On Linguistic Competence in the Multilinguial Repertoire

Standards & forms of evaluation used in European educational systems for communicative competences progressively rely on unambiguous, transparent & internationally recognized criteria. There is, however, a risk of reification, of restriction to what is easily measurable & of lack of specificity that can lead to abuse in selection processes. In addition, the correlation between language tests based on monolingual ideologies & the communicative success in multilingual situations is far from optimal. A case study will help us to understand that social actors do not mobilize stable sets of variants & varieties, but reconfigure & modify their competences during the practical activity. The validity of language exams & certificates must thus be questioned as long as they isolate the competences in each of the languages of a plurilingual repertoire. The paper addresses also the ethical problems related to language testing. References. Adapted from the source document