Over the past two years, the Israeli Council of Higher Education (CHE) has called on tertiary English departments to align our programs with the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages). This has triggered a number of questions among curriculum developers and educators, first and foremost being: What does it really mean to “align with” the CEFR? The short answer is: It is not just a reshuffling of precious class time to accommodate the other three skills - speaking, listening, and writing - at the peril of reading. Rather, alignment involves shifting towards the CEFR “action-oriented approach” to teaching and learning languages. This shift, driven by real-world tasks, will help prepare our students to participate actively as global citizens. Today`s presentation will unpack the action-oriented approach from a practical perspective: background to help understand how it differs from the communicative approach many of us are familiar with, practical pedagogical principles for implementation, and successful action-oriented classroom exemplars.