User's Guide

There follows a full account under the three sections of the European Language Portfolio (Language Passport, Language Biography and Dossier) of what to expect and how to use the European Language Portfolio for the Blind and Visually Impaired.

The Language Passport

This is a formal summary of all the information in your ELP regarding attainment levels and qualifications.

You will first find a note on the role of the Council of Europe. This is a required inclusion in all European Language Portfolios.

After this, there is the official description and contents of the Language Passport, also a required inclusion.

There follows a special supplement of ‘Additional information for blind and visually impaired users.’

There follows the ‘My Language Passport’ Section. It includes three sub-sections:

1. Personal details: you are required to record your name and your date of birth. Please enter your date of birth in the following format: dd/mm/yyyy
2. Languages I use: Here you are asked to enter your
   1. mother tongue (national language and language spoken at home or in the community of your upbringing).
   2. languages other than mother tongue, for which you will further record levels of attainment.
3. Profile of language skills: this sub-section contains the results of your latest self-assessment. Your levels of attainment will appear automatically in this sub-section after you have recorded the results of your self-assessment in the ‘Checklists’ of the Language Biography.

There are five skills: Listening, Spoken Interaction, Spoken Production, Reading and Writing. Speaking is divided into two skills, Spoken Interaction, which is about conversation with one or more other people, and Spoken Production, which is about giving a talk or announcement, where there is no continuous interaction.

The Self-assessment Scale comes after the profile section. This is the scale you and your teacher/tutor will refer to when deciding at what level you are able to perform in the range of skills. Each item is known as a descriptor, which takes account of such things as the length and complexity of the language you can understand or produce. Because it is a self-assessment scale, each descriptor begins, ‘I can…’.

First you will find the standard Self-assessment Scale showing major categories of language use at each of the six levels as presented in the 'Common European Framework of Reference: Learning, Teaching, Assessment' which is a reference document of the Council of Europe for the European Language Portfolio.

There follows the Self-assessment scale adapted for the blind and visually impaired.

Specific provisos for the blind and visually impaired: how this European Language Portfolio recognises your particular circumstances as a blind or visually impaired user

At each of the 6 levels described in the Self-assessment Scale you can understand and express yourself. You will use specific support for the blind and visually impaired such as Braille or screen readers and may experience some limitations to your speed and accuracy because of this. Reasonable allowance is made for these technological limitations.

However you should assume wherever possible that you meet the criteria specified at each level of performance for the purposes of self-assessment, even though your particular constraints may extend the learning time required to achieve those levels.

There will, of course, be types of source material which you cannot be expected to understand or respond to and which you should not be assessed on. Examples include texts inaccessible via technological aids and/or Braille (e.g. public display boards, street signs etc.) and uncommented pictorial illustrations and film/video sequences.

The term ‘constraint’ has been adopted to refer routinely to e.g. the absence of visual clues habitually used by sighted learners to make inferences about spoken and written text. This could include facial expression, bodily stance and gesture in conversation, illustrations in text and uncommented video sequences in screened information or entertainment and so on.

It is understood, conversely, that you, as a blind and visually impaired user, may actually be more aware than a sighted user of certain features of spoken language. The term ‘specific support for the blind and visually impaired’ has been adopted to refer routinely to, e.g., Braille texts, Screen-readers, Braille display, optical equipment or large print for a visually impaired reader, and so on.

The performance criteria or ‘descriptors’ listed in the Self-assessment scale briefly incorporate these provisos and are very broad summaries of the global skills expected of learners who may be regarded as competent at each level.

In the next section, ‘Summary of language learning and intercultural experience’, you are asked, for each language learnt in your own country, to enter brief details of the time spent learning it (a) in the classroom, (b) through work practice (c) through contact with speakers of the language or (d) by any other means.

After that, you are asked to record language learning based in the country where the language is spoken, (a) when attending a language course, (b) when using the language for study or training, (c) when using the language at work or (d) under other circumstances. There is then a space in which you can give further information on language learning and intercultural experiences.

In the ‘Certificates and diplomas’ section you are asked to enter certificates and diplomas related to your language learning.

The Language Biography

The second part of the European Language Portfolio is the Language Biography. Whereas the Passport is a summary document, briefly recording the levels attained for each skill, the Language Biography gives you the opportunity to provide a detailed picture, not only of where you have got to with languages, but also of how you got there and how you feel about yourself as a language learner.

It encourages you to acknowledge and value languages from your home background, although outside the home you may speak the ‘official’ language of the country where you live. It enables you to write about some of your language learning experiences that may have happened outside a classroom, for example, making a new friend, or working abroad – experiences that may even have been more important to you than those of your formal education.

In the section ‘My personal language background’ you are firstly asked to record your mother tongue(s) and other language spoken at home or in the community of your upbringing. You may have grown up speaking the official national tongue of your country and another language at home, for example. If you have already entered this information in the ‘Language Passport’ section, it will automatically appear in the Language Biography.

After that, in sub-section ‘Languages I have learnt and my present language learning’ you are asked to record for each language, which you want to describe in your European Language Portfolio,

1. whether you have learnt it, or may still be learning, formally, through an educational course or/and
2. informally, through your background and through many possible contacts with people of different language communities.

Then, you are invited to add comments about the reasons for, and value of choosing a particular language and how you felt about the experience.

Further in this sub-section you will find a link to Checklists of tasks that correspond to criteria in the Self-assessment scale of the Language Passport. These checklists refer to your present language learning. They enable you to assess your current achievements and set and prioritize your goals.

The Checklists consist of self-assessment descriptors, or tasks, presented in a form of "I can…" statements. Sometimes learners have difficulty understanding these concise statements. At the beginning of each checklist you are offered to read a list of examples which will help you understand better what you are expected to be able to do at a particular level and in a particular language skill.

If you want to check a list of examples before starting your self-assessment, choose ‘Examples’. If you prefer to skip the examples, you can go directly to the checklist. You may wish to return to the list of examples later.

Each checklist contains five tasks (self-assessment descriptors) that illustrate the requirements for a particular skill at a particular level (e.g. Listening A1, etc). For each task, there are three stages of progress you can record. If you can complete the task ‘a little’, perhaps with help, you write 1. If you can often do it ‘fairly well’ but still have some problems, you should write 2. If you can do a task of this kind ‘really well’, you should write 3.

After this, you can record how important it is to make progress on the task, by giving it a priority from 1 (highest) to 5 (lowest).

Your tutor can also say how they think you have progressed. E.g. they may sometimes feel you are more proficient than you think, at the level you are attempting.

Using the European Language Portfolio can encourage you to discuss your progress with a tutor, using an actual activity, rather than vague generalities, to focus your discussion.

After this, there is a sub-section on ‘My language learning experience’. The first part of this invites you to think about yourself as a learner. Do you ‘play safe’, or are you a ‘risk-taker’? Mark which general description you think applies best to you. Give your reasons.

In the second part, you can say how you rate, on a score of 0-5 a number of things a teacher might ask you to do in a language classroom. Some of these are very controlled, while others require you to use guesswork and deduction. Which do you look forward to and which do you feel less comfortable with? There is a key to your answers immediately after this questionnaire. It gives you a short profile of what sort of a learner you are, outlining your strengths and suggesting areas for further development. Fill in the questionnaire and press the 'Check results' button to see your profile.

There follows a sub-section on ‘Intercultural experiences and encounters’. It focuses on how effectively you feel you interact with people whose background culture differs from yours. Here, the emphasis is on customs and expectations of different cultures, rather than on language alone.

You are first asked to record any experiences and encounters with people of different cultures that you feel have been important in forming your attitudes. You may, for example, have noted that people of some cultures are naturally more, or sometimes less, inclined to take blindness or impaired vision into account in the way they converse with you.

In each instance you should record, (a) describe the encounter and (b) say how it influenced the way you now react to such encounters.

There is then a sub-section which helps you assess on your level of ‘Intercultural Skills’ at three broad levels, Basic, Independent and Proficient.

After each descriptor, there is space to comment on how this descriptor fits in with your own perception of your skills.

Finally, an ‘Intercultural awareness checklist’ is provided of a number of problems and misconceptions people may have that can interfere with smooth relationships when they deal with people of other cultures. This is to set you thinking in practical terms about how well you manage now and whether there is room for progress in this area. You may wish to record other such problems, either ones you have thought of or arising from your actual experience.

The Dossier

It is important that the levels of proficiency claimed in the Passport can be proved. For this, evidence of your attainment must be included, especially if, for example a job application were to depend on your claims being accurate.

What kinds of evidence may be included in the Dossier?

This evidence can take several forms, being examples of what you can do using languages for which you have recorded a level or qualification, notably:

Certificates and diplomas (electronic copies), as recorded in your Passport.

Performance evidences:

1. Recordings of texts in the target language (e.g. a listening comprehension test paper you have completed in training) with evidence that you have understood them,
2. Audio or video (refer to note above) recordings of yourself speaking in the target language, both in conversation and giving an account or presentation,
3. Written or printed texts in the target language, (e.g. a comprehension test paper you have completed in training) with evidence that you have understood them,
4. Texts you have written in the target language.

‘Witness statements’ completed by colleagues or others you have worked with, who are competent to testify that you were able to carry out a practical task e.g.:

1. Using and/or responding to, the target language,
2. Behaving in a way (other than purely linguistically) that demonstrates intercultural skills.

In sub-section ‘Certificates and diplomas’ you can

1. provide information about each certificate you want to add to your Dossier (such as the target language, level of competence, awarding body),
2. to make this information visible in the ‘Certificates and diplomas’ section of your Language Passport,
3. to upload the electronic copy of the certificate browsing your computer.

In sub-section ‘Performance evidence’ you can upload any kind of file as a proof of your language skill. In this sub-section you can download a Performance evidence template and use it as a cover page to the particular evidence file, if you want to provide more information about it. The performance evidence can be given as your personal, individual choice of sample or it can be witnessed and signed by an external assessor.

In sub-section ‘Witness statements’ you can collect statements of suitably qualified observers, related to the tasks you successfully performed in a real-life environment (for example, statements of an employer of a task you have performed at the work-place). Two types of templates can be downloaded: a witness statement testimony to language competence and a witness statement testimony to intercultural competence.

The final section of the Dossier is your Language Learning Journal. This is an optional activity, but you may find it useful to keep a daily or weekly record of your learning experiences, e.g. noting which activities or techniques worked best for you, either with a teacher or while studying on your own. There are suggestions as to what you might record, but you can add to these.

In this section, you are invited to keep a regular record of a variety of experiences of language learning that you think are relevant to the section entitled ‘Language learning experience’ in your Language Biography.

At first you may feel you have quite a lot to write and may want to record your reactions every day, if the experience is new to you. Later, however, you may record less frequently, only noting any new developments in your or your teacher’s approach or new activities that have been tried.

Or you might think it worthwhile to list very briefly everything you do, to be able to give an idea of regular routines. It is up to you to decide what sort of a record you want to keep.

There is a Language Learning Journal template provided. You can download the template, fill in your experience, save the record and add it to your electronic Dossier browsing your computer.

The Language Learning Journal template gives you some hints on how to structure your description going through a number of typical points.

The date of the experience and, then, any relevant information about the situation, such as

1. What happened, for example,
   1. how a class was organised
   2. examples of class activities
   3. what you did as a self-tuition activity
2. What impact this had on your learning, for example, if the approach or activity was:
   1. enjoyable (e.g. confidence-building, amusing)
   2. not enjoyable (e.g. undermined your confidence, was boring)
   3. effective (e.g. it helped you to memorise new expressions introduced, it helped you to understand a grammar point that had puzzled you before)
3. How appropriate was the experience for you as a blind or visually impaired person?

Here is a Checklist of items you might want to record. You can add your own items to this list. There are many other possibilities.

Classroom based learning

1. General classroom organisation (e.g. teacher leading every activity / learners being encouraged to work in pairs or groups. (what happened – how you reacted to this)
2. How the lesson was structured (e.g. was the sequence strictly logical … or was it quite relaxed, with contrasting activities… were there breaks for less serious activities)
3. General approach to language teaching (e.g. very systematic teaching of grammar in advance / learners being exposed to examples of the language and asked to deduce meaning). (what happened – how you reacted to this)
4. Importance of the spoken word (e.g. listening activities, laboratory exercises, conversation, etc). (what happened – how you reacted to this)
5. Importance of the written word (e.g. translation, grammar exercises, reading, writing text, etc) (what happened – how you reacted to this)
6. Use of the target language (e.g. was your native language used for a lot of the time or did the teacher try to explain most things in the foreign language you were studying? etc) (what happened – how you reacted to this)
7. Materials used (e.g. do lessons follow a textbook? / does the teacher make the learning materials? / what use is made of recordings, computers, etc? etc) (what happened – how you reacted to this)
8. How much is the process dependent on learning by heart and formal study of grammar (e.g. vocabulary lists given for learning, to be tested later) (what happened – how you reacted to this)
9. Are you often challenged by activities? (e.g. encouraged to improvise when talking/writing about an unfamiliar topic… presented with a very difficult reading/listening task where you have to guess or make inferences…) (what happened – how you reacted to this)
10. Do fun and games enter into your lessons? (e.g. humour, guessing games, competitive activities, etc) (what happened – how you reacted to this)

Self-directed / independent study

11. What sort of a course are you learning from? (e.g. textbook, audio course (or a combination of these / broadcast or web-based / self-study with private tuition, etc). (how you feel about this)
12. How regularly are you able to pursue your studies? (- what you think about your study skills, persistence, etc)
13. How do you approach learning things by heart? (are you happy with the way you do it or do you feel you need advice?)
14. What opportunities do you have/take advantage of to try out your language skills in real situations (e.g. strike up conversation with native speaker/read the news from foreign language internet bulletin)
15. Do you enjoy language learning for its own sake (e.g. you are fascinated by grammatical concepts, origins of words, etc) or do you see language learning as purely for practical purposes (e.g. you need the language to carry out work objectives, etc)

Don’t forget to add to the checklist any other features of your language learning you’d like to track