The Survey

The European Survey of Language Competences aims to be a key tool for European governments to use in developing language-learning policies and is part of the European Commission’s aim to ‘improve the mastery of basic language skills in Europe’ and ‘establish a linguistic competence indicator’. It will help governments to understand existing levels of second language proficiency and how those levels compare to other countries. It will also provide information on how language proficiency relates to demographic, social, economic and educational variables. Information in the survey can then be used to influence policy and improve national standards.

The survey will compare second language learning for pupils in the final year of lower secondary education across using the scales of the Common European Framework of References for Languages (CEFR). It will focus on the two most popular foreign languages studied in each of the participating countries from English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.
The Survey must measure language skills validly for 14–18 year-old learners. Test tasks will:

engage cognitive skills expected for the age group
not depend on knowledge of the world which cannot be assumed
use topics which are relevant and engaging for that age group
test language functions in contexts relevant to the age group.

The survey will cover those languages among the official languages of the European Union that are the first and second most widely taught as foreign languages in the participating countries which, according to the most recent Eurostat’s data, are:

English
French
German
Spanish
Italian

The choice of the first and second most-taught language is to be made by each participating country on the basis of the most recent documented data from Eurostat or more recent national data, if available. The testing tool will be made available for all the participating countries if they also wish to test competences in languages other than the two most widely taught within this list of five.