CEFR Companion Volume implementation toolbox

On 28 June 2022 the VITbox project was presented to participants of the “FIPLV World Congress of Modern Languages in conjunction with the Annual Conference of the Polish Association of Modern Languages – ‘Language education in the times of global change: The need for collaboration and new perspectives’”. The conference was organised by the International Federation of Language Teacher Associations (FIPLV), the Polish Association of Modern Languages and the Faculty of Modern Languages at the University of Warsaw in Poland.

During the conference, the VITbox project team gave a half-hour presentation on “CEFR Companion Volume implementation toolbox – a repository of online tools for language teachers and teacher educators”, in which they presented the aims and objectives of the CEFR Companion Volume Implementation Toolbox (VITbox) project and showed examples of the professional development training materials.

The presentation was met with great interest. The audience asked questions about the project and expressed interest in using the products as well as cooperating with the team in the future.

Furthermore, the Congress was an opportunity to meet language educators from across the globe and to discuss a wide variety of issues involved in the teaching and learning of modern languages. It was also an important forum for disseminating the latest research findings in these areas. The team participated in a number of presentations which focused on the following topics:

• teaching language skills and subsystems;
• new technologies in L2 learning and teaching;
• multilingual education;
• developing intercultural competence;
• learner autonomy and language learning strategies;
• content and language integrated learning;
• classroom interaction and management;
• teachers’ knowledge and beliefs;
• teacher education;
• syllabus design;
• the CEFR;
• assessing L2 knowledge;
• methodology of research on L2 learning and teaching.

Barbara Sawicka and Johann Fischer

• ECML project website “CEFR Companion Volume implementation toolbox” (VITBox): English – French

On 18 and 19 November 2021, the VITbox team met at the ECML in Graz to reflect on the outcomes of the ECML workshop in September with 34 participants from all over Europe. The aims of the meeting were to discuss the development and revision of the VITbox resources, to work on dissemination activities and to plan a network meeting to take place in April 2022. 

The team has been looking back at a series of successful events and has received useful feedback on the resources developed by participants at the ECML workshop, conference presentations, workshops and webinars. Participants have shown great interest in the resources and contributed with valuable comments and suggestions. The team will now work on the further development of the project webpage and make the resources available to a larger audience for dissemination and feedback purposes, while continuing to develop, pilot and finalise the remaining VITbox modules. 

Watch this space!

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The VITbox project (2020-2023) is developing tools in various languages to help teacher educators use and disseminate the ideas of the CEFR Companion Volume. It will provide digital documents and examples of inspiring practice in the implementation of the Companion Volume in language learning, teaching and assessment at university and in vocational training.

On 17 September 2021, the VITbox team ran a workshop on “The VITbox menu, a truly linguistic experience!” during the biennal conference of the Asociación de Centros de Lenguas en la Enseñanza Superior (ACLES) in Murcia (Spain). Participants were introduced to the VITbox resources and were invited to comment on the usefulness of the materials as well as reflect upon how they could adapt and apply them in their individual contexts.

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The ECML VITbox project (2020-2023) is developing tools in various languages to help teacher educators use and disseminate the ideas of the CEFR Companion Volume. It will provide digital documents and examples of inspiring practice in the implementation of the Companion Volume in language learning, teaching and assessment at university and in vocational training.

On 14 and 15 September 2021, 32 participants from 27 countries in Europe attended an online workshop organised by the ECML in which the VITbox project team presented their professional development modules on how to implement the ideas of the CEFR Companion Volume in teaching, learning and assessing languages in higher education and vocational training. The participants had the opportunity to work with the resources developed and provided valuable feedback to the members of the team, as well as suggesting additional elements that could be included. They exchanged ideas on how to adapt and integrate the VITbox resources into their own professional development activities and their teaching context. The VITbox team is eager to see how the participants will use the resources in their countries and contexts and how these activities may contribute to language education in university and vocational training.

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The VITbox project (2020-2023) is developing tools in various languages to help teacher educators use and disseminate the ideas of the CEFR Companion Volume. It will provide digital documents and examples of inspiring practice in the implementation of the Companion Volume in language learning, teaching and assessment at university and in vocational training.

On 5-6 July 2021, the VITbox team met to prepare the central event of their project, the workshop taking place in September. The objectives of this workshop are to introduce the participants to the VITbox materials, to gather feedback and to invite them to pilot and implement the materials in their own contexts. Hopefully, this will be the first face-to-face workshop the ECML has hosted since the end of the lockdown. The VITbox workshop will be organised in a hybrid format, and the project team is looking forward to meeting a fair number of representatives from the 33 ECML member states in Graz in person and to a fruitful exchange of ideas with all participants – those present in Graz and those taking part online.

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The VITbox project (2020-2023) is developing tools in various languages to help teacher educators use and disseminate the ideas of the CEFR Companion Volume. It will provide digital documents and examples of inspiring practice in the implementation of the Companion Volume in language learning, teaching and assessment at university and in vocational training.

The VITbox project team has been developing online modules to help language teacher educators and teachers become familiar with the content of the CEFR Companion Volume. These modules will be available for use in initial teacher training, in professional development activities and for self-study purposes. They can also be adapted by the users according to their individual needs and contexts.

Our French-German-Polish-Spanish project team has already developed prototypes of two modules for the course. The modules were first presented last month at two events: 1st AKS Online Conference “Quo vadis language instruction: On the threshold of new forms of teaching” organised by Arbeitskreis der Sprachenzentren an Hochschulen e.V. on 4 March 2021, and during a webinar run by Grupo de Interés en Evaluación de Lenguas en España (GIELE), a national organisation promoting research and initiatives on language assessment in Spain, on 12 March 2021.

The VITbox project team (Johann Fischer from Universität Göttingen, Laurent Rouveyrol from Université Nice Côte d'Azur, Barbara Sawicka from Politechnika Poznańska and Julia Zabala Delgado from Universitat Politècnica de València) presented the aims and objectives of the VITbox project and examples of training activities and materials taken from the project modules. The presenters provided a first insight into these modules and explained how the material can be used, for example in professional development workshops.

The presentation “The VITbox Project – an online toolbox for teacher educators to implement the ideas of the CEFR Companion Volume 2020” delivered at the AKS conference highlighted examples of training materials and activities which discuss the issues of online communication, whereas the webinar “Proyecto VITbox” at the GIELE meeting was illustrated with selected materials related to language mediation. Both were followed by discussions of the concepts presented and the content of the project modules. This provided project team members with valuable and constructive feedback.

For more information visit the websites:

1. 1st AKS online conference "Quo vadis language lnstruction: On the threshold of new forms of teaching": a conference presentation of the VITbox project
2. Online GIELE webinar: "Cómo familiarizar a los profesionales de las lenguas con el contenido del Volumen Complementario al MCER: proyecto VITbox – un programa de desarrollo profesional online"

More coming soon…

• VITbox project website: English - French

The VITbox team met on September 7th and 8th to discuss the draft VITbox material within the ECML project “CEFR Companion Volume implementation toolbox”. These materials are designed to help teacher educators and teacher trainers in initial teacher training and in professional development programmes as well as language teachers to implement the ideas of the CEFR Companion Volume. At the end of the project, you will have access to a mouth-watering Companion Volume Moodle course offering the following items on the menu:

• VITbox appetizers (short videos on individual modules)
• VITbox main course list (offering more extensive videos on each module)
• VITbox full experience with a cherry on top (providing further reading material)
• VITbox dessert list (with recorded webinars)
• VITbox wine list (with bibliographical references)

and special treats such as:

• VITbox dégustation (sample tasks for teaching and assessment)
• VITbox shopping list (offering checklists for training contexts)
• VITbox recipes (training activities)

etc.

Bon appétit! Enjoy your meal!

Johann Fischer, Laurent Rouveyrol, Barbara Sawicka, Julia Zabala Delgado

• VITbox project website: English - French
• ECML programme of activities 2020-2023 "Inspiring innovation in language education: changing contexts, evolving competences": English - French

The ECML project “CEFR Companion Volume Implementation Toolbox” – or “the VITbox Project” for short – has now started its activities. The project aims to provide digital resources that exemplify how to implement the ideas of the new CEFR Companion Volume in language teaching at university and in vocational training. These resources will include short videos, checklists, texts and classroom tasks and for use by teacher educators and teacher trainers in their training sessions and by language teachers for self-study purposes. The material will be produced in English and French but will include examples from other languages. The idea behind the VITbox project is to create an open toolbox from which educators, trainers and teachers can freely choose the resources they consider suitable for their purposes, adapt them to their individual training needs and eventually create their own material.

The team is now looking forward to setting up a substantial database of varied materials, that has been piloted in their own training sessions and freely available to the public.

Johann Fischer, Laurent Rouveyrol, Barbara Sawicka, Julia Zabala Delgado

• VITbox project website: English - French
• ECML programme of activities 2020-2023 "Inspiring innovation in language education: changing contexts, evolving competences": English - French