First of all, I would like to describe what the ELP is:
The European Language Portfolio is a tool developed by the Council of Europe to provide a way of teaching and assessing all languages in Europe.
Each school can adapt the ELP, but it must have three compulsory parts:
- Language Passport: summarizes the linguistic identity saying how many languages you speak, what your level in each skill is (listening, speaking, reading and writing), what kind of certification you have and which your intercultural experiences with the language are.
- Language Biography: is used to record how languages are acquired and learned and monitoring the progress in language learning (doing a tick in each descriptor we have achieved to do).
- Language Dossier: contains a selection of work that shows the evidence of the language learning.
I have to say that I have never listened to talk about the ELP since two weeks ago, when the teacher explain us all above the ELP. Last year I did a master in Teaching Education (Economics specialty) and although I’m not working yet, if I had to teach my subject in English I would like to use the ELP because I believe that is a very interesting tool which has a lot of advantages.
One of the most obvious advantage, in my opinion, is that make language
learners to be more aware of the
learning process, and this helps to be more objective whit the
self-assessment and also develops a planning skill of their own learning.
I will teach in High School, so I think that is an important advantage
use a tool that encourage learners to be more autonomous, because students are in age when they have to start to
be seriously responsible of their learning and practice active learning.
According to that, when teachers use descriptor during the course when
the students are doing activities, they know what is the objective, what is
expected of them, and they can organize
their learning process, know how to work
and plan what could they need to
achieve the aim. Set objectives also helps to motivate the students, who can see that they are improving their
knowledge of the language progressively.
Another advantage is that using the ELP foster the continuous
assessment and also the self-assessment, so students are more aware about what
they can and cannot do and because of this they understand better the teacher
assessment (they compare it with the progress they have record in their
language biography).
Related to my subject, I find very interesting use the language dossier
with a professional purpose, they
can compile evidence of their abilities that help them to find a job in the
future (covering letters, CVs, economic news comments…)
But, to my mind, teaching with the ELP has disadvantages too. The biggest disadvantage that I see is that it takes a lot of time prepare the
activities in order to work with the ELP, it would be interesting to have some
supporting resources to make easier this work, that requires a big effort from
the teacher. I guess that another disadvantage is that you need the support of
the school to work with the ELP in a whole way, because to my mind it has no
sense work only during a year or in a lonely subject with the ELP.
In my opinion there are more advantages than disadvantages, so it’s a
good idea extend the use of the ELP in order to improve the assessment of a
language and the awareness of the own learning process.
