GOALS
Awarded by France’s Ministry of National Education, the DELF is the official French-language diploma. Recognized in 165 countries around the world; that makes it valuable for certifying French-language proficiency on an international level. In order to meet the range of needs, such as age and uses and types of language learners, different versions have been developed (Vandergrit, 2015).
The CEFR provides a series of standardized descriptors which are used to evaluate competencies in foreign languages across five activities (reading, writing, listening, spoken interaction, and spoken production) at six achievement levels. The descriptors for each activity are written as “Can do” statements and include a description of what L2 learners “can do” in the target language at the various levels of proficiency. (Rehner et al, 2021, p.2).
Importance in Canada
Ontario’s current FSL curriculum documents, informed by the CEFR, promote the creation of an action-oriented learning environment in the classroom in which students learn through meaningful interactive tasks based in real-world, everyday contexts. The current documents start from the perspective that “communicative and action-oriented approaches to teaching French put meaningful and authentic communication at the center of all learning activities” (Ontario Ministry of Education 2014, p. 9).
According to Vandergrift (2015), le Diplôme d’études de langue française (DELF) has recently gained attention in Canada for its potential ability to be used as a national French second language (FSL) proficiency test.
In 2005, the DELF was restructured to align it more closely with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR; Council of Europe, 2001). This makes the test of particular interest for Canada, given the recent interest and increasing use of the CEFR as a framework of reference for languages in Canada (Council of Ministers of Education, Canada, 2010; Vandergrift, 2006).
In connection with the examination of the relationship between teachers' understanding of the CEFR and their classroom methods, Vandergrift (2015) conducted a study that explored teachers' perspectives on how their knowledge of the DELF exam influenced their teaching practices. The results revealed that after becoming acquainted with the exam, teachers elevated the incorporation of interactive speaking activities in their teaching and incorporated more authentic materials into tasks aimed at enhancing their students' receptive skills (Rehner et al., 2021)
