On Wednesday 20 March Dr Mayo Osama and Daniel Pierce of the Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Japan visited the ITT to meet with Professor Muiris Ó Laoire of the School of Health and Social Sciences. The overall objective of their visit was to learn about how the CEFR has been perceived by language education experts in Ireland. The CEFR is the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment is a guideline used to describe achievements of learners of foreign languages across Europe.  The CEFR was published 17 years ago has since had a major influence on the teaching of languages in the world, becoming a sort of "standard model" of research in language teaching. Language exams in the Leaving Certificate in Ireland as well as all language courses at third level are  aligned with this framework.  In Japan, the CEFR has recently been introduced and is now widely used with plans by the Japanese government to place it at the heart of language teaching courses in Japanese schools and universities.

Professor Muiris Ó Laoire is among language teaching experts that Dr Osama and Dr Pierce are talking to, in connection with national roll out of the CEFR in Japanese schools and universities. “It’s a wonderful honour for IT Tralee to play such an important role in informing language teaching in Japan”, says Professor Ó Laoire. “We teach Irish here as part of the Early Childhood Degree and there has been a growing number of students studying here; so our discussions centred on the optimal way to teach and examine languages using the CEFR as a framework.”