Know your English level

Do you know what your level of English is? Why is it useful to know this? And how can you find out what your level is? That's what I'm going to help you with in this post.

How to describe your level
Sometimes learners tell me that they are level 3, for example, and I have no idea what this means. This is because different countries and different schools have their own levels and numbers. The first school I worked in had twenty levels, believe or not! In my second English-teaching job, we had six levels. So level 6 in the first school was low but level 6 in the second school was advanced!

We need a system to describe the levels so that everybody knows what it means. There are two ways to do this. We can use words like “beginner”, “intermediate” or “advanced”. A lot of books for English learners still use these words.

The other option is to use the Common European Framework of Reference (or CEFR). This isn’t known only in Europe but is used worldwide.

Here are the levels in both systems:
A1 (Beginner/Elementary)
A2 (Pre-intermediate)
B1 (Intermediate)
B2 (Upper Intermediate)
C1 (Advanced)
C2 (Proficiency) 

In my experience, the two different ways to describe levels don’t match up perfectly. I think elementary coursebooks cover some A1 and some A2 material, for example.

Why is it useful to know your English level?
If you are learning English on your own and you know what level your English is, it’s easier to find suitable learning materials. For example, you can search the Internet or YouTube for “B1 listening practice” or “A2 English reading”.

When you are practising your reading or listening skills, I recommend finding material at the right level for you. If you use something that’s too easy, you won’t learn anything. If you use something that’s too difficult, you might not understand it, you might lose your confidence or you might just get bored checking all the new words in a dictionary. The right level is something with a few new words so you are learning something but not too many.

It’s also useful to know your level if you want to join a class with other learners who are at the same level as you are. If you are interested in group conversation lessons, you possibly don’t want to be with people who are much stronger or weaker than you are.

(Actually, if you have a high level of English, it’s a useful skill to be able to alter your language so that somebody with less English can understand you but I can understand that you wouldn’t want to do this in a lesson.)

How to find out your level
1. Read descriptions of what you should be able to do at your level. The simplest descriptions I’ve found are here: https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/english-levels/understand-your-english-level
More detailed descriptions can be found here: https://www.coe.int/en/web/common-european-framework-reference-languages/table-2-cefr-3.3-common-reference-levels-self-assessment-grid

2. Guess your level and try reading or listening to something which is aimed at that level. If it’s too easy or too difficult, then try a different level. A good website for this is https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/. Go to “skills” and then find the reading or listening section.

3. Do a test. I’ve found the following websites where you can test your level for free:
British Council Test (you have to create an account but it’s free):
https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/english-levels/online-english-level-test
or https://englishonline.britishcouncil.org/free-english-level-test-cefr-2/
Other tests:
https://test-english.com/level-test/
https://www.efset.org/
https://preply.com/en/learn/english/test-your-vocab (this one is vocabulary only)

Duolingo and italki also have tests but I think you have to pay for them.

​I hope this post helps you to discover what your English level is so you can find the right learning materials for your needs!


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