The Comparative Study Of Chinese, European And Canadian Language Proficiency Standards

As the rapid development of globalization, foreign language education plays an increasingly important role in western world, especially Europe and North America. In the late 1990s, a lot of countries started to formulate and spread new foreign language proficiency standards so as to training the foreign language competence of the public. This thesis chooses two typical well-recognized foreign language proficiency standards--Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: learning, teaching, assessment and Canadian Language Benchmarks 2000--and conducts comparative analysis so as to figure out the advanced foreign language educational concepts underlying these standards. Meanwhile, the "Craze for Chinese" all over the world and the language policy of our country--to spread Chinese internationally call for the improvement of the Chinese language proficiency standard. Office of Chinese Language Council International published a new standard in 2007 --Chinese Language Proficiency Scales for Speakers of Other Languages. It is of great urgency to evaluate whether the Scales fits into the new trend of foreign language proficiency standard in the world.Based on Bachman’s theory of communicative language ability, this thesis analyses the Scales from linguistic competence, textual competence, functional competence, sociolinguistic competence and strategic competence. It is found that the Scales emphasizes the core of communicative language ability --the learner’s language proficiency to use Chinese to communicate. However, the description and requirement of learner’s linguistic, sociolinguistic and strategic competences still need further development. In addition, the thesis attaches great importance to the comparative analysis of CEFR, CLB and the Scales. The findings show that just as CEFR and CLB, the Scales is designed for the purpose of cultivating learner’s foreign language communicative competence, which accords to the direction of foreign language proficiency standards in the world. Nevertheless, the Scales still needs improvement on the following aspects such as the descriptions of learner’s culture knowledge and intercultural communicative competence, the cultivation of learner’s comprehensive competencies, and the descriptions of linguistic elements such as vocabulary, grammar and characters. Based on the comprehensive analysis, this thesis hopes to shed some lights on the further improvement of Chinese language proficiency standard.