VALILEX - Theoretical and empirical validation of lexical competence in English and French within the Common European Framework of Reference

The language-neutral Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) (Council of Europe, 2001) is probably one of the most influential document for educational language policy in Europe. It describes language tasks and linguistic competences for any European language and links them to six levels of language proficiency (from A1 to C2). However, the CEFR and RLDs, the language-specific descriptions, have been criticized for lacking a theoretical and empirical basis (Alderson, 2007; Hulstijn, 2014; Kuiken et al., 2010). Therefore, two PhD-projects – one focusing on English, the other on French – would like to contribute to an empirical and theoretical validation of the CEFR by combining a corpus-based and expert-judged approach (Bardel et al., 2012) and by taking into account Hulstijn’s theory of language proficiency (2011). Specifically, we will first determine the shared vocabulary for listening and speaking among native speakers for communicative settings described by the A1 and B1 CEFR-levels. Next, we aim to determine the lexical competence (= vocabulary size and lexical items) needed for learners of English and French to successfully perform listening and speaking tasks at these two CEFR-levels. Finally, we aim to determine whether the communicative activities at these two levels share a common vocabulary in two typologically different languagesstatus: publishe