Linguistics faculty and students invited to participate in Council of Europe Project

The Linguistics Department of the Hellenic American University has been invited by the Language Policy Unit of the Council of Europe to participate in a study related to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: learning, teaching, assessment (CEFR). The study, which began in March 2015, involves further development of the illustrative scales used to measure language proficiency in the area of mediation.  As Johanna Panthier, Head of the Language Unit Policy noted in her letter of invitation, this study is an “extremely valuable contribution for all professionals using the CEFR.”

The participants of the study include University faculty members, Christine Irvine-Niakaris and Charalambos Kollias, and fifteen graduate students studying in the Master of Arts program in Applied Linguistics (MAAL). All of the participants are involved in a series of activities conducted in workshops at the University and surveys administered online. The activities aim to finalize and validate a set of descriptors for mediation activities and mediation strategies used in a number of languages. According to Professor Irvine-Niakaris, the MAAL students participating in the project feel privileged to be part of this work for the CEFR, which has had such an impact on learning, teaching, and assessment of foreign languages in Europe and worldwide