a world language as well as developing an attitudinal change with regard to ‘standard’ English. This article suggests that the basic principles of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) can be best applied through scaffolding using CEFR and EIL given the reality of teaching in relatively low English language proficiency contexts.

Keywords

CLT CEFR EIL plurilingual pluricultural Southeast Asia-East Asia classroom

Introduction

The aim of this article is that Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) and English as International Language (EIL) have a common focus in a socially oriented view of language that has moved from a closed system to a living organism, which is continuously evolving, taking different forms by a variety of users in a variety of contexts. While language is the free choice of the individual, it is also used for communication. Human beings strive to maximize the efficiency of communication by using common language elements that will facilitate communication in the most efficient way. There is an accommodation to the language of ‘others’ in terms of accents, lexis, grammar, shared content and other features that are instrumental to the process of facilitating communication (Shohamy, 2006). However, given the complexity of language, especially in the learning process, an effective scaffolding process is needed (Vygotsky, 1992) if language is to be used as means for transforming experience into cultural knowledge and understanding and not just a means by which individuals can formulate ideas and communicate them. CLT, CEFR and EIL are therefore seen here as inherently related, as language learning is directed towards enabling learners to act in real-life situations. As stated in CEFR (2018: 27) ‘action-oriented approaches put the co-construction of meaning at the center of learning and teaching process’.

Background to Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)

In linguistics there is a longstanding distinction made between what people can say and what they do say. People in everyday interactions do not demonstrate their total linguistic ability; they merely do what is necessary to get their message across. This distinction is what Saussure (1974) termed langue and parole (competence and performance). However, the reality in the classroom, at least in this part of the world, has been that teachers and educationalists accept the approaches and methods presented uncritically and apply them in their own practices. This often means, among other things, that an exonormative form of English tends to dominate.

Hymes (1972) and Vygotsky (1992) put more focus on the competence aspect of language acquisition to build a picture of the communicatively competent person in terms of the knowledge and integration of social, cultural and linguistic levels. Wilkins (1976) had proposed a syllabus based around meanings expressed through the lexico-grammatical functions of language. This became the basis of a set of specifications for a first-level communicative language syllabus. These ‘threshold levels’ with regard to the syllabus specifications (Van Ek and Alexander, 1980) were based on a description of the daily challenges learners/users faced when living in a foreign country. The success of the ‘threshold level’ meant that the authors were asked to develop additional levels. This was not thought to be a good idea, as they did not want to apply compartmentalized level-based logic to language learning (Trim, 2012). There was, therefore, a case for re-examining the conceptual and pedagogic appropriateness and adequacy of the early forms of the CLT paradigm. However, in order to advance more communicative approaches, Waystage (Van Ek and Trim, 1999) and Vantage (Van Ek and Trim, 2001) were eventually published as part of CEFR (2001) using their previously established linguistic descriptions (for more details, see: Foley, 2019b: 29, 2019c: 102).

CEFR

The original goal of CEFR (2001) was to investigate the possibility of developing a pan-European unit-credit system that would allow language learners to document their foreign language (Foley, 2019a, 2019b) qualifications in a modular way. CEFR described users as Basic (A1, A2), Independent (B1, B2), Proficient (C1, C2) in such a way as to promote the mobility of people and lifelong learning that has impacted language teaching and assessment in Europe (Barni, 2015) and across the globe (Byram and Parmenter, 2012). CEFR (2018) version has soon become the most widely used language proficiency framework worldwide (Figueras, 2012; Foley, (2019b).

An additional goal of CEFR (2018: 25–26) was the promotion of the formulation of educational aims and outcomes at all levels. Its ‘can do’ aspects of proficiency were intended to provide a shared pathway for learning and a more flexible instrument to measure progress than a focus on scores in tests and examinations. The principle is based on the CEFR view of language as a vehicle for opportunity and success in social, educational, and professional domains. This presents the language learner/user as a social agent, ‘acting in the social world and exerting agency in the learning process’ (CEFR, 2018: 27). The CEFR action-oriented approach represented a move away from syllabuses based on linear progression through language structures, or a pre-determined set of notions and functions. The goal was a communicative perspective guided by what someone ‘can do’ in terms of the descriptors developed around local contexts rather than a deficiency perspective focusing on what the learners have not yet acquired. Courses and examinations can be based on what the users/learners need to be able to do in the language in their own context. However, CEFR (2001) is also proposed as a tool to facilitate educational reform projects, not a standardizing tool. It is seen more as the construction of meaning that may take place across languages and draw upon users’/learners’ plurilingual and pluricultural repertoires (translanguaging). CEFR (2018: 28) distinguishes between multilingualism (the co-existence of different languages at the social or individual level) and plurilingualism (the developing linguistic repertoire of an individual user/learner). The fundamental point is that plurilinguals have a single, inter-related repertoire that they combine with their general competencies to accomplish tasks. Such tasks might require moving from one language to another or giving an explanation in another language to make sense of what is said or written (CEFR 2018: 28; Foley, 2019b: 30).

A significant approach in CEFR (2018: 34) was that the common reference level has two axes: a horizontal axis of categories for describing different activities and aspects of competence, and a vertical axis representing progress in proficiency in those categories. To facilitate the organization of courses and to describe progress, the CEFR (2018: 35) presents the same six Common Reference Levels that allow user/learners to engage with relevant aspects of the descriptive scheme in a progressive way. However, there has been a tendency for some educational bodies and testing organizations to use these categories without this flexibility, but in fact all categories in language testing are conventional and socially constructed concepts. CEFR was never considered to be a complete or standalone document. The vertical and horizontal dimension of language development reflects the fact that users develop their overall communicative language competence by improving the quality of their language (vertical development) and expanding the breadth of communicative activities that they are engaged in (horizontal development). The CEFR’s concept of ‘partial competence’ helped in appreciating that language development does not solely have to be about moving up the vertical scale of complex language use. Broadening performance ability in communicative activities and strategies across domains is seen as equally important as CEFR (2018) does not specify the proficiency level of speakers of the target language. The idea of uneven proficiency profiles or ‘partial competence’ is significant because it recognizes that a language user’s proficiency is fundamentally uneven. No two users share the same language profile, as even the most proficient language user is unlikely to have the same proficiency across all CEFR scales. Another significant approach in CEFR (2018) is the focus on ‘mediation’ – an activity whereby ‘the user/learner creates bridges and helps to construct or convey meaning, sometimes within the same language, sometimes from one language to another’ (Council of Europe, 2018: 103).

Adapting CEFR in the region

The aims of CEFR are essentially to promote and facilitate co-operation in English and other languages in different countries in Europe and further afield. This means providing a basis for mutual recognition and language qualifications as well as assisting learners, teachers, course designers and educational administrators to help co-ordinate their efforts to present language learners/users as competent users, acting in society and exerting agency in the learning process (North, 2014). In this article, Thailand will be the main focus, with Japan, Vietnam and China, to illustrate how the implementation of CEFR was initiated and implemented.

Thailand (FRELE-TH)

The level of English in Thailand according to the EF English Proficiency Index (2020) has fallen from a 2018 ranking of 74th to 89th in 2020, which is categorized as ‘very low proficiency’. This latest ranking has placed Thailand 7th in Southeast Asia for English proficiency, while the Office of the Basic Education Commission (OBEC) (2020) noted that less than half of the English teachers attained a B1 level in CEFR.

In April 2014, the English Language Institute (ELI), a branch of the Ministry of Education (MOE), announced a policy of basing all aspects of English language curriculum reform on the CEFR framework. A local version of the Common European Framework of References for Languages-Thailand, FRELE-TH (Hiranburana et al., 2017) was published with two scales: a global scale (overall descriptors) and illustrative scales, (communicative activities, communication strategies, and communicative language competence) (Hiranburana et al., 2018; Foley, 2019b). FRELE-TH also used a 10-level reference framework with the plus (+) levels to make sure that Levels A (Basic User) and B (Independent User) had more discrete steps for Thai learners to achieve these levels of performance (Hiranburana et al., 2018). Outlining more discrete levels made sense for pedagogical reasons, as it shows that the FRELE-TH framework following CEFR is flexible, allowing levels and categories to merge and sub-divide as appropriate (North, 2004: 48). The rationale behind the development of FRELE-TH lies in the principle that CEFR does not offer ready-made solutions but must be adapted to the requirements (Foley, 2019a) of particular contexts (see: Pitsuwan, 2014; Foley, 2019b: 33, 2019c: 107). It was also hoped that the FRELE-TH global scale could be used for the design of specifications on the high-stakes standardized tests of English proficiency, the results of which could be benchmarked with those of international standards. In this way, learners’/users’ performance and progress could be measured and tracked to be calibrated with other international standards for educational and professional purposes (Hiranburana et al., 2018). Recently, the Government Gazette announced that the Institute of Professional Qualifications (2020) would be able to issue a Certificate of Competency in English divided into six levels: A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2. The rationale for removing the + at the various levels seems more to do with simplification for administration purposes than anything pedagogical.

Japan (CEFR-J)

Japan used a modified version of CEFR (2001), CEFR-J, to ensure that the framework reflected its local standards in teaching and learning, curriculum development as well as assessment. Part of the impetus for change came from the need to transition from a knowledge-based English curriculum to a competency-based language one (Buҁar et al., 2014). Stakeholders’ consent for a new skill-based language curriculum was more in favour of curriculum objectives that aimed at marketable results on reputable language proficiency tests (Moser, 2015). However, it was also realized that the proficiency level in English of students enrolling in tertiary education was too low to achieve the proficiency test results required. It was suggested that CEFR’s ‘can do’ scales could be used, as these scales identified language gains at the lowest levels of language proficiency. MEXT (2011) published a report encouraging the use of ‘can do’ lists of CEFR-J in junior and senior high schools. Negishi and Tono’s (2014) survey of Japanese EFL users indicated that 80 per cent were between A1 and A2. CEFR-J introduced scales using narrower levels of A1+ and A2+, B1+ and B2+ to make CEFR more useable in the Japanese context. This use of CEFR-J scales allowed students of near A2 who may not have seen their progress improving on the vertical scales because of the time needed to acquire skills to be considered as A2+ or B1 (Tono, 2012). As North (2007) pointed out, this approach with its narrow levels would allow teachers and students to see more progress, which especially at the earlier levels is critical for developing motivation. A drawback of this narrower scaling was distinguishing these sublevels as they became more nuanced and created more variability in teacher assessment (Foley, 2019b: 35).

Vietnam: CEFR-V

The Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) in 2008 officially began to use the CEFR 2001 version to define English language exit benchmarks for students ranging from primary through to tertiary levels of education. The national project, Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages in the National Education System 2008–2020 (Hung, 2013), expected all university graduates not majoring in languages to reach B1 English. MOET also adopted CEFR levels A1 (beginners), A2 and B1 as the required standards for students leaving primary, junior and secondary high schools. However, the government’s targets for language proficiency were felt to be too ambitious (Nguyen et al., 2017; Nguyen and Hamid, 2015). The consequence was that institutions had to lower the requirement to A2. The reasons given for not reaching the targets were the teachers’ poor English, lack of resources and outdated teaching methods with a heavy focus on traditional grammar. A new approach was undertaken, creating CEFR-V, a Vietnamese version. However, because it was felt that it would take a long time to fulfil the English teaching programme, MOET is now focusing on training teachers of English as it is expected that Vietnam would need 100,000 teachers in 2025 to fulfil the programme’s objectives (Viet, 2015; Foley, 2019c: 109).

China’s Standards of English (CSE)

China’s Standards of English Language Ability (CSE, 2018) was published by the National Education Examinations Authority (NEEA) to develop a national framework of reference for English language education (Yan Jin et al., 2017). The management structure of education in China has had different governmental departments taking charge of education at different stages. One of the issues arising from such management structure was the inconsistent learning objectives specified in the curricula for learners of English at each educational stage as well as the national tests being developed and administered by different testing organizations. It was hoped that the introduction of a common English proficiency scale would facilitate test construction and score interpretation to make it more transparent to the outside world. China also developed a nine-level scale so that the standards of English language education could be aligned to international frameworks. Significantly, the descriptive framework of CSE has a more sociolinguistic orientation being subdivided into various genres and mediating activities, with interpretation and translation occupying an important place in the Chinese education system (Foley, 2019a: 365).

Issues in implementing CEFR in the region

Creating a language competency framework for Thailand, Japan, Vietnam, and China has involved decisions that are more than simply transferring CEFR to other educational contexts. The various implementations of CEFR were based originally on CEFR (2001). In general teachers, educationalists and government officials’ views saw the potential for the implementation of CEFR to help to raise the level of competence in English within the contexts of their own educational systems. However, competency in a language is a multidimensional system that accounts for the situations, the functions, the linguistic elements needed in communicative competencies, but measures of language competency can be arbitrary. As North (2000) pointed out, CEFR was originally designed as a common measure for recording language competence and that the motivation for a common framework was more pragmatic (thus the ‘can do’) rather than academic.

There were a number of inherent limitations in the original version of CEFR (2001), in particular a lack of empirical evidence between the products and the research to underpin the descriptions and reference levels of CEFR (2001) in its early stages. The way CEFR was introduced has led many teachers to associate CEFR with what Freeman (2017) called a ‘deficit view’ of teachers and their teaching abilities. Wider forms of self-assessment, the European Language Portfolio (ELP) advocated by the developers of CEFR, seem to have been missed (Foley, 2019c: 111), apart from in Japan (North, 2008). The main vision of ELP was to develop a ‘logbook of a learner’s/user’s progress’ so as to show the ability to communicate across linguistic, social and cultural boundaries (O’Dwyer, 2008).

Several general issues that have arisen from the adopting and developing of CEFR in the region can be summarized as follows:

ambitious target levels for students and teachers;

teachers’ level of proficiency;

the lack of adequate training for teachers;

teachers having limited knowledge and exposure to CEFR;

the notion many teachers had that it would be difficult to incorporate CEFR into their teaching;

CEFR as simply a measure of language proficiency rather than a goal in terms of a ‘can do’ approach;

the teachers’ and stakeholders’ resistance to change;

centralized decision-making and the felt need to resort to external consultancies to develop materials.

English as an International Language (EIL)

CLT since the 1980s has been the recommended basis for language teaching methodology and the established paradigm. Recognizing diversity and fluidity as the use of English continues to spread in educational, professional and social domains across Southeast Asia and beyond has required rethinking the teaching approaches and materials to cope with this flux. English from the perspective of World Englishes (WE), English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), English as an International Language (EIL) have tended to be conceptualized differently by researchers (Brutt-Griffler, 2002; Jenkins, 2015; McKay, 2018; Marlina, 2018). However, this does not mean that there is a particular variety of English called ‘English as an International Language’ (Mauranen, 2018).

When looking at the development of CLT and CEFR, it was possible to retrace the conceptualized beginnings of the various adaptations. For EIL, it seems to have been more a reaction to monolithic views of language (Hall, 2018) and the controversies about linguistic imperialism (Canagarajah, 1999; Phillipson, 1992). There seems to be little consensus about what labels such as EIL, WE, and ELF stand for in practice. One claim that can be made is that awareness of English as an international language in its various manifestations has acted as a catalyst for change in establishing ways of thinking in addition to the questioning of the ownership of English (McKay, 2002, 2018; Widdowson, 2015). Indeed, EIL has challenged some of the fundamental assumptions that underpin English language teaching (Sadeghpour and Sharifian 2017, 2019). Such approaches are an attempt to achieve some balance between local and global standards. In other words, the extent to which language norms and pragmatic conventions often drawn from native-speaker varieties should be acceptable as the benchmarks for communicative competence. The awareness of multilingual communicative competence has led to the advocacy for changing CLT to a different pedagogy which gives more recognition to the major features of EIL in terms of new modes of communicative competence, intercultural competence, and trans-languaging (Garcia and Wei, 2014). Proposals for such change have emerged from research (Burns, 2005; Kumaravadivelu, 2003; McKay, 2011) showing what is often a mismatch between the English taught in the classrooms and the English used in today’s multilingual world. Researchers have highlighted the need to educate teachers and learners about the sociolinguistic uses of English and move away from reliance on ‘native speaker’ norms in order to prepare learners as users of English in today’s world.

However, the concept of a ‘standard’ variety of English, particularly in the classroom, continues to dominate (Kohn, 2011), even though history shows it is both varied and difficult to define (Davies, 2003; Houghton et al., 2018; Seidlhofer, 2018). Standards are more about attitudes and imagined benchmarks, whereas it is the actual use of a language that indicates its legitimacy. Milroy and Milroy (1999, p. 45) stated, ‘Standardisation is never complete because, ultimately, a language is the property of the community that uses it.’ Indeed, the prevalence of EIL, especially in multilingual contexts, appears, for some researchers, to make the concept of an EIL increasingly relevant to the Teaching of English as an International Language (Bayyurt and Safakis, 2017; Matsuda, 2018; Sharifian, 2014).

Issues and challenges

One of the main challenges for EIL remains teachers’, learners’ and administrators’ awareness and sometimes negative attitudes. Over the last 20 years, a number of studies have investigated the expanding circle view on the use of English as an International Language in the classroom (Friedrich, 2003; Goh, 2009; Ranta, 2010; Sifakis and Sougari, 2005; Timmis, 2002). The indications are that some form of the native speaker model was preferred together with raising awareness of the existence of multiple varieties of English. This changing attitude highlights the communicative effectiveness of ‘non-standard’ forms of English. The attitudinal changes towards EIL have developed as a field of enquiry in itself and have been discussed and (re)conceptualized by Jenkins (2015), Seidlhofer (2011), Widdowson (2015), and Mauranen (2018). Following this continual development, the approaches taken to account for language practices in multilingual and multicultural environments have become more nuanced. Early attempts were more related to language patterns that can be explained, predicted and codified without reference to specific contextual communicative events, and have been superseded by more contextually based studies. From this progressive shift in conceptualization around EIL, there are a range of attitudinal aspects of language that inform us of the reality of language in use (Baird and Baird, 2018: 535). The indexicality of English (Blommaert, 2010; Silverstein, 2003) in the ‘expanding’ circle has shed light on the issues of classifying varieties of EIL. The indications are that the features are not necessarily uniform nor the community of speakers who use these forms. Agha (2005) has argued that English in the expanding circle may be ‘enregistered’ as a form of EIL despite lacking a status that is directly attributable to a community of speakers. In other words, the social meanings of the localized variety can be more important than the variables themselves.

Apart from classifying broadly in terms of ‘outer and expanding’ circles of English in Southeast Asia and East Asia, there is also a gap between the official government policies (often ‘inner circle’ English) and what takes place in the English language classroom reflecting this lack of reality. Nunan (2003) identified the main gap being between policy and actual practice as being ineffective language instruction and inadequately trained teachers. A similar situation has been identified in Thailand, where a large number of Thai English teachers use Thai rather than English (Jamrassari, 2018; Pourpornpong, 2019) because attitudinally, they feel that their English is not ‘good enough’, in other words ‘non-standard’ (Fitzpatrick, 2011). In Thailand, language teaching has generally been based on grammatical competence and traditional teaching methodologies (Saengboon, 2006). Consequently, there is a view that CLT is not appropriate as teachers depend too much on commercial textbooks that may not be relevant or suitable in the Thai context (Prapaisit de Segovia and Hardison, 2008). Recently, the Thai Minister of Education announced a plan to recruit 10,000 native (inner circle) English-speaking teachers (Dumrongkiat, 2020). However, this may not be the answer to any major improvement. It is teachers’ beliefs and attitudes that drive their classroom practices and determine the degree to which they adopt, adapt or reject the implementation of any new curriculum (Shi et al., 2019: 316).

Conclusion

What I have attempted to show in this article is that the English-speaking world of learners and users is diverse and complicated, and this is the premise on which a greater awareness is needed of the complementarities of CLT, CEFR and EIL. Given the different contexts, cultures and situations, users can have a variety of different forms and usages of English. The effects of globalization have increased our understanding of English varieties and what is involved in teaching English as an international language. Such attitudinal change has been contextualized and given prominence as part of research into indexicality as well as plurilingual and pluricultural competence advocated in CEFR and EIL. Language is an uneven and changing competence, in which the user’s/learner’s resources in one language or variety may be different in nature from those in another. Competence in a language is based on an ability to communicate inside and outside the classroom (Young and Walsh, 2010). However, the measure of such competence should be empirically derived as to what counts as real-life communication and based on data of what people actually ‘can do’ (performative). The focus on ‘mediation’ (CEFR, 2018: 103–105) in creating the space and conditions for communicating and learning is important, as languages do not vary and change proactively under their own steam but reactively in response to certain social forces. As educators, this means developing the capacity for reflexive examination of one’s own ideas and actions as an important part of our profession. CLT, CEFR and EIL should be seen as a continuum and not separate entities, which means addressing the linguistic practicalities of other varieties of English together with what is nationally and internationally acceptable in terms of being a competent English language user.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Joseph Foley

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