Students’ Perspective of Common European Framework of Reference in Kosovo

Abstract

Communication is the main goal people learn languages and for this reason many researchers and scholars have conducted research on teaching and learning second/foreign languages. Research has shown that the learning route is the same but it depends on the difficulty of the language and the type of learner as well as learners’ abilities for languages. The opportunities people have to visit different places came up the need of having a standard of knowledge toward specific language, in our case English language. Between years 1993-1996, the European Council came up with the idea of CEFR to make it easier and more useful way of utilizing the languages across Europe. The CEFR stands for Common European Framework Reference, which is a framework that is being used recently, around the world in order to have specific evidence of learners’ proficiency of a language. It precisely shows to what level of language learners belong. It is basically divided into six levels of foreign language proficiency; A1, A2, B1, B2, C1 and C2. Each level has its own references of language abilities.  The way of making CEFR successful is by being aware of its usefulness, not only by teachers but by students too. Students and teachers should know their goal, and to achieve that they have to know their language level. Therefore, we want to focus on students’ information about CEFR in Britannica LC around Kosovo. The study is conducted in a private school of languages “Britannica LC” in Gjilan. They were 12 groups of students, including different ages and background. The study covered two groups for each level of languages set by CEFR; 2-A1, 2-A2, 2-B1, 2-B2, 2-C1, 2-C2. The research results showed that students were informed about levels of English depending of the book they were using and on their age. We could also figure it out that teachers were familiar with CEFR.