The VITbox resource website addresses teacher educators and teachers in the field of vocational and university language teaching, learning and assessment. This overview website provides information on how to use the VITbox resources in initial teacher education, professional development programmes and self-study and on how they may be used or adapted to specific contexts.
Why the CEFR Companion Volume is relevant
The CEFR Companion Volume (CEFR CV) was published in 2020 in its final version, and it offers a new vision of language teaching, learning and assessment. This has caused a paradigm shift as it puts a strong focus for example on the action-oriented approach, on mediation, on plurilingual and pluricultural aspects and as it provides a new database of validated illustrative descriptors. For key references please see the section “Bibliography” on this site. This new vision has motivated the VITbox team to develop ideas on how to implement the concepts presented in the CEFR Companion Volume at university and in vocational training.
Why use VITbox resources?
VITbox aims to support institutions, teacher educators and teachers in the process of implementing key concepts of the CEFR Companion Volume to enhance innovation in teaching and assessment and ultimately to prepare learners better for situations of communication at the workplace, at university and in research; for example, by working with real-life scenarios. This includes the idea of strengthening an action-oriented and task-based approach in teaching and also in assessment in order to manage innovation in university and vocational language teaching and assessment.
What VITbox resources offer for teacher educators and teachers
The VITbox resources provide digital resources that show how the ideas presented in the CEFR Companion Volume can be implemented in language teaching at university and in vocational training. The resources have been produced for teacher educators to be used in their training courses, but also for language teachers for self-study purposes. The VITbox resources consist of short videos, text files, sample tasks for use in teacher education, checklists, templates and sample classroom material, such as tasks which language educators can use in their contexts and adapt to their individual purposes.
The material is available in English and French, but examples in other languages - for example of classroom activities - are also included in the VITbox toolbox, so that teachers or teacher educators focusing on other languages can use it as well. Users can choose from this toolbox the materials that they would like to use for their individual purposes and can adapt them to their individual needs. This might also motivate them to create their own materials.
How to use the VITbox resources
All VITbox modules provide videos, corresponding PowerPoint presentations and recorded PowerPoints describing the VITbox resources, with a focus on specific key concepts of the CEFR Companion Volume. Teacher educators can use these files in their professional development workshops or in teacher education seminars. They can use the documents as they are or adapt them to their individual needs. Furthermore, teachers and teacher educators can use them for self-study purposes.