Reading Competence and Graphemic Competence: Impacts of the Chinese Writing System on Designing Competence Descriptors for the “European Benchmarks for the Chinese Language” (EBCL) Project

Abstract

The “Common European Framework of Reference for Languages” (CEFR 2001) is a tool that is widely used as an instructional basis for all foreign language education in Europe. From 2010 to 2012, the European Commission funded the project “European Benchmarks for the Chinese Language” (EBCL) in order to develop benchmarks and competence descriptors for Chinese as a Foreign Language on the basis of the CEFR. After a short introduction of the project (which is freely accessible on the web) which mainly deals with the introductory levels A1 and A2, the article discusses several aspects and conflicts that occurred during the adaptation of CEFR competence descriptors for EBCL reading competence in Chinese on different levels of competency, and gives some examples. In the last chapter, the newly designed descriptors for “Graphemic and Orthographic Competence” in Chinese are introduced in detail.