"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.
How CEFR levels map to common exams
Most major exams now report results in CEFR terms, which was the whole point of the framework.
| Language | Exams and the levels they cover |
|---|---|
| English | Cambridge A2 Key, B1 Preliminary, B2 First, C1 Advanced, C2 Proficiency; IELTS gives a band score up to 9 that maps onto CEFR levels |
| French | DELF (A1–B2), DALF (C1–C2) |
| Spanish | DELE (A1–C2); SIELE (one test, scored A1–C1) |
| German | Goethe-Zertifikat (A1–C2), telc; TestDaF for university (roughly B2–C1) |
| Italian | CILS, CELI, PLIDA (A1–C2) |
| Portuguese | CAPLE exams (A1–C2) for European Portuguese; Brazil's Celpe-Bras uses its own bands |
| Japanese, Chinese, Korean | JLPT, HSK and TOPIK use their own scales, which don't line up neatly with CEFR |
In the US, schools and government agencies have their own scales: ACTFL (Novice, Intermediate, Advanced, Superior, Distinguished) and the government's ILR scale from 0 to 5. Rough comparisons with CEFR exist, but treat them as translations, not equivalents.
CEFR levels also turn up in immigration rules. Germany asks for B1 German for naturalization, Italy asks for B1 Italian for citizenship by marriage or residence, and Spain asks for at least DELE A2 plus a separate test on the constitution and Spanish society for nationality by residence. Rules change, so check the official source before you book anything.
How Qlango courses follow the CEFR levels
Every Qlango course is built for one CEFR level, so you always know which rung you're on. Right now there are 81 courses at A1, 80 at A2, 47 at B1, 42 at B2 and 12 each at C1 and C2, across 80 languages. Higher levels are being added language by language: B2 recently arrived for Greek, Latvian, Swedish, Estonian and Romanian, and Polish and Czech now go all the way to C2. The full table of languages and levels shows exactly how far each language goes today.
One piece of advice from long experience: start one level lower than you think you are. Reviewing what you half-know costs a week. Building B1 on a shaky A2 costs months, and you won't notice until you try to tell a story in the past tense and discover you own exactly three verbs.
Quick answers
Which CEFR level counts as fluent?
Most people mean B2 when they say "fluent": you can talk with native speakers at normal speed without either of you suffering. Recruiters sometimes mean C1. Anyone selling a course tends to mean whatever you're about to buy.
How many hours does each CEFR level take?
Roughly 90–100 guided hours for A1 and 1,000–1,200 for C2, counted from zero, by Cambridge's estimates for English. Languages close to your own may go faster; Japanese or Arabic will take an English speaker much longer.
Can I test my CEFR level for free?
Free online placement tests give a rough estimate, but most check only grammar and vocabulary. An official certificate (DELF, DELE, Goethe, Cambridge and the rest) costs money and tests all four skills, speaking included.
Is C2 the same as a native speaker?
No. C2 describes a highly skilled, educated user of the language. Native speakers aren't automatically C2 in writing, and C2 users often keep an accent for life.
If you're just starting, the most useful thing to do with all of this is to forget about C2 for now. Pick something from the languages you can learn, do the first A1 lesson today, and come back to this table in a few months to see which line you've crossed.
