RATIONALE BEHIND THE STUDIES                

  
Dear Instructors,

As I emphasized in my speech at the SFL General Assembly meeting on January 5, 2006, upon the request of our department administrations, SFL Curriculum & Assessment Alignment Studies with the Common European Framework have gained some momentum over the past few months. And the launching of this web page is part of these efforts.

I would like to make one or two points clear at the outset of this project. First of all, SFL departments have just completed a cycle of curriculum development, renewal and evaluation and thus gained experience and expertise both at institutional and individual levels. Second, CEF is by no means a set of prescriptive standards regarding curriculum, materials and assessment which we must adopt right away. Rather, it is an evolving, multi-faceted language project of EU-supported applied linguists, which we can no longer afford to ignore. I am confident that SFL departments will look into both the merits and pitfalls of this scheme, and after careful consideration, adopt some aspects of instruction and testing from it in order to raise the quality of English language teaching at SFL, METU.

During this process of curriculum and assessment adjustment, SFL will be committed to give all the support it can to its departments. We hope we will all benefit from this web page.

Best wishes,

Prof. Dr. Hüsnü Enginarlar
Director
School of Foreign Languages