Part of the Catapult project was the creation of the Common Competence Framework (CCF) – a model of knowledge and skills necessary in an LSP teacher. The framework, to be found here  – was divided into 5 sub-sets of competences in the following areas:

• general teaching
• collaboration and intercultural mediation
• (data) analysis
• course / material design
• evaluation

We did the sub-division based on two assumptions:

1. Contemporary language teachers in general – and LSP teachers, in particular – face a number of challenges that go beyond on-focus competences;
2. Being an LSP teacher is far more demanding in terms of content than regular teaching: the school-life connection is usually much more pressing and far more explicit; the materials are scarce; communicative competence to be developed in learners very frequently needs to provide for intercultural communication.

All in all, being an LSP teacher is a challenge we would like to celebrate in this blog. The posts to follow will be dedicated to the 5 sub-competences of the present CCF. We very much hope that you would get involved in a dialogue about them, giving us feedback based on first-hand pedagogical experience.