The CEFR adopts an action-oriented approach that can be traced back to theoretical proposals made by philosophers of language such as Ludwig Wittgenstein in the 1950s and sociolinguists such as Dell Hymes.[3] The approach regards language users as social agents who develop general and particular communicative competences while trying to achieve their everyday goals.
What is particularly interesting is not so much the 'grading' from A1 to C2 - or that there is absolutely no 'grammar' - but the fact that we have not four skills but five. Now speaking takes up 40% of the curriculum - and is divided into the 'subskills' of spoken interaction and spoken production - both very different.
This will have profound effects on the way language is taught in the classroom - and on how teachers are trained. Students and teachers will not be able to rely on 'grammar exercises' and 'word lists' - which in the past provided a very simple method of 'quality control' with tests and 'right answers'. Now there will have to be much more speaking - which is much more difficult to teach, to control and to test - but which will provide so much more opportunity for 'authentic practice'.
The challenge will be for the 'non-native' language teacher - but there are so many resources on the internet, that both teacher and student will be able to listen to tons of stuff, practice good pronunciation, try out 'shadowing' techniques, chat on-line and so on.
So, what's there to worry about - just let go and practice speaking!
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