It is undeniable that English has become the worldwide lingua franca for the academic world. Many countries have therefore opted for Higher Education programmes fully in English, of which the Netherlands is the frontrunner. Language policies that include drawing on students plurilingual repertoires could offer the opportunity to employ several…

This article begins with a brief overview of the aims and activities of the CercleS CEFR/ELP Focus Group. It goes on to report on some of the outcomes of the 2015 CercleS CEFR/ELP seminar hosted by the Centre for Language and Communication Studies at Trinity College Dublin. The five examples presented during the seminar's plenary sessions are…

This article reports on an investigation of the challenges and benefits of university students taking a degree course in a language other than their mother tongue. Our study was conducted from the point of view of the non-native students themselves, and our primary concern was the role of language. We investigated the academic achievement of…

The CEFR will only achieve its potential in higher education if it is embedded in a meaningful way in the wider processes of the university. One means of embedding the CEFR is through policy, and in this article we report the development of a language policy in the broader context of internationalization at a Dutch university. We describe some the…

This article attempts to shed some light on the possible learning benefits for language acquisition and intercultural development of authentic social interaction with expert peers through computer mediated communication (CMC) tools. The environments used in this study are video communication and the 3D virtual world "Second Life." For…

This paper addresses the reconceptualization of the ELP as a Personal Language Learning Environment (PLLE), encouraging learners towards greater self-regulation. Such a development fits in with the pedagogical function of the ELP by scaffolding the plurilingual, lifelong learning of languages. Web 2.0 social media tools allow learners to work with…

This article explores levels of proficiency in Chinese with reference to the new HSK (Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi) Chinese Proficiency Test and the "Common European Framework of Reference for Languages" (CEFR). Special attention is given to learning and teaching the writing of Chinese characters and the use of Pinyin, a phonetic Romanization…