CRITERIA AND LEVEL DESCRIPTORS FOR ASSESSING THE PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCE OF FUTURE ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHERS IN CORRELATION WITH THE CEFR B2–C1 BANDS

Abstract

Assessment in pre-service English teacher education commonly relies on summative instruments that measure declarative knowledge of language and methodology, leaving the professional quality of a graduate’s classroom performance largely unmeasured. This article reports the construction and trial of a criterion-referenced assessment apparatus in which five criteria — linguistic accuracy, communicative appropriateness, methodological appropriateness, intercultural flexibility and reflectivity — are described at three levels of development and anchored to the B2 and C1 bands of the Common European Framework of Reference. The apparatus combines a lesson-observation rubric, a reflective portfolio and structured peer assessment. It was trialled between 2021 and 2024 at three Uzbek universities with 607 students. At the final measurement the experimental group exceeded the control group on every criterion, with the largest margin on reflectivity (3.96 against 2.89 points) and the smallest on intercultural flexibility. The study concludes that criteria of this kind are usable by ordinary teaching staff without specialist training and that they make visible dimensions of competence which conventional testing systematically omits.