The importance of developing strategic thinking through teaching foreign languages

Abstract

New Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. Companion Volume with new descriptors. Council of Europe (CEFR) (2018) underlines the importance of strategies and “represents a departure from the traditional distinction made in applied linguistics between the Chomskyan concepts of (hidden) ‘competence’ and (visible) ‘performance’ – with ‘profi ciency’ normally defi ned as the glimpse of someone’s underlying competence derived from a specifi c performance. In CEFR, ‘profi ciency’ is a term encompassing the ability to perform communicative language activities (can do…), whilst drawing upon both general and communicative language competences (linguistic, sociolinguistic, and pragmatic), and activating appropriate communicative strategies”. Also the authors of CEFR suggest that tasks in the language classroom should involve communicative language activities and strategies that also occur in the real world, so it is undoubtful that our students must have a good command of strategical competence with strategical thinking as a key element.