Reproduced with the kind permission

of the journal editor. Page numbers

will change on publication.

THE CEFR COMPANION VOLUME AND THE ACTION-

ORIENTED APPROACH

Brian North

INTRODUCTION

This chapter is organized in two parts: Sections 1-3 concern the CEFR Companion
Volume, describing briefly what it is, what it contains, the paradigm shift it seeks to foster,
and how it was developed. The second part, sections 4-6, goes into more detail on the
action-oriented approach, giving an overview in section 4, an explanation of the crucial
concept of the social agent in section 5, and a discussion of the three key aspects of the
approach – affordances, agency and collaborative tasks – in section 6.

1. THE CEFR AND THE CEFR COMPANION VOLUME

Following the publication of the CEFR (Council of Europe, 2001) after several years
of consultation and piloting with the provisional version (Council of Europe, 1996), the
Council of Europe frequently received requests from member states to update and/or
further flesh out the descriptors – especially “for mediation, reactions to literature and
online interaction, to produce versions for young learners and for signing competences,
and to develop more detailed coverage in the descriptors for A1 and C levels”(Council of
Europe, 2020, English: 13, Italian: 9). In addition, there were “many comments that the
2001 edition was a very complex document that many language professionals found
difficult to access” (Council of Europe, 2020, English: 21, Italian: 20). A decision was
therefore taken in May 2013 to update and extend the descriptors and, following the 2014-
2016 research project to do so, to provide a “new, user-friendly version” (ibid.) with
“[t]he key aspects of the CEFR vision […] explained in Chapter 2, which elaborates the
key notions of the CEFR as a vehicle for promoting quality in second/foreign language
teaching and learning as well as in plurilingual and intercultural education”(ibid).
The Council of Europe makes clear that, whilst researchers will wish to continue to
consult the 2001 edition, whose conceptual framework remains valid and which remains
on the CEFR website (www.coe.int/lang-cefr), “[f]or pedagogical use of the CEFR for
learning, teaching and assessment, teachers and teacher educators will find it easier to
access the CEFR Companion volume as the updated framework” (Council of Europe, 2020,
English/Italian: ii). In addition, it is clearly stated that the updated and extended 2020
edition of the illustrative descriptors “replaces the 2001 version of them” (Council of
Europe, 2020, English: 21, Italian: 20).
Here one should re-emphasize that the CEFR descriptors are illustrative in two senses
of the term: firstly, they are examples; no one is obliged to use them, and they should be
used with adaptation and/or further elaboration appropriate to the context. Secondly,
they do not attempt to describe everything systematically at every level – they give
examples of language behaviour that appears to be salient in the category concerned at

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the level concerned. This point is often misunderstood: if all relevant aspects were
described at each level (if that were even possible), the result would be pages and pages
of descriptors for each category – and the effect would be that of a straightjacket. The
national delegates at the intergovernmental Symposium that recommended the
development of the CEFR and Portfolio were very clear on this point: they preferred the
‘salient feature’ approach to a ‘systematic’ approach (Council of Europe, 1992; North,
1992). It is this open nature of the CEFR descriptors – demonstrated, for example, by the
inclusion of CEFR-based descriptors from a variety of sources in the 2020 update – that
ensures their acceptance in what, after all, is a reference system, not a standard to be
‘applied.’ Delegates at the 2007 intergovernmental Symposium to take stock of CEFR
implementation were clear that, though the integrity of the common reference levels
should be respected because this facilitates networking and synergies in a ‘shared space,’
it is the CEFR’s potential for stimulating reform in language education that was of
paramount interest (Council of Europe, 2007). The CEFR, and CEFR Companion Volume,
provide a heuristic for this process of reflection on current practice.
The CEFR 2001 had pioneered a new vision in language education with:
a) the provision of the common reference levels and illustrative descriptor scales to
facilitate the alignment of curriculum planning, teaching and assessment (=
constructive alignment: Biggs, 2003);
b) the presentation of four modes of communication: reception, production, interaction,
mediation to replace the four skills (now presented under reception and production)
– which had long been considered inadequate to describe communication (see e.g.,
Alderson and Urquhart, 1984; Breen, Candlin, 1980; Brumfit, 1984);
c) the concept of the user/learner as social agent mobilising and further developing
competences and strategies in action;
d) an action-oriented approach to classroom pedagogy focused on tasks – to which a
whole CEFR chapter (Chapter 7) was devoted; and last but not least,
e) plurilingual and pluricultural competence.
However, the CEFR vision was somewhat ahead of its time and, for a variety of
reasons, initially many of these innovative concepts were largely misunderstood (e.g., the
action-oriented approach; the move from four skills to four modes of communication),
or largely ignored (e.g. mediation, plurilingualism). This may well have been because of
the immediate practical utility of the levels and descriptors, which tended to dominate, as
Coste complained (2007). The levels and descriptors quickly gained popularity with
member states, associations and institutions, probably because they appeared at precisely
the moment in which people were looking for a solution of this kind (Goullier, 2007). As
Porto (2012) reports and Byram and Parmenter (2012) confirm, however, it was the fact
that the CEFR provided such practical tools as well as a progressive, educational vision of
interculturality that made it appealing to education ministries.
As interviews with CEFR pioneers in Switzerland and Canada suggest (Piccardo,
North, Maldina, 2017, 2019) it may not be an exaggeration to say that there appeared to
be a tendency to engage with aspects of the CEFR vision in a particular order: first the
levels, then the descriptors, then tasks, then the action-oriented approach, then mediation,
and finally plurilingualism. Certainly in the 2000s the main focus of CEFR use appears to
have concerned levels and assessment, with a draft CEFR manual for aligning
examinations (Council of Europe, 2003), finalized after piloting (Council of Europe,
2009) through a series of case studies (Martyniuk, 2010), with the addition of a second
manual devoted to designing CEFR-based examinations (ALTE, 2011).

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This phase of CEFR implementation did also have a positive pedagogical impact
insofar as it led to the revision of language examinations for many languages, including
the DELF/DALF for French, the DELE for Spanish, CILS and CELI for Italian, and
the Trinity suite for English. A large number of versions of the European Language
Portfolio were also produced in the 2000s, following the Swiss prototype (Schneider,
North, Koch, 2000) and development guide (Schneider, Lenz, 2001). The Portfolio
introduced teachers to using descriptors for setting learning objectives and for self-
assessment, which, together with the new CEFR-based exams, facilitated CEFR-inspired
innovation in classroom practices in many countries (see, e.g., Byram, Parmenter, 2012;
Figueras, 2013; Piccardo, 2006, 2020; Takala, 2013). However, the focus on exams and
checklists of descriptors at one level tended to reinforce the interpretation of the CEFR
as primarily a series of proficiency levels.
With regard to other concepts in the CEFR, the action-oriented approach was clearly
distinguished from the communicative approach by many Francophone scholars (e.g.,
Bourguignon 2006, 2010; Puren, 2002, 2009; Richer, 2009, 2012), due to the focus on
agency, self-regulation, and the mobilization and further development of competences
and strategies through the completion of a task. However, in the English-speaking world
the CEFR was generally interpreted as a tool to help give rigour to curricula for the
communicative approach through its ‘can do’ descriptors. The concept of the social agent
– the core of the action-oriented approach – received little or no echo in the professional
literature written in English. In the period before and immediately after the publication
of the CEFR in 2001, the buzz word was ‘autonomy’ rather than agency, with a very
reductive not to say trivial concept of autonomy (see Schmenk, 2005, 2008 for a
discussion).
Mediation in the more limited sense of ‘mediating a text’ and ‘acting as an intermediary’
suggested by the presentation in the CEFR 2001 was, by contrast, elaborated in Profile
Deutch (Glaboniat et al., 2005) and also adopted from around 2003 in both Germany
(Kolb, 2016; Reiman, Rössler, 2013) and Greece (Dendrinos 2006, 2013; Stathopoulou,
2015). However, as Kolb explains, “…it is sometimes the case that the contextualisation
with a particular addressee is considerably underspecified [so that the context given] can
be seen as above all an excuse for a summary” (Kolb 2016: 52 my translation), and tasks
for acting as an intermediary are often presented as individual writing tasks, often gapped
dialogues, which “… seems to make little sense, even if this is due to the constraints of a
test situation” (Kolb: 2016: 50, authors’ translation).
As regards plurilingualism, as John Trim, the director of the CEFR project, lamented
at the 2007 Symposium:

Most users of the CEFR have applied it only to a single language but its
descriptive apparatus for communicative action and competences, together
with the ‘can-do’ descriptors of levels of competence, are a good basis for a
plurilinguistic approach to language across the curriculum, which awaits
development (Trim, 2007: 51).

Apart from some pioneering plurilingual teaching, mainly in France (e.g., Auger, 2005),
one had to wait for the so-called pluri-/multilingual turn in 2012-2015 (Candelier et al.,
2012; Conteh, Meier, 2014; May, 2014; Piccardo, Puozzo, 2015; Taylor, Snodden, 2013)
before the concept really began to be noticed academically. Even then the distinction
between plurilingualism and multilingualism was often ignored (see, e.g., the discussion
in Piccardo, Germain-Rutherford, Lawrence, 2022a). However, recently: the number of
references per year in Google Scholar for plurilingualism has been rising year on year,

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while those for multilingualism are declining quite dramatically; a Handbook of Plurilingual
Language Education has just been published (Piccardo, Germain-Rutherford, Lawrence,
2022b); and a range of plurilingual pedagogies around the world have recently been
documented (see, e.g., Choi, Ollerhead, 2018; Lau, Van Viegen, 2020; Piccardo, Lawrence,
Germain-Rutherford, Galante, 2022).

2. WHAT THE COMPANION VOLUME CONTAINS

Put briefly, the Companion Volume updates and completes the CEFR with new scales of
descriptors, makes explicit and develops certain CEFR constructs, particularly mediation,
phonology and plurilingualism, and refines the CEFR vision of the action-oriented
approach. It emphases an integrated view of language activities, rather than four isolated
skills, which – as even language testers (e.g. Bachman, Palmer, 2010) are now starting to
realize – are simply unrealistic. The CEFR tries to facilitate the current paradigm shift
from the traditional, Cartesian, perspective of dissection (e.g., the four skills, languages
kept strictly separate) to an integrationist (Harris, 1981; Orman, 2013), ecological (van
Lier, 2004, 2007), complex (Larsen-Freeman, 2017; Larsen-Freeman, Todeva, 2022)
perspective.
Chapter 2 in the Companion Volume explains the key aspects of the CEFR vision for
teaching and learning in a short, illustrated text that may be of considerable use in teacher
education. This text explains the main aims of the CEFR and outlines the CEFR model
and descriptive scheme, focusing on plurilingualism, the action-oriented approach and
mediation. With regard to mediation, the CEFR view of the user/learner as a social agent
gives a central role in its model to mediation (Piccardo, 2012), which was a key factor in
the development of the new descriptors. The text (Companion Volume chapter 2) also
discusses misunderstandings in relation to the common reference levels and the
descriptors – the focus mentioned before on levels as holistic concepts, rather than using
the multidimensional set of categories defined for each level as a tool to create profiles of
the needs of certain groups and profiles of the differing proficiency of individuals.
As mentioned above, the Companion Volume contains the complete set of illustrative
descriptors in chapters 3 to 6, including descriptors specifically for signing competences
(chapter 6) organized under linguistic, sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence, like
those for communicative language competences (chapter 5). In addition, every scale of
descriptors now has a short rationale that explains the focus of the scale and the way it
develops up the levels. Descriptors for communicative language activities (chapter 3) have
been considerably expanded for reception and for both A1 – with the addition of a ‘Pre-
A1’ – and the C-levels. Descriptors for plurilingual and pluricultural competence are
included in chapter 4, presented after mediation at the end of chapter 3, in order to
emphasize the close link between these two aspects, discussed by Piccardo (this volume).
As well as the new descriptor scales for mediation, online interaction and
plurilingual/pluricultural competence, there are also three other new scales, one for each
of reception, production and interaction, namely ‘Reading as a leisure activity;’ ‘Giving
information;’ and ‘Using telecommunications’ respectively. In chapter 5, there is a new
scale for phonological control (see Piccardo, 2016 for the research), with subscales for
sound articulation and for prosody (= stress and intonation). This new phonology scale
avoids native-speaker norms, focusing on intelligibility and recognizing the fact that many
speakers at C2 retain a noticeable accent. Separately available on the CEFR website are

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compilations of CEFR-based descriptors for younger learners (Szabo, Goodier, 2018), for
the age groups 7-101 and 11-152.
Finally the Companion Volume offers a number of appendices: Appendices 1-4 provide
updated versions of the summary scales in CEFR Tables 1-3, plus a writing assessment
grid previously presented in Table C4 in the Manual for relating examination with the
CEFR (Council of Europe, 2009); Appendix 5 then gives example of contexts for the
four CEFR domains: public, personal, occupational, educational – for each of the
descriptors for online interaction and for mediation; Appendices 6-9 then relate to the
development project, with Appendix 10 listing relevant resources.

3. THE NEW CEFR DESCRIPTORS

The development and validation of the descriptors is summarized briefly in Appendix
6 of the Companion Volume and described in detail in North and Piccardo (2016, 2019), so
will be mentioned only briefly here. The project took place in three broad stages that
overlapped slightly: firstly, the updating of the 2001 scales, principally at the C levels and
A1 with the addition of Pre-A1 (2014-2015); secondly the development of descriptors for
mediation and related areas (2015-2016); and finally production of descriptors for signing
competences (2017-2019). The project team was structured in the concentric circles
typical of communities of practice (Wenger-Trayner, Wenger-Trayner, 2015). There was
a small Authoring Group of four, working interactively through email and regular
meetings, with a Sounding Board of another four experts who reacted with comments
and suggestions, plus a third tier of 20-30 consultants invited to three meetings in July
2014, 2015, and 2016 respectively. Finally, a network of 140 institutions (rising to 189
later in 2015) were organized into five divisions of approximately 30 institutes according
to the associations they were recruited through3, These institutions, each with a designated
coordinator, carried out three phases of validation activities between February to
December 2015. The first two validation activities were undertaken in pairs in face-to-
face workshops, whilst the third was an individual task, with an optional workshop
undertaken by some of the institutes.
In addition, immediately after these three 2015 phases, in early 2016, there were two
sub-projects: a phase of further validation of descriptors for plurilingual and pluricultural
competence (chapter 4 in the Companion Volume, described in North, Piccardo 2016), plus
the development of a new scale for phonological control, described by Piccardo (2016),
to replace that from 2001, which had always been recognized as the weakest of the 2001
scales (North 2000).
The three main phases of the project emulated the phases of the 1994-1996 Swiss
project that had produced the original CEFR/ELP prototype descriptors (North, 1995,
1996, 2000; North, Schneider, 2000; Schneider, North, 2000), but on a larger scale. For
each validation phase, the draft descriptors were put onto overlapping questionnaires that
were distributed evenly around the five divisions of institutes, with detailed instructions
for the coordinator and for the participants. In the Phase I workshops (1,000 participants),

1 https://rm.coe.int/collated-representative-samples-descriptors-young-learners-volume-1-
ag/16808b1688
2 https://rm.coe.int/collated-representative-samples-descriptors-young-learners-volume-2-

ag/16808b1689
3 1. Eaquals (www.Eaquals.org); 2. CercleS (www.cercles.org), 3. Ealta (www.ealta.eu.org); 4. from German

and American universities (especially members of UNIcert: http://www.unicert-online.org); and 5. an

international group.

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the focus was on whether the pairs of participants could identify the category of each
descriptor, as well as evaluating it for clarity, pedagogical usefulness and relation to real-
world language, and, if they wished, suggesting improvements to formulations. In the
Phase II workshops (1300 participants), after some familiarization activities suggested by
the CEFR alignment manual (Council of Europe, 2009), pairs first discussed the level of
the descriptors and then entered their individual decisions on the questionnaires. Phase
III (3500 usable responses) was the main data collection for calibration, with a task
simulating the one used in the 1994-1996 Swiss project (North 1995, 1996, 2000; North,
Schneider, 1998; Schneider, North, 2000). Participants were asked to think of a person
they knew well (partner, friend – themselves) and rate the extent to which that person
could do what was described in the descriptor, using the same 0-4 rating scale that had
been used in the Swiss project. Data from Phases I and II were analyzed qualitatively
whilst those from Phases II & III were analyzed quantitatively with the Rasch scaling
model. The scale value for each descriptor was then equated to the mathematical scale
from the Swiss project, which underlies the CEFR levels.
Finally, in a separate project, to which the current author acted as scientific adviser,
descriptors scales for different aspects of signing competences (chapter 6 in the Companion
Volume) were developed in two phases: for productive signing (2017-2018) and for
receptive competence in interpreting signing by others (2018-2019) (Keller, 2019; Keller
et al., 2017, 2018). In a final step, all the CEFR descriptors were lightly edited where
necessary in order to make them modality-inclusive (i.e. to apply also to sign languages4)
and – at least for English – gender neutral.
The resulting set of CEFR descriptors, presented in chapters 3-6 of the Companion
Volume, show a really remarkable consistency with the content of the 2001 CEFR
descriptors, expanding and complementing them. This is the case with the updating of
the 2001 scales, with the new descriptor scales for mediation and related areas, and with
those for signing competences. There is no impact on the CEFR levels, which have not
changed. For mediation and related areas, this consistency with 2001 is explained with an
example at the end of the project report (North, Piccardo, 2016): The new scales ‘Building
on pluricultural repertoire’ and ‘Facilitating pluricultural space’ are compared to the 2001
scale for ‘Sociolinguistic appropriateness’. The consistency is due to the fact that, apart
from the technical success in linking the different scales together, an action-oriented
approach is adopted for all the descriptors: it is the way someone at a particular level can
reasonably be expected to be able to act that is described.
Not everyone agrees with the adoption of an action-oriented approach to
plurilingual/pluricultural competence – and the consequent association of aspects of such
competence to successive language proficiency levels like A2 and B1 (see, e.g., Cavalli,
this volume; Coste 2021a, 2021b). Coste has never been particularly keen on descriptors
for the common reference levels (e.g., Coste, 2007) and has now extended a disapproval
of the descriptors for plurilingualism/pluriculturalism (e.g., Coste 2021a, 2021b) to the
descriptors of mediation as well (ibid.), even though many of them appear in draft form
in Coste and Cavalli (2015). Here one should mention that, quite apart from the scientific
basis of the approach (described above), the resulting descriptors met with overwhelming
approval in the 2017-2018 consultation with institutions, experts and Council of Europe
member states. Indeed, with member states, those for plurilingualism/pluriculturalism
were the most popular. In the development project we had taken the view, with Auger

4The approach taken here was inspired by that taken in the ECML ProSIGN project, whose project team
contributed to the process. All CEFR descriptors have been recorded in International Sign, but are not
yet at the time of writing available on the CEFR website.

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and Louis (2009), that pluri/inter-cultural competence can best be developed with a
problem-solving, action-oriented approach, rather than through taxonomies of elements.
A small number of descriptors describing aspects that are potentially salient when learners
are A2, B1 or B2 provides teachers who have classes at those levels with specific aims and
some inspiration for feasible activities that may encourage plurilingualism. At the same
time these descriptors provide the kind of concrete goals that are an effective way to
promote learner agency (Bandura, 1989, 2001). Finally, the provision of such descriptors at
successive levels underlines the fact that plurilingual and pluricultural competence is a
dynamic and developing competence (see Companion Volume, Section 2.3), not a static
mindset.

4. AN OVERVIEW OF THE ACTION-ORIENTED APPROACH

As mentioned in Section 1, whilst the action-oriented approach was largely seen as a
new paradigm in France after the publication of the CEFR 2001, it was largely ignored in
the English-speaking world, being seen by many as simply the addition of ‘can do’
descriptors to the communicative approach. Now that the CEFR Companion Volume has
made the action-oriented approach more explicit, a rather sterile debate has taken place
(in Little, Figueras, 2022) as to whether the action-oriented approach is further developed
in the Companion Volume, or whether everything was already there in 2001. The fact of the
matter is that the principles of the action-oriented approach were there in the CEFR 2001,
but with the tendency to focus on the CEFR levels and descriptors, it was overlooked by
most users. There were of course exceptions, especially in France (e.g. Bourguignon, 2006,
2010; Puren, 2002, 2009; Piccardo, 2010, 2014) and in the 20 years following the first
appearance of the CEFR in the late 1990s, experimentation by practitioners – influenced
by socio-constructivist/-cultural, collaborative and ecological approaches to language
education – further developed task-based language teaching (TBLT: the “strong version”
of the communicative approach: Larsen Freeman and Andersen, 2011: 150), often in the
context of teaching adults (e.g. Van den Branden, 2006).
The way the CEFR Companion Volume introduces the action-oriented approach is as
follows:

The CEFR’s action-oriented approach represents a shift away from syllabuses

based on a linear progression through language structures, or a pre-
determined set of notions and functions, towards syllabuses based on needs
analysis, oriented towards real-life tasks and constructed around purposefully
selected notions and functions. This promotes a “proficiency” perspective
guided by “can do” descriptors rather than a “deficiency” perspective
focusing on what the learners have not yet acquired. (Council of Europe,
2020, English: 28, Italian: 26)

The aim of the action-oriented approach is broader, more political and less
instrumental than the approaches that preceded it, which is not surprising considering it
comes from Europe’s Human Rights organization, the Council of Europe. As Puren
explained:

It is no longer a question of educating learners, like at the beginning of the

1970s, to establish contact with and communicate with foreigners passing by.
It is rather a question of educating the citizens of multicultural and

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multilingual societies capable of living together in harmony, … as well as

students and professionals capable of working together over an extended
period of time in a foreign language/culture (Puren, 2009: 124, my
translation).

The emphasis on collaboration and co-construction in the action-oriented approach

led Puren (2002) to talk of ‘co-action’ and Bourguignon (2006) of ‘communic-action’ in
order to express the co-operation and joint agency in creating something new. The main
differences between the communicative and action-oriented approaches are well
explained by Bourguignon (2006), Puren (2009), and Piccardo (2014). They include:
− teaching the use of language now in the class, as opposed to for some future needs;
− the focus on developing a variety of competences as well as strategies – rather than
practicing certain language;
− the scope and breadth of the tasks, their richness in terms of affordances they offer;
− the agency, freedom of manoeuvre and responsibility that the users/learners have;
− the organization of didactic sequences of several lessons unified in a ‘scenario’;
− the fact that the purpose is to produce something, with learners having a “mission”
to fulfil under conditions designed to foster creativity (Bourguignon, 2006, 2010);
− the acceptance of complexity – in terms of the task itself, the organization of the work
in cycles of try and retry, the new language users/learners needed, the language(s) used
at different points, the apparent loss of control by the teacher – who, however,
provides the mediation and scaffolding required to be successful.
In the action-oriented approach the teaching and learning process is driven by action
at two complementary levels:
a) in terms of the curriculum and related course planning;
b) in terms of enactment in the class.
Firstly, at a curriculum and planning level, action-orientation involves planning
backwards from learners’ real-life communicative needs in a process sometimes called
backward design (Richards, 2013; North et al., 2018); alignment between planning,
teaching and assessment (Biggs, 2003; North, 2014); involving students in the learning
process by using descriptors for ‘signposting’ to users/learners why certain things are
happening (North, 2014) and finally, using descriptors to create concrete goals in relation
to specific tasks/scenarios.
Secondly, at the classroom level action-orientation implies providing such purposeful,
collaborative tasks that:
a) allow initiative, so that learners can strategically exert their agency;
b) have a defined mission for the learners (usually to create a product, an artefact);
c) require co-construction of meaning through mediation in interaction;
d) set conditions and constraints;
e) specify a ‘language policy’ of when to use one language or another in which
phases/activities, and when free plurilanguaging (Piccardo, 2017, 2018) is encouraged.
As Bourguignon suggests, “carrying a project through to completion being engaged in
an action for which he/she needs language can and should lead to a desire to know even
more: thus the action becomes the facilitator of learning” (2006: 66, my translation).

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5. THE LEARNER AS SOCIAL AGENT IN THE ACTION-ORIENTED APPROACH

In the action-oriented approach, users/learners are thus seen as “acting in the social
world and exerting agency in the learning process (Council of Europe, 2020, p. 22). As
suggested by the types of tasks/scenarios mentioned above, the class is seen as a real
social context in which, rather than receiving inert knowledge, students as social agents
learn to (co)-construct content and communication by engaging in collaborative tasks –
whose primary purpose is not language – in which they can act in the language in order to
construct and mediate meaning. They are a social agent because they exert their agency
within a specific social context, a defined situation which imposes conditions and
constraints, which in turn stimulate creativity. Within these constraints, the social agent
mobilizes all their resources (cognitive, emotional, linguistic and cultural), in iterative
cycles in order to plan, produce results, and monitor their action. By performing such
tasks, the learners further develop their competences and strategies.

Seeing learners as social agents implies involving them in the learning process,
possibly with descriptors as a means of communication. It also implies
recognising the social nature of language learning and language use, namely
the interaction between the social and the individual in the process of
learning. Seeing learners as language users implies extensive use of the target
language in the classroom – learning to use the language rather than just
learning about the language (as a subject). Seeing learners as plurilingual,
pluricultural beings means allowing them to use all their linguistic resources
when necessary, encouraging them to see similarities and regularities as well
as differences between languages and cultures. Above all, the action-oriented
approach implies purposeful, collaborative tasks in the classroom, the primary
focus of which is not language. If the primary focus of a task is not language, then
there must be some other product or outcome (such as planning an outing,
making a poster, creating a blog, designing a festival or choosing a candidate).
Descriptors can be used to help design such tasks and also to observe and, if
desired, to (self-)assess the language use of learners during the task (Council
of Europe, 2020, English: 30, Italian: 28, my emphasis).

The CEFR model of the action of the user/learner as social agent exercising their
agency in an action-oriented approach is extremely compatible with recent theories
informing language education, particularly the ecological approach (van Lier, 2004, 2007),
complexity theories, especially complex dynamic systems theory (CDST) (De Bot, Lowie,
Vespoor, 2007; Larsen-Freeman, 1997, 2011) and socio-constructivist / sociocultural
approaches inspired by the work of Vygotsky (Lantolf, 2000; 2011). Van Lier (2007), for
example, in an article on action-based teaching, agency and autonomy, emphasizes the
importance of ‘affordances’ – interpreted as invitations to action – with the vital issue
being “perception in action” (van Lier, 2004: 97). Larsen-Freeman and Todeva (2022), in
discussing the significance of complexity for language learning, suggests CDST as a
theoretical framework for plurilingual action-orientation, as does Piccardo (2017). As
Bourguignon puts it, “The new reality with which the teaching/learning of language-
culture is faced is a complex reality” (2006: 61, my translation).
This reality, as the CEFR recognizes, has external and internal aspects. What one ‘can
mean’ in any given situation – Halliday’s (1973, 1978) concept of ‘meaning potential’ – is
in fact determined by an interaction between (a) external (social) factors and (b) internal
(individual) factors (CEFR 2001, Sections 4.1.3-5). Richer (2009, 2012) in discussing the
CEFR model and the nature of competence, refers to the concepts of pouvoir agir (external

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factors) and vouloir agir (internal factors) in this respect as essential aspects of a dynamic
concept of competence. As Piccardo (2012) points out, the recognition of the centrality
of this external/internal interaction in the CEFR gives mediation, in the sense of the term
used in Vygotsky’s work and in socio-constructivist/cultural approaches – and indeed in
mainstream educational theory nowadays – a crucial role in the CEFR model. This is why
the 2020 version of the CEFR takes a far broader view of mediation – see Piccardo
forthcoming and Piccardo, North, Goodier (2019) for discussion. It also links directly to
the concept of the affordances present in the environment, which is discussed below, and
in addition to the recognition that any language use/learning, any competence in action,
is situated. As Piccardo and North (2019: 85) put it:

the concepts of agency, communities of practice, collective intelligence, and

situated cognition cast light on the teaching and learning process in general
and present a great potential in the understanding of the innovative
conceptualization of language education that the AoA [action-oriented
approach] is fostering. These concepts together with theories of action […]
complete the colourful picture of the AoA theoretical framework.

6. KEY ASPECTS OF THE ACTION-ORIENTED APPROACH

As suggested in the previous two sections, the key aspects of the action-oriented
concern affordances, agency and tasks. In this section we look at each of these in turn in
more detail.

6.1. Affordances
Affordances are “opportunities for action” (Käufer, Chemero, 2015: 166) with the
environment “calling for a certain way of acting” on the part of a social agent (Dreyfus,
Kelly, 2007: 52; original emphasis); they “are not mere possibilities for action but generally
invite us” Withagen, Araújo, de Poel (2017: 16). However, “affordances can only solicit
us if we perceive them” (ibid.) and not all affordances are perceived, firstly because
someone working on a task “is only sensitive to the affordances that are relevant […]
Only those relevant affordances […] are experienced as invitations” (Käufer, Chemero,
2015: 203) – but more fundamentally because not everyone is equally perceptive all of the
time, especially in a school environment.
Van Lier therefore emphasises the need to provide learning environments with “action
potential” (2004: 92 – Halliday’s “meaning potential”) and to encourage “perception in
action” (2004: 97):

From an ecological perspective, language learning-as-agency involves learning to

perceive affordances (relationships of possibility) within multimodal
communicative events. Every subject and every topic is an ‘affordance
network’ that is accessed through collaborative activity (Van Lier, 2007: 53, my
emphasis).

Thus, rather than providing ‘inputs’ to learners as passive recipients one should expose
them as social agents to a rich landscape of affordances in collaborative task/projects,
which will foster emergence of language (Piccardo, North, 2019: 107). Such rich

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oriented Approach

affordances will also encourage creativity, affordances being an element of one of the
leading theories of creativity (Glăvenau’s ‘Five A’s’ theory of creativity) in which:
“creativity can be defined as a process of perceiving, exploiting, and ‘generating’ novel
affordances during socially and materially situated activities” (Glăvenau, 2012: 196).
Piccardo (2017) explains how complexity theories, ecological theories and creativity
theories interact and provide a theoretical framework for providing a rich environment
for collaborative languaging (thinking things through: Swain, 2006; Cowley, Gahrn-
Andersen, 2018) and plurilanguaging (Lüdi, 2015, 2016; Piccardo, 2017, 2018) in an action-
oriented approach.
The Companion Volume descriptors for mediating concepts provide ‘signposts’ that are
intended to help to make such collaborative languaging more explicit and thus more
effective.

6.2. Agency
In socio-constructivist/sociocultural thinking, learners are seen as agents who “actively
engage in constructing the terms and conditions of their own learning” (Lantolf,
Pavlenko, 2001: 145). However, agency is both facilitated and constrained by the
affordances available in the context. In the broader field of agency studies, people are
nowadays seen as “agents able to influence their contexts, rather than just react to them,
in a relationship of ongoing reciprocal causality in which the emphasis is on the complex
dynamic interaction between the two elements [social and individual]” (Mercer, 2011: 428)
– just like in the CEFR model of the social agent, who perceives and acts on affordances
available. Larsen-Freeman puts the same point as follows:

Agency is not inhered in a person. There is no homunculus or innate internal

program that is responsible for the observed behavior. Instead, agency is
interpellated from the self-organizing dynamic interaction of factors internal
and external to the system, persisting only through their constant interaction
with each other (Larsen-Freeman, 2019: 65).

Mercer, in reporting on an in-depth case study with one learner, reports that
“motivation, affect [interest, likes/wants] and self-regulation emerge as the ‘controlling’
components of this learner’s agentic system” (2011: 427). Mercer, like Larsen-Freeman
(2019) concludes that agency:

can best be understood as a complex system composed of a number of

constituent components; each of which can itself be thought of as a dynamic
complex system … No single component or element in the complex system
causes Joana [the subject of the case study] to exercise her agency in a certain
way, but it is rather a series of multiple, interconnected causes which appear
to vary in their relative significance and can interact in unpredictable ways
(Mercer, 2011: 435).

Agency thus has a social/environmental aspect and an individual aspect – hence the
expression ‘social agent.’ To recap, these are considered again below.

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oriented Approach

6.2.1. Social
Social agents exert agency within a specific social context, which imposes conditions
and constraints. What they ‘can mean’ is defined by the range of affordances of the
specific situation type in which the agent is able/permitted to act (pouvoir agir: Richer,
2009, 2012): the “meaning potential:” (Halliday, 1973, 1978) or “action potential” (van
Lier, 2004), which van Lier equates with affordances.

6.2.2. Agent
When the social agent perceives the affordances of the situation, they mobilize all their
resources/competences (cognitive, emotional, linguistic and cultural) and develop
strategies to complete the task, working in iterative cycles in order to plan, rehearse/draft,
produce results, and monitor their action. According to Bandura (1989, 2001), agency has
four core characteristics:
a) Intentionality: a plan of action, which is at partially thought through, and which is
adjusted in the light of new information and/or experience during the process of
completing the task;
b) Forethought: which involves considering consequences, anticipating outcomes, and
selecting further actions based on experience so far;
c) Self-regulatory processes in relation to concrete goals that link thought to action: Are we
heading in the right direction? Are we making progress towards the goal? and finally
d) Self-reflection on the soundness of one’s ideas and the actions undertaken, judged
against the outcomes achieved through them: Do we need to adjust our actions – or
the goal?
In later versions of his theory, Bandura (2008) clarifies that agency can be collective
and collaborative rather than just individual and also (2018) simplifies his model to three
aspects: forethought; self-reactiveness (self-regulation) and self-reflectiveness. According to
Bandura, the result of experiencing success through following such processes is to
increase the agency itself in what is called self-efficacy: the belief in future success.
As Larsen-Freeman points out (2019) agency is thus dynamic: it develops through
iteration (with safe spaces to produce drafts, to rehearse, and through repetition of
familiar types of tasks) and through co-adaption to other complex adaptive systems –
here, adaptation to the other user-learners when working together in a collaborative
context. As Bandura emphasizes, agency is reinforced by self-efficacy: the motivating
belief, based upon experience, that one can be successful.
Agency theory thus has direct implications for the action-oriented approach:
− concrete goals can be provided to learners with CEFR ‘can do’ descriptors selected in
relation to specific tasks; such more concrete goals work better than vaguely
formulated aims;
− motivation is strengthened by self-belief that one can be successful, and this is
increased by previous experiences of success;
− tasks can be challenging rather than dumbed down, provided learners know that they
can be imperfect in their first try: “Conceptions are rarely transformed into masterful
performance on the first attempt” (Bandura, 1989: 1181).

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− an iterative process with feedforward (in relation to goals) and feedback (in relation
to challenges/weaknesses): “motivation is self-regulated through the joint influence
of proactive and feedback mechanisms” (Bandura, 1989: 1180)
The iterative process mentioned in the final point above requires reflection on the part
of the social agent – throughout the process, not just a reflection phase tacked onto the
end of a task:

[Reflection is] a recursive, awareness-raising, (self-)regulatory process that

supports the social agent in his/her actions, risk-taking and learning process.
… The reflection process does not always necessitate formal steps or
formalized tools, it is very often an impromptu process done through
personal, unstructured or even scribbled notes – or sometimes even just at
the mental level. It is more the idea of creating a reflective habit that fosters
self-regulation and other-regulation and self-confidence and eventually more
effective autonomous learning. This does not mean that more formal end of
project reflection is not useful, quite the contrary, this last type of reflection
in fact further contributes to reinforcing and giving value to the reflective
habit itself (Piccardo, North, 2019: 255).

To summarise, action-oriented tasks therefore need to provide the space for the
learners to take responsibility and to design what they are doing and reflect on how they
are progressing towards the goal.

6.2.3. Tasks
Tasks, of which as stated before: “the primary focus of the tasks is not language”
(Council of Europe, 2020, English: 30, Italian: 28) are central to the CEFR model and the
CEFR 2001 dedicated a whole chapter to tasks (CEFR Chapter 7). In an action-oriented
approach, the classroom becomes a context for real use of language, breaking down the
classroom walls, e.g. through projects and the use of online tools. Tasks provide direction
to teaching, learning and assessment, with learning occurring in context, as learners as
social agents activate and further develop the strategies and competences needed to
complete the task – with scaffolding from the teacher. Action-oriented tasks involve the
development of a product or outcome, which might be “planning an outing, making a
poster, creating a blog, designing a festival or choosing a candidate” (ibid).
The following list summarizes the principal characteristics of an action-oriented task:
a) action is purposeful with real-life application;
b) there is a clearly communicated goal to be accomplished that results in a product or
outcome;
c) learners process authentic texts and real-life experiences;
d) learners exercise agency in an authentic social context;
e) there are conditions and constraints (e.g., that promote critical and creative thinking);
f) learners work collaboratively, helping the progress of others;
g) learners draw upon existing and newly developed competences;
h) learners make choices and think and act strategically.
(modified from: Hunter et al., 2019)

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How is this different from task-based language teaching (TBLT)? The short answer is
in (a) the richness of the tasks – that provide a ‘landscape of affordances’ and (b) the
agency that learners have. The role of learners and teachers are fundamentally different in
the action-oriented approach. In the action-oriented approach, tasks are essentially
projects that learners design and control. Learners act as social agents, take responsibility
and design what they are doing as they engage in a process of co-construction, within
given conditions and constraints – as in real life. The teacher asks about progress and
provides help if needed at regular intervals – as in academic or professional life.
Definitions of ‘task’ in TBLT differ greatly and often contradict each other (see van
den Branden 2006: 3-10). Most types of tasks described by Ellis (2003), Nunan (2004),
Skehan (1998), and Willis, Willis (2007) are far narrower than those used in the action-
oriented approach. In TBLT, the tasks are often simple role plays or very structured
activities in which learners only choose from a list of options provided. Nunan (2004: 20-
21), for example, introduces the notion of ‘task’ with a very restricting activity. In TBLT
there is often a focus on a tight instructional sequence following defined principles:
scaffolding, task dependency, recycling, active learning, integration, reproduction to
creation, reflection (Nunan, 2004: 35-38). There is also a tendency to design tasks to use
particular language – related to the target real-life situation that the task simulates – that
the learner is expected to rehearse and learn through performing the task, in preparation
to some future ‘real life’.
Willis and Willis (2007), for example, give seven types of task in their ‘task generator’:
a) listing; b) ordering and sequencing; c) matching; d) comparing; e) sharing personal
experience; f) problem-solving; and g) “projects and creative tasks: class newspaper,
poster, survey, fantasy, etc.” (Willis, Willis, 2007: 108). The first four of these types are so
narrow that they could be test tasks. The fifth – sharing personal experiences – is a nice
communicative activity, but unless part of a broader scenario, it lacks purpose. Only the
final two, problem-solving and ‘projects and creative tasks’ have a clear potential to be
action-oriented. In Willis and Willis’s TBLT vision, however, even the projects are tightly
controlled by the teacher with the learners having little or no agency, e.g.: “The students
work in groups and choose the five best questions … and answer them from the
documentary” (ibid: 102).
Piccardo and North summarise the difference between the communicative and action-
oriented approaches as follows:

In the communicative approach, learners had a limited responsibility and an

equally reduced range of choices. The point was to be able to function in
everyday situations, performing speech acts that enabled communication.
This characterizes the communicative approach both in its weak ‘classic’
version and in its strong version, i.e. TBLT. Tasks in the AoA [action-oriented
approach], on the other hand, are projects and as such they require real
problem-solving and decision-making skills that enable actions here and now.
(Piccardo, North, 2019: 246)

and:

Action-oriented tasks give users/learners the opportunity to engage in action

– to come up with a well-defined outcome, to create an artefact: a visible
product. It is during the process of developing the product that the learners
mediate and (pluri)language i.e. exploit different linguistic and semiotic
resources to communicate and (co)construct meaning, and so acquire new
language. This is why action-oriented tasks can be equated with projects. And

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oriented Approach

project work is a perspective that is valid from the lower levels, when
users/learners are developing the ability to communicate, all the way to the
highest levels. It is no coincidence that professional further training tends to
be task and project-based. (Piccardo, North, 2019: 278-9)

Action-oriented tasks, being broader than TBLT tasks, require more time and are
spread over a number of lessons in a didactic sequence. This sequence is often given a
frame and credibility for the learners through a ‘scenario’. A summary of the scenario puts
the groups of learners in a certain simulated context and explains to them both their
mission and the conditions and constraints under which they are to realize it. Here it is
important to understand that the learners are not role-playing. In the 1980s, when
simulations (Debyser, 1986; Jones, 1982) were quite popular, an important distinction was
made between role-playing – in which learners pretend to be someone else, often with
defined opinions and personal characteristics – and role-enactment. In role-enactment,
defined by a scenario, learners as social agents adopt the stance of a participant in a given
situation, but act as themselves in the realistic context given by the scenario, developing
their own opinions and plans.
Over the past decade action-oriented scenarios have become more common in
language education (e.g., Eaquals - CIEP, 2014; Hunter, Andrews, Piccardo, 2016; Hunter
et al., 2019; North, Ortega, Sheehan, 2010; Piccardo, 2014; Piccardo et al., 2022; Schleiss,
Hagenow-Caprez, 2017; Scholze et al., 2022) and more recently in language assessment
(Carroll, 2017; Purpura, 2021). I will not go into more detail about scenarios here, since
Piccardo (this volume) gives a detailed description and worked example. Readers are also
referred to Piccardo and North (2019, Chapter 7) for further explanation and discussion.

7. CONCLUSION
This chapter has introduced the Companion Volume and briefly explained the main ideas
behind the action-oriented approach. Action-oriented/-based teaching is becoming
common in other school disciplines, with the effect of socio-constructivist theories on
education, and language education is of course the most obvious context in which to apply
it. The action-oriented approach is not the same as the communicative approach, which
has remained much the same since the 1980s, with the norm being a thinly disguised
grammatical syllabus organized in linear fashion, elements of behaviourism, and an
obsession with ‘native-speaker’ competence.
To risk summarising prerequisites for an action-orientated approach, one could say
that it boils down to the following points:
− The backward design of curriculum modules, with alignment between planning,
teaching and assessment facilitated by using ‘can-do’ descriptors to define the aims
and outcomes.
− The shift from a paradigm of simplicity (chop things up; don’t make things
challenging) to a paradigm of complexity: accept complexity and provide reasonable
challenges, with scaffolding as necessary.
− The authenticity and credibility of a scenario for a task/project in which the learners
have the autonomy to research different source materials, which they mediate to their
peers, and create a product in which they invest.
− A didactic sequence over several lessons that leads up to a unifying, final task, with
several phases offering different language activities and iterative cycles of draft/

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redraft culminating in the (co)production and presentation of an artefact, followed by

a reflection phase.
− A plural, intercultural focus, recognising that all languages the learners possess have a
place, at times, in the classroom, with an integrated approach to language education,
to teaching additional languages, to incorporating elements of heritage languages, and
linking to the language of schooling.
− Agency for the learners as social agents to decide how to go about the task, make
decisions as they go along, co-constructing meaning through the mediation of
concepts and/or communication.
− Feedforward towards the concrete goals (expressed with descriptors) and feedback
from the teacher on drafts created in a safe environment, with the experience of
success with the final product leading to self-efficacy and increased self-awareness.
− Self-, peer and teacher assessment of the outcomes, with (CEFR-based) criteria shared
in advance.

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