European Language Policies and the Development of Language Competences in Higher Education

Abstract

The purpose of the present paper is to offer an overview of the language policies proposed by the Council of Europe and the European Commission and implemented at the European level over the last decades. In this context, reference is going to be made to the language competencies that students are expected to have at the end of the cycles of education, with emphasis on higher education, as well as to teaching methods that have proven to be particularly efficient as regards languages for specific purposes.