CEFR levels explained: A1 to C2
The CEFR describes what a learner can do with a language, in six levels from A1 to C2. It is not a syllabus and it does not tell you which grammar to teach — it tells you what a student should be able to accomplish, which is a more useful thing to aim a lesson at.
The six levels in one table
The Common European Framework of Reference splits proficiency into three bands — Basic (A), Independent (B) and Proficient (C) — each with two levels. The descriptors below are the shape of the Council of Europe’s global scale, in plainer words.
| Level | Band | Can do | Guided hours (approx.) |
|---|---|---|---|
| A1 | Basic | Introduce themselves, ask and answer simple personal questions, handle very concrete needs — if the other person speaks slowly and helps. | 90–100 |
| A2 | Basic | Handle routine exchanges about familiar things: shopping, family, work, where they live. Simple, direct, present-tense-heavy. | 180–200 |
| B1 | Independent | Follow the main points of clear standard speech on familiar topics. Cope while travelling. Write connected text about experiences and give reasons for an opinion. | 350–400 |
| B2 | Independent | Follow complex text on concrete and abstract topics. Hold a conversation with a fluent speaker without strain on either side. Argue a position in detail. | 500–600 |
| C1 | Proficient | Handle long, demanding texts and catch what is implied rather than said. Use the language flexibly for academic and professional purposes. | 700–800 |
| C2 | Proficient | Understand almost everything heard or read. Summarise across sources, and express fine shades of meaning precisely. | 1,000–1,200 |
The distinctions that matter when you plan
Most teaching decisions turn on one of three boundaries. The rest of the framework is detail.
A2 → B1: from phrases to language
A2 students reproduce learned chunks. B1 students build sentences they have never heard. This is where past narrative, reasons and opinions become possible, and where most coursebooks lose people.
B1 → B2: from concrete to abstract
B1 handles what happened. B2 handles what it means. Hypotheticals, arguments, and topics with no personal experience attached all arrive here.
B2 → C1: from correct to precise
B2 gets the message across accurately. C1 chooses between two accurate ways of saying it. Register, connotation and implication are the C1 job.
How CEFR maps to the exams
Rough alignments, published by the exam boards themselves. Treat them as bands rather than exact conversions — the exams test different things and the boards say so.
| CEFR | Cambridge | IELTS (approx.) | TOEFL iBT (approx.) |
|---|---|---|---|
| A2 | A2 Key (KET) | — | — |
| B1 | B1 Preliminary (PET) | 4.0 – 5.0 | 42 – 71 |
| B2 | B2 First (FCE) | 5.5 – 6.5 | 72 – 94 |
| C1 | C1 Advanced (CAE) | 7.0 – 8.0 | 95 – 120 |
| C2 | C2 Proficiency (CPE) | 8.5 – 9.0 | — |
What the CEFR does not do
It is worth being clear about this, because the framework gets asked to do jobs it was never built for.
It is not a syllabus. Nothing in the CEFR says “teach the present perfect at B1”. The grammar sequence in your coursebook is the publisher’s decision, not the Council of Europe’s.
It is not a test. A level is an outcome you demonstrate, not a score you receive. ”My students are B1” is a judgement someone made, and different people make it differently.
It is not evenly spaced. The gap from A1 to A2 is roughly a hundred hours. B1 to B2 is closer to two hundred. A student plateauing at B1 is not failing; they are in the widest part of the scale.
The 2020 Companion Volume added a pre-A1 level and a set of mediation descriptors — summarising, interpreting, helping others understand — which most classroom material still ignores.
Pitching material at a level
When you set a level on generated material, these are the knobs it actually turns:
| Feature | At A2 | At B2 |
|---|---|---|
| Sentence length | Short, one clause, coordination | Multi-clause, subordination, embedded relatives |
| Tense range | Present, past simple, going to | Full range including perfect aspects and conditionals |
| Vocabulary | High-frequency core, concrete | Lower-frequency, abstract, some idiom and collocation |
| Topic | Familiar, personal, immediate | Abstract, unfamiliar, argued |
| Question type | Answers stated in the text | Answers implied, requiring inference |
A common mistake is picking the level of the class rather than the level of the task. Reading input can sit a notch above where students produce; speaking tasks usually need to sit at or slightly below it.
Questions people ask
What does CEFR stand for?
The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, published by the Council of Europe. It describes language ability in six levels, A1 to C2, and applies to any language, not only English.
What level is "fluent"?
There is no CEFR level called fluent. B2 is the level most people mean — able to hold a real conversation without strain. C2 is not native-speaker level either; it describes a very high proficiency that many native speakers would not demonstrate on an academic task.
How long does it take to move up one level?
Roughly 100 to 200 guided hours in the A band, and 200 or more in the B band, on Cambridge’s estimates. It stretches as you go up, which is why progress feels slower at B1 than it did at A1.
Can I generate material at a specific CEFR level?
Yes — every task type in Classorium takes a level from A1 to C2, and it changes the text, the questions and the vocabulary together. Check the output against the table above; a generated A2 text can still slip one hard word in.
Which languages use the CEFR?
It was designed to be language-neutral and is used across European languages and beyond. Classorium applies it to English, Spanish, French and German.
Generate something at the level you teach
Set A2 and B1 on the same text and the difference stops being abstract.
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