European Profiling Grid

Nearly 12 years ago, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment was launched.  

Since then, talking about levels of language competence seems to have become a lot easier and clearer. 

Parents and students, as well as teachers and language specialists, publishers, exam boards, seem to be speaking the same language!!  I overhear mothers and fathers saying 'He needs a B1' to get into university.  'She has to pass B2'.

And of course, the Cambridge English exams are all clearly aligned to the different levels.

Some time ago, I found out about another European project:  The European Profiling Grid.  

I signed up to receive information about the European Profiling Grid Project and last Friday, I got an email to tell me that the interactive grid is now available on the official Project Website.

I've copied the Objectives of the Grid from the official website:

Objective

The aim of the European Profiling Grid (EPG) project is to help improve the quality and effectiveness of language training thanks to an innovative instrument: the European Profiling Grid.

Designed for teachers working in Europe in language centres and schools, this tool aims to :

• help better identify training needs;
• provide a reliable means of evaluating and self-evaluating professional skills;
• facilitate recruitment thanks to a transparent evaluation system;
• foster mobility by enhancing professional skills.

The EPG Grid is not only a tool developed for the use of the language teachers but also for their trainers and employers.

The Grid was originally developed by EAQUALS and used in it inspections.  There are now more organisations involved:  

Partners

Centre international d’études pédagogiques (CIEP), France
Evaluation & Accreditation of Quality in Language Services (EAQUALS), UK
British Council, UK
Instituto Cervantes, Spain
Bulgarian Association for Quality Language Services (BAQLS OPTIMA), Bulgaria
Goethe-Institut e.V., Germany
Center für berufsbezogene Sprachen (CEBS), Austria
ELS-Bell Education Ltd (ELS Bell), Poland
Università oer Stranieri di Siena (UNISTRASI), Italy
Hogeschool van Amsterdam DOO (HvA), Netherlands
Sabanci Üniversitesi (SU), Turkey

I couldn't find the Grid on the EPG website, but I clicked on the link to the Webinar that took place last week and listened to it (watching it when the interesting bits I wanted to look at came on).

The webinar is quite long - an hour.  The first part is really an introduction to the Project and the actual Egrid that I wanted to find out about appears about half way through - 30 minutes into the webinar.

As I write this post, the Egrid does not seem to be online, but I did find a pdf document on the EAQUALS website here.

From what I can see, this could be a useful training and development tool.  

And if you didn't read my post back in July about the ELT Snapshot Survey, you might like to read it now because it's very thematically related!