Evaluation of textbooks for German as a foreign language in the basis of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: learning, teaching, assessment

Abstract

The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment (CEFR) has since its inception in 2001 served as a guideline not only for teachers and students, but also for curriculum writers, test developers, and textbook authors. CEFR was only translated into Slovenian in 2011. The key principle of CEFR is an action-oriented approach that defines the communicative competence of an individual on the basis of the language activities of reception (listening, reading), production (spoken and written), interaction (spoken), and mediation. Each individual skill is defined by descriptors for levels A1-C2. The aim is to ensure more transparency in the process of language teaching and learning and at the same time to enable students to develop their foreign-language communication competence in an efficient way. Given that foreign language textbooks greatly influence the way a foreign language is taught, the article tries to determine how the students’ lexical competence at different levels (as defined by CEFR) is developed with the aid of some of the most commonly used German language textbooks.

Keywords

• lexical competence
• CEFR
• German coursebooks
• aspects of lexical knowledge