Pending requests

[Kent Karlsson]

Den 2015-11-26 14:23, skrev "Philip Newton" <philip.newton at gmail.com>:

> On 26 November 2015 at 12:19, Kent Karlsson <kent.karlsson14 at telia.com> wrote:

>> So, instead of "-simple" or "-basic", something along the lines of:
>> 
>>     -levelB1
>>     -levelB2
>>     -levelC1
>>     -levelC2
>> 
>> (referring to the CEFR levels) would be my preference.
> 
> How about "-cefrb1 .. -cefrc2" to make it more explicit that "B1" etc.
> refer to CEFR levels?

Maybe, except that it looks like alphabet soup and thus extra prone to
misspelling.

> Since it's a European thing, it might not be immediately obvious to
> everyone what "B1 level" is.

It's not altogether a European thing. According to the Wikipedia article:

"Canada increasingly uses the CEFR in a few domains. CEFR-compatible exams
[..] are administered. Universities increasingly structure their courses
around the CERF levels. Larry Vandergrift of the University of Ottawa has
proposed Canadian adoption of the CEFR [...]"

According to 
http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/why-cambridge-english/international-language
-standards/ (referenced from the Wikipedia page):

"The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) plays a
central role in language and education policy **worldwide**. [...]"

(my emphasis)

Arbitrarily picking the Vietnamese Wikipedia version, and Google translating
that (thus the bad English in the quote) I get:

"[...] abbreviated as CEFR or CEF, is a Rules to describe the level of
students learning foreign languages​in Europe and are becoming more widely
used in many other countries (eg, Colombia and the Philippines)."
(I had hoped for it saying "in Vietnam"...)

re Colombia: 
http://www.plc.edu.co/category/our-institution/common-european-framework-ref
erence-cefr

The CEFR levels are also used by the United Nations,
https://hr.un.org/sites/hr.un.org/files/file/refmaterials/documents/Guidelin
es%20for%20the%20organization%20of%20language%20learning%20courses%20v.March
%202014_0.pdf:

"The CEFR is a major development in language teaching and learning. It has
contributed to the setting of common standards for establishing goals and
measuring achievement; [...]

The framework is based on practical, comprehensible “can do” statements that
cover elements of communicative competences for the six levels [...]

For example, the United Nations proficiency examination for each of the six
official languages includes questions at the B2 and C1 levels."



What I would NOT like to see is a proliferation of such level systems being
given subtags in LSR. That would be utterly unhelpful. (Plus: The ones more
heavily based on numbers (usually 0-5) are especially confusing since the
same numbers mean different levels in different systems, indeed some systems
even reverse the scale with 1 being highest and higher numbers meaning lower
proficiency.) So I'm trying to pick the "winning horse" here, as well as
something that is not altogether confusing.

/Kent K

> Cheers,
> Philip