Monika Jezak
University of Ottawa
Enrica Piccardo
University of Toronto, OISE
The twentieth anniversary of the Canadian Language Benchmarks (CLB) is an apt occasion to review the origins of the CLB and the Niveaux de compétence linguistique canadiens (NCLC), and to consider their current status in official-languages training for adult immigrants in Canada. The chapter begins with a brief definition and description of the two frameworks, follows with their historical and political context, and continues with an outline of the mechanisms at work in the “Canadian model” of language training for adult immigrants. In order to trace the process that led to their development, the CLB and the NCLC are situated in the context of language education in relation to other Canadian and international standards. The final section applies the concept of glocalization as a basis for exploring the position of the various standards in the global–local continuum.
Like other contemporary language standards, the CLB and the NCLC are scales representing all stages of learner language proficiency. These scales were implemented by the federal ministry of immigration for use with adult immigrants.1 They consist of twelve benchmarks divided into three levels (beginner, intermediate, and advanced) that cover four language skills (listening and reading comprehension, speaking, and writing). The two frameworks include an explanation of the development of the scales, an outline of the target clientele, a review of the theoretical underpinnings, and guidelines for teaching and assessment. The authors of the CLB and the NCLC state that these documents provide a national standard for French and English programs in various contexts, and a framework for learning, teaching, program planning, and evaluation of second or additional languages in Canada. They further clarify that these documents are not meant to serve as curricula, teaching methodology, or assessment tools (CIC and CCLB 2012a, v; CIC and CCLB 2012b, 1).
Since the publication, twenty years ago, of the first version of the CLB for English as a second language, many related tools for language teaching, learning, and assessment have become available. These resources, as well as a number of language training programs based on the 2012 versions of the CLB and the NCLC, can be found on the dedicated site: http://www.language.ca.
A unique feature of the CLB and the NCLC is that the two standards are parallel yet distinct; they are not translations of each other. Their application is closely linked to the requirements for settlement of newcomers to Canada (e.g., the recognition of professional qualifications) and for citizenship. Since such requirements are common to both official languages, the description of language proficiency at each benchmark must be the same in French and in English, especially in the case of cut levels such as the minimum requirement for granting Canadian citizenship or for admission to professional associations.
The language needs of newcomers and the skills they will require, however, will differ according to whether they choose to settle in an English community or a French minority community. As an example, newcomers who decide to settle in an Anglophone province may self-identify as members of that province’s French minority because their language proficiency is stronger in that second language. As a result, their use of the two official languages would be quite different: English in an Anglophone community would be mainly used for activities of daily living, such as finding housing or running errands. In contrast, French in a minority context would more likely be used for social and community services, such as seeking medical attention or helping a child who attends a French-language school. Accordingly, the standards, apart from being equivalent, must offer a wide range of specific contents and descriptors related to situations that newcomers might face in each of the two official languages.
Whereas twelve benchmarks might seem excessive in comparison to other frameworks, the highly contextualized nature of the CLB and the NCLC justifies this choice. The many cut points on the continuum help Canadian managers assess, with precision, what level adult immigrants have achieved in their linguistic integration into Canadian society, in order to determine whether language training is required for settlement in the host community, whether language resources are needed for seeking employment, whether prior learning in English or French is adequate for the practice of their chosen career, or whether the newcomer is able to pass the citizenship test. The ability to precisely identify the acquired level of proficiency makes possible services tailored to the specific needs of the language learner.
The highly contextualized nature of the CLB and the NCLC, in particular their intended use for newcomers to Canada, explains the strong Canadian character of these two standards, since part of their mission is to convey the brand and values of Canadian identity. Examples of the Canadian ethos abound in the descriptors and language tasks found in both frameworks. The very fact of having two parallel but distinct documents reflects the bilingual nature of the country. The Canadianity2 of these standards is deeply rooted in the culture and tradition of language training for adult immigrants in Canada, as detailed in what follows.
Immigration has always played a major role in Canadian history. The federal Immigration Regulations of 1967 introduced a professional and educational merit-point system for admission to Canada. This system led to changes in the law that abolished ethnic and racial discrimination. This in turn led to an ever-increasing proportion of newcomers who belong to a variety of cultural communities (Boyd and Vickers 2000, Li 2000).
The integration and adaptation of immigrants to a host society depends largely on their knowledge of the official languages. The Immigration Regulations, however, generated an increased presence of languages other than French or English. While in the early twentieth century, 93 percent of the Canadian population had either English or French as their first language, the years from 1950 to 1970 show an increase in the number of native speakers of other European languages such as German, Italian, Dutch, and Ukrainian. Since the 1970s, there has been an influx of speakers of non-European languages. For example, the number of native speakers of Indo-Pakistani languages rose from 33,000 in 1971 to 900,000 in 2006. Over a century, the allophone3 proportion of the Canadian population rose from 7 percent to nearly 20 percent. By 2011, 6.6 million people reported using a language other than French or English at home (Lachapelle and Lepage 2010, Statistics Canada 2012).
The ethnic diversification of the 1970s and 1980s created a greater need for language training, which in turn led to an increase in the number of language programs available to adult immigrants, particularly in areas directly affected by the tide of immigration. During this period, co-ordination of services among local administrations and community organizations responsible for language training was not entirely adequate, not only at the level of curriculum and certification, but also in relation to teaching qualifications. Measures intended to co-ordinate language services, however, soon began to emerge, as shown below.
Shortly after the adoption of the new Immigration Regulations in 1967, two major pieces of federal legislation begin to define Canadian identity: the Official Languages Act of 1969 and the Multiculturalism Act of 1971.
The Official Languages Act (along with the later Constitution Act of 1982, which opens with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms) defines official bilingualism. It establishes institutional bilingualism by promoting equality of status and equal rights and privileges (point 16.1) for Francophone and Anglophone Canadians. As Leclerc (2010, 76) underlines, “Canada isn’t officially bilingual, only the federal state is. The provinces, municipalities, private organizations (and individuals) are not directly affected by Canada’s institutional bilingualism.”
By instituting an Anglophone-Francophone duality, however, the legislation removes from the national debate all language matters related to allophone immigration, whether the study of English or French, or language planning for immigration languages. A striking result of this language policy is the emergence of a “third force” in an increasingly multilingual Canada, outside the sphere of the languages of the “founding peoples,” (Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, cited in Li 2000, 1). In line with this, Burnaby (2008, 336) observes: “Reading official statements, one would scarcely believe that Canadians speak languages other than English and French. Federal statements carefully refer to speakers of non-official languages as other ‘cultural’ groups.”
The Canadian policy on multiculturalism becomes the government’s response to the growing ethnic diversity. On the subject of the study of official languages, policy states that the government will continue to help immigrants to acquire at least one of the two official languages and to integrate into Canadian society (Government of Canada 1971, 8546). Both the Immigration Act of 1976 and the Multiculturalism Act of 1988 reaffirm these commitments. The latter, in points 3 (i) and (j), highlights the status of official languages along with the promotion of multiculturalism in keeping with the national commitments to the two official languages.
It is through social policy related to immigration and multiculturalism that the federal, provincial, and local governments address allophone language planning, including issues related to the teaching of official languages to adult immigrants. This approach has a number of practical implications.
First, the structure and content of language courses is subject to immigration-policy priorities. Since 1970s, these priorities have concerned – to varying degrees depending on the period – the economy (for example, access to the labour force) and social cohesion (for example, citizen participation) (Williams 1998).
An added feature of the Canadian system is that official-language education comes under provincial and local jurisdictions, whereas issues related to immigration, multiculturalism, and citizenship (including issues related to the official languages for adult immigrants) fall under various federal, provincial, and local authorities. This structure results in shared and negotiated responsibility in matters related to language training, which certain authors refer to as “diffuse decision making” (Churchill 2011). This type of governance sometimes makes it difficult to identify by whom and how policies are introduced, approved, financed, and implemented.
Diffuse decision making, while facilitating the negotiation, compromise, and democratic dialogue characteristic of Canadian policy-making (Cardinal 2015), gave rise in 1970s and 1980s to a great diversity of programs across the nation. For example, certain school boards in charge of language training for adult immigrants, such as the Toronto boards, adopted innovative methods following a massive influx of immigrants from diverse backgrounds. Meanwhile, other service providers with limited resources added few changes to teaching materials or curriculum development (Fleming 2007). In this context, language training centres for adult immigrants across the country expressed the need for a national standard for all language programs.
In the decades of the 1970s and 1980s, pioneer initiatives of the “Canadian Model” for immigrant language training were introduced by the federal government in programs such as the Canadian Job Strategies Program (CJS) (1978) or the Settlement Language Training Program (SLTP) (1986). The first example, the CJS program, was directly linked to employment, and the SLTP program was linked to settlement policy. These examples clearly illustrate the reference made above to a direct connection between social policy and language training for adult immigrants.
Some aspects of the diffuse decision-making process were even adopted by existing second-language training structures, such as the shared responsibility between the federal and provincial governments, whereby the provincial government took charge of program delivery (staffing teachers, selecting teaching materials), while the federal government handled the selection and financial support of participants.
The five-year immigration program that ran from 1990 to 1995 opened new opportunities for immigrants with marketable skills or financial resources. It also promoted a harmonization of federal and provincial immigration policy that prioritized language training, since knowledge of one or both official languages was seen as crucial for the modern workplace (Burnaby 1998). Despite the recession of the 1990s, Canada hosted an unprecedented number of highly educated immigrants or investors from Asia and Africa for whom neither French nor English was their mother tongue.
In 1991, encouraged by the call for better co-ordination of federal and provincial immigration policies, Quebec negotiated with the federal government to take full responsibility provincially for selection of immigrants, settlement services, and language training. The result was a distinct system of language training for adult immigrants in Quebec. The province also developed its own language standard: L’Échelle québécoise des niveaux de compétence en français des personnes immigrantes adultes (Government of Quebec 2011), discussed further on in this chapter.
As for the other provinces and territories, in 1991 the federal government’s Ministry of Employment and Immigration set up an advisory board made up of immigration stakeholders to assess the language training needs of adult immigrants. Following extensive nationwide consultation with teachers, students, program administrators, and others in the field, the advisory board submitted a number of key recommendations to policy makers:
1. Better co-ordination among service providers;
2. Establishment of a common standard for teacher training;
3. Standardization of tests and certification procedures;
4. Development of a national curriculum;
5. A package of measures for program delivery, including an increase in the amount of government-funded training and a reduction in class size.
These nationwide consultations also served to highlight the need for nationally recognized language standards.
In 1993, the federal Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration followed through by setting up a national advisory group to develop a language-standards framework and provide support to the group’s editorial team. Canadian Language Benchmarks: English as a second language for adults, English as a second language for literacy learners (working document) was first published in 1996 (CIC 1996), and has since become the basis of program design, teaching methodology, materials development, and assessment in English as a second language. The Benchmarks were field-tested, revised, and published in the definitive version in 2000 (Pawlikowska-Smith 2000). Their counterpart for French as a second language, the Niveaux de compétence linguistique canadiens (NCLC) was first published in 2002 under the working title Standards linguistiques canadiens 2002: français langue seconde pour adultes (CIC and CCLB 2002), and in the definitive version in 2006 (CIC and CCLB 2006). Ever since, the CLB/NCLC have played a unifying role in official-languages teaching and assessment practices for adult immigrants in Canada.
As a follow-up in 1998, a national administrative body was created to independently direct the implementation of these new language standards: the Centre for Canadian Language Benchmarks (CCLB).
The CCLB’s mandate is to implement the CLB and the NCLC in a range of English and French as a second language programs and assessment structures across the country. It hosts the two standards, advocates their use, and oversees their updates. It fosters excellence in official language teaching to adult immigrants and provides support for program administration. It also provides strategic direction for the education sector, for access to the labour market, and for the integration of immigrants. It is also responsible for quality assurance of products based on the two standards. The CCLB is governed by a Board of Directors made up of representatives from organizations and interest groups, and a network of experts and practitioners in French and English as a second language from across the country. Because the mandate of the Centre cuts across several sectors and jurisdictions, it works in close collaboration with all Canadian sectors involved in the teaching of official languages to adult immigrants: federal ministries of Citizenship and Immigration and Human Resources and Skills Development, various provincial government ministries, and school boards and colleges, as well as professional associations such as TESL Canada (http://www.tesl.ca/).
In 2009, as reported in the preface to the 2012 versions of the CLB and the NCLC, with funding support from the federal and some provincial governments, the CCLB “embarked on a national consultation to determine how the CLB and the NCLC should evolve to meet the changing needs of stakeholders. More than 1,300 people, representing multiple stakeholders, participated in the process” (CIC 2012b, I).
Following this initial consultation, a series of forums were held, involving stakeholders in the field of immigrant language training and experts in the field of second languages in Canada. Their objective was to ensure that the revised CLB and NCLC standards had the rigour and validity required for use in a broad range of contexts. These forums also provided a list of practical recommendations for updating the Benchmarks, such as improving descriptors for proficiency levels, bridging gaps noted in the NCLC continuum, and adding examples of suitable tasks for work or study contexts.
After years of work by specialists, a common theoretical framework for the two standards was completed (Bournot-Trites et al. 2015), followed up by two substantially redesigned frameworks, the CLB 2012 and the NCLC 2012. The official summary states:
Those documents draw upon widely accepted research in the field of language education, including key principles applicable to all languages and contributions from the ESL and FSL fields. The theoretical framework underwent extensive independent review at each stage of its development. It was later compared with the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) guidelines, and the Échelle québécoise. These comparisons showed that the theoretical framework was consistent not only with the theoretical concepts it articulated, but also with the key principles underlying other language frameworks. The CLB and the NCLC were then validated against the theoretical framework to determine whether they accurately reflected the underlying theory. … The documents were further fine-tuned and both have been accepted as accurate reflections of the theoretical framework and consistent with widely accepted research. (Citizenship and Immigration Canada 2012a, II)
As mentioned earlier, the NCLC are not the only standard for evaluating French-language proficiency in Canada. Whereas the NCLC are a federal standard, another standard was developed specifically for the province of Quebec: L’Échelle québécoise des niveaux de compétence en français des personnes immigrantes adultes (Government of Quebec 2011).
L’Échelle québécoise is a descriptive framework for language proficiency similar to the CLB/NCLC. It also divides proficiency into four skills (listening, reading, speaking, and writing), three stages of development, and twelve benchmarks, and is intended for adult immigrants. This standard, however,
stems from the Quebec government’s political will to harmonize francization services for immigrants through schools and community organizations who partner with the Ministère de l’Immigration et des Communautés culturelles (MICC), and school boards under the Ministère de l’Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport du Québec (MELS). … This standard, which includes l’Échelle québécoise des niveaux de compétence en français des personnes immigrantes adultes and the Programme-cadre de français pour les personnes immigrantes adultes au Québec, is also used by ministries and organizations such as l’Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) and le ministère de l’Emploi et de la Solidarité sociale (MESS) to measure the French language competence of their clientele. (Government of Quebec 2011, 4)
This section will end with a description of a standard of a very different nature: the Qualification Standards in Relation to Official Languages for Federal Employees (the Standards). Created in 1984, these were the very first Canadian language standards. According to Gale and Slivinski (1988, 84), they apply to all federal government positions requiring the use of both official languages, and their scope is very broad, concerning: “approximately one-quarter of a million employees … distributed nation-wide throughout approximately sixty government departments and agencies and seventy-five different occupational groups.”
The Standards are governed as much by public policy (Public Service Employment Act, Financial Administration Act), as by language policy (the Official Languages Act, the Policy on Official Languages for Human Resources Management, the Directive on the Staffing of Bilingual Positions, and the Directive on the Linguistic Identification of Positions or Functions) (Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat 2015). Briefly, the Standards are a description of the language requirements for positions that involve communication with the public, service delivery, and for the language of work. They divide the language-proficiency continuum into three skills (reading comprehension, writing, and speaking), and include two categories of language proficiency for bilingual positions: general skills (with three levels of requirements according to position: A for minimum requirements, B for intermediate, and C for advanced), and specialized skills (requiring code P).
Europe, the birthplace of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) (Council of Europe 2001), has a long tradition of the co-existence of languages, the teaching of foreign languages, and the creating of links between research and practice in language teaching (for example, the International Association of Applied Linguistics was founded in 1969, and the Centre de recherche et d’étude pour la diffusion du français in 1959). It also has a long tradition of user-centred learning objectives linked to the context of use. The classic case of this is the 1970s Threshold Level, which is the precursor of the CEFR, adapted to some thirty languages.
The linking of research, language policy, and foreign-language teaching practices is a central concern for many European member states. The idea of an organization able to accomplish such a mission has held sway in Europe for over half a century.
In fact, foreign-language teaching has been aligned with the educational policies of the Council of Europe since the European Cultural Convention of 1954 (Council of Europe 1954). As such, it is subject to the imperatives of human rights, linguistic diversity, and the search for social cohesion: “Language teaching is not only a matter of pedagogy, it is a crucial area for language policy and living together in a democracy” (Council of Europe 2014, 6). The Language Policy Unit of the Council of Europe (supported since 1994 by the European Centre for Modern Languages) plays a central role in the establishment and implementation of language-education policy, and in theoretical reflection on linguistic diversity. Given the sovereignty of member states in the field of education, the Council of Europe exerts only indirect influence, by providing reference documents, guidelines, and instruments (such as the CEFR) on which to base curricula, assessment, and national teaching materials.
Policy decisions related to the teaching of foreign languages are traditionally research-based, as in the example of Threshold Level. This culture of research gave rise to a range of varied yet complementary events (symposia, colloquia, government research publications, commissions, working groups, and more), culminating in the creation of the CEFR. The levels and descriptors used in the CEFR were developed and validated in a Swiss research project (1993–1996) that used both quantitative and qualitative methods (North 2000, North 2014, North and Schneider 1998). The CEFR is, moreover, increasingly recognized as both a policy standard and the product of advanced research in language teaching and assessment.
The CEFR merging of research and assessment practices would become one of the hallmarks of the “European model.” For instance, the Manual for Relating Language Examinations to the CEFR (Council of Europe 2009) reports on and models the research required to establish a reliable relationship between examination results and the CEFR levels.
Six levels (grouped into three macro-levels: A1/A2, B1/B2, C1/C2) describe the continuum of language proficiency in the CEFR. The descriptors are positively formulated definitions of the language activities (comprehension, production, interaction, and mediation4), which take place in written or oral mode, and of aspects of the competences needed for real-world tasks. As stated by Piccardo (2014, 7), “the main objective of the CEFR is to provide a common language for professionals in the field of language learning and teaching at all levels, to help them in their practice and in achieving their respective goals.”
Of special interest here is the relevance of the CEFR for adult migrant language training and assessment, since the majority of European states require proof of competence in the language of the host nation for citizenship, residence, or work permits. In this context, the CEFR provides clear level descriptors rooted in real life that prove essential for the training and assessment of the migrant population. The individual European states, and in general any institution involved in training migrants, could benefit from this contribution.
To support the EU’s language policy for adult immigrants, the project Linguistic Integration of Adult Migrants (LIAM) (co-ordinated by researchers and stakeholders in language training and assessment of migrants across Europe) was set up in 2006. The LIAM project, with its focus on migrant needs for linguistic and cultural integration, developed and implemented the CEFR vision of plurilingualism and linguistic diversity, while maintaining the integrity of the levels clearly defined by the CEFR. Hence, LIAM motivates member states to develop competence profiles rather than restricting themselves to assigning levels.
Over time, this approach is intended to raise awareness of the relationship between written standards (such as the CEFR) and the reality on the ground for formal and informal learning or for participation in social life.
As several authors point out, one of the main features of current educational environments (Canada included) is that they are subject to both local demands (protection of interests of national and local cultures, defining identities, and so on) and global ones (student mobility, transfer of expertise and technologies, access to information on a global scale through new technologies, need for internationally recognized certifications, and more). The co-existence of local and global dynamics is known as glocalization (Ball, Goodson and Maguire 2007; Drori, Höllerer and Walgenbach 2013; Giulianotti and Robertson 2012; Meyrowitz 2005; Ritzer and Ritzer 2012; Rizvi and Lingard 2010). Roudometof (2015, 9) uses a wave analogy to explain this concept:
In the case of the globalization of X, what actually takes place is the migration and spread of X into different localities. If one further views these localities as having varying degrees of density or “thickness,” or to put it differently, as having different wave resistance capacities, the process can then operate in two different ways. First, the wave-like properties can be absorbed and amplified by the local and then reflected back onto the world stage. … Second, it is possible for a wave to pass through the local and to be refracted by it. … The local is not annihilated or absorbed or destroyed by globalization but, rather, operates symbiotically with globalization and shapes the end state or result.
The processes of glocalization also apply to language standards. One of the CEFR authors, Brian North, emphasizes that there is no contradiction between the need for a globalizing common standard on the one hand, and the need for local strategies and instruments targeting the specific needs of learners on the other. More specifically, he states (North 2008, 226):
The aim of a meta-system at a national or international level ought to be to facilitate reflection, communication and networking. The aim of any local strategies ought to be to meet needs in context. The key to linking the two into a coherent system is flexibility: an expandable/contractible descriptive approach in which levels, categories and descriptors can be merged or subdivided in a common hierarchical structure.
The following sections will apply three axes of analysis to investigate the glocal value of the CLB and the NCLC relative to other instruments discussed in this chapter, namely the two other Canadian standards and the CEFR. The three axes are: general versus specific content, easily modified versus less easily modified framework, and bottom-up versus top-down development and implementation.
The CLB and the NCLC are not exempt from the influences of this new dynamic in the language teaching, learning, and assessment market that evolves between the demands of globalization and glocalization.
The target clientele of the two Canadian standards is generally made up of mobile adult immigrants seeking recognition of language proficiency acquired abroad or in other parts of Canada. Such recognition implies correlation to other standards.
There are multiple ways to achieve this goal. As discussed at the beginning of this chapter, the CLB and the NCLC, like all other standards, are scales used to describe the continuum of language competence from beginner to advanced levels. Although the cut-points between levels may vary from one standard to another,5 all have three stages of learning in common: for example, the A levels of the CEFR (basic user) correspond to the beginner stage of the CLB/NCLC, the B levels (independent user) correspond to intermediate, and the C levels (proficient user) correspond to advanced level.
Similarly, the conception of the continuum of language competence (along with the communicative activities in which it is embedded) is at the core of the different standards. The concept of language competence is defined in a comparable if not identical manner. This common ground gives rise to a sort of global common language. The CLB/NCLC converge with the other standards in other ways as well. For example, all contemporary standards view the teaching, learning, and evaluation of language competence holistically, thus closely tied to curriculum design, testing, and teaching materials. The learner-centred approach is another common thread. Lastly, all standards, including the CLB/NCLC, currently favour an action-oriented approach to language teaching. The emphasis is on the performance of language tasks rather than the knowledge of language, and communicative competence is contextualized according to the learner’s life experience.
The parallel development of the CEFR and the CLB is significant. The dates of origin, development, and publication are nearly simultaneous (both projects took place between approximately 1995 and 2001, with the respective first versions published in 1996). This parallel process might explain why there was no knowledge transfer between the two projects (although, for example, a major research of all existing assessment instruments was undertaken in preparation for the CEFR); however, it also demonstrates the felt need for clear and transparent language-assessment instruments that could address growing societal needs generated by mobility on both sides of the Atlantic.
In 2008, the Council of Ministers of Education Canada proposed that second or additional language curricula in primary and secondary schools be based on the CEFR (Council of Ministers of Education Canada 2010). Although no one can ascertain the exact number of students of second and additional languages trained and assessed by the “CEFR system,” it is safe to say that it is a large number. Second-language instruction in many provinces is mandatory for four or five years; there are also programs such as early French immersion, in which language instruction begins at a very early age. After eight years of use, it is still difficult to assess the exact impact of having second-language programs aligned with the CEFR. Nevertheless, its adoption by the school system is not without impact for the CLB/NCLC, if only because immigrant parents are part of the CLB/NCLC target clientele.
As mentioned earlier, the CLB and the NCLC belong to the globalization of education movement by virtue of adopting a conceptual framework and language common to other contemporary standards. However, these standards are also influenced by local factors (dependent on requirements for integration into society), and, in our judgment, their true value is determined in relation to the balance achieved between global and local pressures. Accordingly, content can be more generic when it needs to follow global requirements, but more specific to user context when it must meet mainly local criteria. The framework could be more easily modified and updated when subject to local policy, and less easily modified when global policies take precedent. Similarly, the standards would be developed and implemented using a more top-down approach to suit a global perspective, and a more bottom-up approach for a local one. An analysis follows of the standards introduced above, beginning with those produced for Canada.
L’Échelle québécoise has a local focus tied to francization policy for adults in Quebec (hence deals with only one language and is geographically defined). Since it derives directly from provincial immigration policy, L’Échelle québécoise must be modifiable in line with any major changes to this policy. It was developed with both a top-down and bottom-up approach at the same time. Although the process was initiated by the government, the teaching community in charge of the francization of adult immigrants participated throughout the development of this instrument by validating content and providing feedback on its successive versions.
Both the CLB/NCLC and L’Échelle québécoise share the clearly similar goals of serving the needs of those engaged in the training and language competence assessment of adult immigrants. It is indisputable, however, that the political choice of developing two distinct instruments reduces de facto the potential impact of a single national standard with regard to transparency and ease of implementation, especially for inter-regional mobility. However, these potential disadvantages were taken into account and considerably mitigated a fortiori by updating the CLB/NCLC in comparison with other current standards. Aside from these considerations, what is relevant at this point is the challenge of finding a balance between the global goals of these standards and the influence of particularistic interests or claims. The issue at hand is the harmonizing of global and local dimensions in a way that allows enough flexibility to meet specific needs.
The Standards, as detailed earlier, define language requirements for specific administrative positions where language, in this case the two official languages, plays a key role in the relationship between institutions and citizens. In contrast, the CLB/NCLC, L’Échelle québécoise, and the CEFR focus on learner progress in language competence. Still, the very existence of the Standards demonstrates a long-standing goal of developing standards for national comparison, which is a globalizing tendency. At the same time, the Standards are linked to a specific work environment, a local focus. Their specific contents are directly linked to language tasks required in different positions within the federal public service. These contents must be easily modified whenever new language requirement are identified for the positions, or in case of a policy change affecting language use in the workplace. (The latest version was released in 2015.) Given that the Standards arise out of federal policy related to management of the public service, with the goal of establishing employee language competence qualifications, their development and implementation are essentially top-down.
The CEFR is a standard with a European focus, but a global scope (Piccardo, Germain-Rutherford and Clement 2011; Byram and Parmenter 2012). It aims to serve as an extra-national guide for curricula and assessment, suited to European member states, but also relevant outside Europe. Its contents (descriptions of levels of proficiency, lists of descriptors, and so on) are generic enough to allow substantial adaptation for local use.
At the same time, as it is rooted in the key values of the European project (the search for social cohesion through cultural exchange, plurilingualism, and so on), it remains a document of a political nature generated by the context in which it was created. The 2001 version is still in effect, although a recent major international project is updating the descriptors (North and Panthier 2016 forthcoming, North and Docherty 2016 forthcoming). A series of related tools (guides, textbooks, exemplars of oral and written production aligned with the CEFR levels) are available on-line at the Council of Europe website. The various European language portfolios, with descriptors adapted from those of the CEFR, have their own dedicated websites. Also available on the site of the European Centre for Modern Languages (ECML) is a wide range of research publications inspired by the CEFR or its derivatives. The ECML is an institution of the Council of Europe; its mission is to implement language policy. Lastly, as the CEFR project is guided by a European body, a top-down approach in its creation is implicit. A team of researchers mandated by the Council of Europe developed an instrument that was field-tested through the national education departments and agencies in charge of curricula and assessment. Since its beginnings, the implementation of the CEFR at the local level has posed the greatest challenge, particularly with regard to language teaching itself, and in the provision of evidence to demonstrate a reliable relationship between on the one hand the local objectives, curricula, and examinations, and on the other hand the CEFR levels. This shows how difficult it is to achieve a balance between local and global goals (Martyniuk and Noyons 2006, Broek and van den Ende 2013).
So, how does one situate the CLB/NCLC in this complex landscape, which is currently undergoing major socio-economic shifts? What is the place of the CLB and the NCLC in language training in Canada? Considering their target clientele (adult immigrants integrating into Canadian society), the focus of these two standards seems both local and global. Actually, this target clientele has particular language needs: besides the broader needs dictated by the host society, there are the specific needs of the particular community they are joining. Recent immigrants are mobile, both geographically (potentially to other regions in Canada) and socially (vis-à-vis employment or a new role in society). Given this reality, the CLB/NCLC language certifications have to be recognized by all immigrant services across Canada, including Quebec. However, since Quebec adopted its own standard, the CLB/NCLC may find itself at odds with the decisions taken in this particular context, with the possible result that their global role may be called into question. Furthermore, although Quebec immigration policy differs from that of the rest of Canada, citizenship policies are common, implying some commonality between L’Échelle Québécoise and the NCLC. Similarly, immigrants, once established and no longer receiving special services for newcomers, are likely to compare their language proficiency to that of native-born Canadians trained in the CEFR system. It follows then that the CLB/NCLC should also be comparable to other certifications, such as those reporting a CEFR level that immigrants from Europe or other countries may have. These examples illustrate the complexity of the context in which the CLB/NCLC are used, where both local and global pressures are equally exerted.
The contents of the CLB/NCLC are relatively specific in order to meet the language needs of newcomers to Canada in their work, study, and life in the community. In this respect, the CLB and the NCLC differ somewhat, to reflect the difference in language use between a majority (English) and minority (French) context. Apart from purely pragmatic language content dealing with living in the host community, searching for work, the practice of a profession, or civic participation, both standards include an introduction to Canadian values and identity. These contents are a unique feature of the two Canadian standards deemed necessary for immigrants wishing to integrate into their new country.
The CLB/NCLC are directly linked to Canadian citizenship and immigration policy, and are modifiable in the event of changes to these policies or to the context of language teaching and assessment for adult immigrants, as already mentioned.
Finally, the standards were developed mainly through a top-down, but also a bottom-up dynamic. On one hand, immigration, multiculturalism, and citizenship policy, along with federal funding, were crucial to the development and implementation of the CLB and the NCLC. Moreover, the development of the common theoretical framework was research-driven. On the other hand, as mentioned earlier, national consultations and the needs expressed by stakeholders provided the impetus for the updates to the standards. Similarly, the community of practitioners in the field took part in all stages of their development. Finally, the CLB/NCLC initial development process, as well as its updates, were an opportunity for professional development and gave rise to a coherent community of practice, committed to a recognisable CLB/NCLC culture, despite the size of the country and the wide diversity of immigrant language services.
These analyses are not meant to provide a rigid classification, a task beyond our scope. The various facets and implications discussed above clearly demonstrate that such a classification would be unrealistic, and in the long run not very productive. What we do propose are avenues for exploring the implications and consequences of institutional choices at both the local and global levels. A case in point here is the effort made in the European context to overcome particularistic interests and linguistic and cultural differences in order to arrive at a common system that can transcend the local dimension, while remaining open to local adaptation (North 2016, personal communication). In the Canadian context, this endeavour was complicated, at least at the level of implementation, by the presence of strong local dynamics. It should be noted, however, that the idea of providing a more global instrument, less sensitive to local demands, such as the CEFR, requires considerable rigour in the calibration of descriptors, which on one the hand ensures good transferability, but on the other hand hinders the ease of modification. By contrast, an instrument more sensitive to local demands, such as the CLB/NCLC, calls for less rigour in the validation of descriptors, since in any case it will likely require more frequent updates. This less rigorous process of revision offers greater flexibility in exchange. Clearly, glocalization has a powerful impact on all standardization instruments: what matters is an awareness of the possible impact of the choices made.
The aim of this chapter was to describe the CLB and the NCLC and to provide a brief outline of the issues involved, both from a historical perspective and in relation to the current Canadian socio-political context. The two standards were situated within the context of language training for adult immigrants, setting the stage for subsequent chapters which deal with more specific issues: the research dimension of the two standards, the teaching culture they have engendered, and an overview of related practices and resources.
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1 “Immigrant” is the preferred term in Canada, while “migrant” is commonly used in Europe. In this text, both terms are used in their respective contexts.
2 The term “Canadianity” refers to Canadian values and identity.
3 The term “allophone” refers to native speakers of languages other than French or English.
4 The descriptors for several aspects of mediation have recently been validated in a 2014–2016 project drawing on the methodology used in the Swiss project (North and Panthier 2016 forthcoming, North and Docherty 2016 forthcoming).
5 There are six levels in the CEFR versus twelve in the CLB/NCLC; four modes of language activity: reception, production, interaction, and mediation, each of which can be expressed orally or in writing in the CEFR, versus four language skills – oral and written comprehension, and oral and written production – in the CLB/NCLC.