The European Language Portfolio: ELT News

The Dossier offers the learner the opportunity to select materials to document and illustrate
achievements or experiences recorded in the Language Biography or Passport.
The skills referred to in the language passport are: Understanding (listening and Reading),
Speaking (Spoken Interaction and Spoken Production), and Writing; while the levels, derived
from the Council of Europe’s Common European Framework, are:
• Basic User (A1: Breakthrough and A2: Waystage),
• Independent User (B1: Threshold and B2: Vantage),
• Proficient User (C1: Effective Operational Proficiency and C2: Mastery).
Note that the inclusion of self-assessment in the passport emphasizes that the ELP
belongs to the individual learner, not to the issuing body or institution.
From a pedagogical point of view the language biography
plays a pivotal role, providing a focus for the reflective
processes that mediate between the language passport and
the dossier. The dossier is the part of the ELP that most
closely corresponds to the artist’s portfolio.
For younger learners it may be rather like a scrap book in which target language materials are
collected to complement or “decorate” the textbook and provide a focus for ownership of the
foreign language learning process and the language itself.
Older school learners may fill their dossier with the outcomes of project work related more or
less closely to the skills in which they will be tested in public exams.