The Companion Volume with New Descriptors (provisional Edition) is intended as a complement to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment (CEFR). It represents another important step in a process that has been pursued by the Council of Europe since 1971 and owes much to the contributions of members of the language teaching profession across Europe and beyond.

The Companion Volume is the product of a project of the Education Policy Division (Language Policy Programme) of the Council of Europe carried out from 2014 to 2017. The focus in that project was to update the CEFR illustrative descriptors by:

• highlighting certain innovative areas of the CEFR for which no descriptor scales had been provided in the 2001 set of descriptors, but which have become increasingly relevant over the past twenty years, especially mediation and plurilingual / pluricultural competence;
• building on the successful implementation and further development of the CEFR, for example by more fully defining ‘plus levels’ and a new ‘Pre-A1’ level;
• responding to demands for more elaborate description of listening and reading in existing scales, and for descriptors for other communicative activities such as online interaction, using telecommunications, expressing reactions to creative text and literature;
• enriching the description at A1, and at the C levels, particularly C2.

The CEFR Companion Volume with New Descriptors

Considering the importance of the CEFR revision process, the Italian Ministry of Education (MIUR, DG for Schooling) and INDIRE are cooperating on a pilot project involving Italian schools, with the aim to test some of the new descriptors of the CEFR, in particular "Online interaction in a CLIL environment".

The project is coordinated by Gisella Langé and Letizia Cinganotto.

Gisella Langé is a Foreign Languages Inspector with the Italian Ministry of Education, advising on internationalisation and foreign languages. A researcher, writer and consultant on issues relating to Foreign Language teaching, curriculum development, bilingual and intercultural education, she has vast experience of working on culture and language learning solutions and web-based teacher training. An expert within the European Commission and the Council of Europe, thematic groups, studies and projects she has been involved with include language policies, early language learning and bilingual education/CLIL. She is currently involved in National Groups organized by the Ministry of Education on teacher training, National Guidelines and CLIL.

Letizia Cinganotto, holds a PhD in linguistics and is currently a Researcher at INDIRE, the Italian Institute for Innovation, Documentation and Educational Research. Former teacher of English at upper secondary school level, trainer and author of digital content, she worked at the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research, Directorate General for Schooling, dealing with issues relating to foreign languages and CLIL.

Her main research areas are: CLIL, CALL, MALL, TELL, teacher training, learning technologies.