Can-Do Statements

Can-do statements are positive, action-oriented descriptors specifying what a learner can do at a given proficiency level. They form the backbone of the CEFR (Council of Europe 2001, expanded in the 2020 Companion Volume), replacing deficit-based descriptions ("cannot yet…") with competence-based ones.

Structure

Each descriptor follows the pattern: "Can [verb] [what] [under what conditions / with what limitations]."

The CEFR organizes them across:

• Communicative activities — reception, production, interaction, mediation
• Communicative strategies — planning, compensating, monitoring, repair
• Communicative competences — linguistic, sociolinguistic, pragmatic

The 2020 Companion Volume added descriptors for online interaction, mediation, and plurilingual/pluricultural competence — areas absent from the original 2001 framework.

How They Function

Can-do statements serve three roles simultaneously:

1. Curriculum design — defining learning objectives per level
2. Assessment — anchoring rating scales to observable performance
3. Self-assessment — enabling learners to monitor their own progress (the European Language Portfolio uses them for this purpose)

Practical Considerations

• Descriptors must be context-independent enough to apply across languages, yet specific enough to be observable
• The CEFR's "plus levels" (e.g., B1+) acknowledge that proficiency is a continuum, not discrete steps
• Institutions often customize CEFR descriptors into local can-do checklists calibrated to their programs — the generic descriptors are starting points, not endpoints
• North (2000) used Rasch analysis to empirically scale the original descriptors — they are not arbitrary intuitions but statistically calibrated benchmarks