Anu Virkkunen-Fullenwider, University of Helsinki Language Centre

In addition to interesting presentations and a panel as well as other discussions, the participants contributed to the workshop by answering the four questions put to them by the workshop organizers. The questions had been sent in advance and they were also in the program distributed in the workshop. Both these questions and the answers given will be discussed in this paper.

Although there were not a hundred and some answers (there were more than a hundred participants), the sample is still representative in many ways. The number of countries the respondents came from was 10, with most answers - as can be expected - by Finnish university teachers. Table 1 gives the exact information. Finland was also the only country where the respondents represented technical universities (2), schools of economics (2) and universities (10). The only British and Slovakian respondents came from schools of economics, which may not give a precise picture of the situation in these countries because the business schools have clearly had much more cooperation than the other universities. The third representative of the technical universities (two from Finland ) comes from the Netherlands .

Table 1 Countries and the number of respondents

In most countries, university language teachers have had some training in using CEF. However, some respondents pointed out that it has been voluntary and that the active teachers have been involved. The training has taken the form of one or more seminars, workshops or conferences; and there have been many in-house discussions and CEF groups. Further, the CEF book has been widely available and has been read by many. In addition, DIALANG and the ELP and the UNIcert®, knowledge of these and their use, have been mentioned in this same context.

Students, on the other hand, have had a less systematic introduction to CEF. There is some printed material, some university study guides mention the CEF levels which are then used to describe the language skills in university diplomas. In addition, language teachers are expected to inform their students, especially when it comes to assessing their language competences.

The main opinion seems to be that it is too early to say anything definitive about the large-scale consequences CEF may have or has had in universities. In some cases, however, changes have taken place within the universities because of CEF (e.g. Italy ); in others they are still to come. It is in general thought that language teachers are aware of CEF, other teachers are not.

It seems that the main concerns are very similar, as are the insights into the advantages and disadvantages. The greatest advantages are, according to the respondents, the transparency and harmonization of criteria across languages, "the same language" now being spoken by teachers of various languages. The main disadvantages, on the other hand, are the lack of an LSP adaptation or even an academic adaptation of CEF, the fuzziness of descriptors, more work for no extra pay, lack of training, and ignorance of CEF among the stakeholders.

So, what next? It seems that the most immediate need is to develop some LSP or LAP instructions for university teachers who use CEF in their work. This should be a unified, international enterprise that would then automatically work toward transparency and commensurability in developing and using CEF descriptors in various European universities.

On next page , you will find the answers verbatim by all the other countries except Finland . In case there were several respondents from the same country, italics have been used for the second sets of answers - that way it is easier to group the answers by respondents.