"Intermediate" is close to meaningless. One school's intermediate class can barely order lunch; another's argues about politics in the subjunctive. The CEFR levels exist to fix exactly that. The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, published by the Council of Europe in 2001, sorts learners into six levels, A1 to C2, and describes each one by what you can actually do with the language, not by which chapter of the grammar book you've reached.
Here are the CEFR levels explained in one line: A is a basic user, B an independent user, C a proficient user, and each band has a lower and an upper step. An A1 learner can say who they are and where they live. A C2 user can follow a fast argument on the radio and tell you where it went wrong. Everything else sits in between, and the rest of this page shows what "in between" looks like on an ordinary Tuesday.
The six CEFR levels at a glance
The original framework gave each level a name as well as a code. Nobody uses the names anymore, but they're oddly helpful.
| Level | Original name | What it looks like | Guided hours (approx.) |
|---|---|---|---|
| A1 | Breakthrough | Introduce yourself, order food, ask simple questions if people speak slowly | 90–100 |
| A2 | Waystage | Handle routine tasks: shopping, directions, short chats about family and work | 180–200 |
| B1 | Threshold | Cope alone while traveling, tell a story, give reasons for an opinion | 350–400 |
| B2 | Vantage | Hold a real conversation with native speakers without either side straining | 500–600 |
| C1 | Effective operational proficiency | Work or study in the language, catch what's implied | 700–800 |
| C2 | Mastery | Understand virtually everything, express fine shades of meaning | 1,000–1,200 |
The hours are Cambridge English's rough estimates for learners of English, counted from zero and with a teacher. They're a fair guide for languages close to your own and optimistic for distant ones; there's a separate piece on how long it takes to learn a language if you want the details. Notice that the gaps grow. A1 to A2 is a short hop. C1 to C2 is a long, slow climb.
CEFR levels explained: what each one means in practice
The official descriptors are careful and a little dry. Here is the same ladder in terms of situations you'll actually meet.
A1: survival
You can give your name, nationality and job, count, read a menu with some guessing, and understand "the train to Bilbao leaves from platform four" if someone says it slowly and points. Your sentences are short and mostly in the present tense: Me llamo Sam. Soy de Chicago. Trabajo en un banco. That's not nothing. It's the difference between being a tourist and being luggage.
A2: routine
You can buy a train ticket and ask whether it stops in Bilbao, explain at the pharmacy that your throat hurts, and tell someone what you did last weekend in a rough past tense. Conversations work as long as they follow the script. When the waiter goes off-script ("Inside or outside? We're out of the hake, is the bream all right?"), you freeze, smile and say yes to everything.
B1: independence
The framework calls this level Threshold, and it earns the name. You can deal with most things that come up while traveling: a lost booking, a missed connection, a landlord who won't answer your messages. You can tell the plot of a film, badly but completely, and explain why you liked it. You follow the main points of clear speech on familiar topics. The typical B1 feeling is "I can say almost anything, just not the way I want to say it." It's also where a lot of learners stall, because getting by stops being a problem.
B2: real conversations
The Council of Europe says a B2 user can interact with native speakers "without strain for either party", and that phrase is the best test there is. You follow most TV news, most films in standard dialect, and arguments full of abstract ideas. You can defend a point of view and lay out the pros and cons of, say, working from home. You still make mistakes and you still have an accent. Since it's the level most employers and universities ask for, it gets its own page: what B2 level really means.
C1: working language
You can read long, demanding texts and pick up what isn't said directly: irony, or a polite refusal dressed up as a maybe. You speak without visibly hunting for words, write a well-organized report, and run a meeting without rehearsing it in the shower first. Other people's jokes land most of the time. Yours, less often.
C2: mastery
You understand practically everything you hear or read, can summarize several sources into one coherent argument, and choose between near-synonyms on purpose. C2 isn't the same as "native", and plenty of native speakers would struggle with a C2 exam paper, which tells you more about the exam than about them.
You rarely have just one level
The CEFR rates listening, reading, speaking (conversation and longer talks separately) and writing on their own scales, and real people are lopsided. Someone who learned from books may read at B2 and speak at A2. Someone who grew up hearing a language at home may chat at C1 and spell at A2. When a certificate gives you one overall level, it's an average. When you assess yourself, go skill by skill. It's more useful and a lot less flattering.
You'll also see in-between labels such as B1+ or B2+ in course books, and the Council of Europe's 2020 Companion Volume added a Pre-A1 band below A1. They're refinements of the same six levels, not a new system.
