In the last few decades, the Language Policy Division of the Council of Europe restructured its efforts to help European citizens learn European languages for survival purposes to facilitate travel and work throughout Europe. With the idea of daily language use and plurilingual competence in mind, it published the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEF), with the Common Reference Levels. Among these levels are the Breakthrough and Waystage levels, the latter of which is at the core of this study because the researchers not only aim to design a Waystage reading syllabus, but they also aim to test how different it is from mainstream reading syllabuses in preparing learners for daily tasks and boosting their overall reading proficiency. Two distinct questionnaires were developed to survey learner and teacher ideas about subject headings and text types. Following the validation study and administration of the questionnaires to 87 teachers and 445 learners, the syllabus was designed by taking into account the CEF principles. Then, it was piloted in a quasi-experimental design in which the control group studied texts taken from various elementary course books, while the treatment group followed the CEF-based syllabus prepared. Independent samples t-test results revealed that there was a meaningful difference (two-tailed sig = 0.002 p<0,05) between the means of average differences between the groups in terms of utilizing reading skills for survival purposes. However, the difference was not meaningful (two-tailed sig = 0.642 p<0,05) in terms of increasing reading proficiency. As it is showed by these figures, CEF based syllabuses more successful in preparing language learners to perform survival tasks, and this means that they are more suitable for the needs of those learners with the idea of using foreign languages for tourism and work.