What Is Your Language Level?

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🏅TEST YOUR LEVEL IN 7 LANGUAGES:

Use our FREE level tests to check your current level in French, German, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish!

French Level Test:

German Level Test:

Italian Level Test:

Korean Level Test:

Portuguese Level Test:

Russian Level Test:

Spanish Level Test:

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⏱ TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 - Intro
0:11 - What Are CEFR Levels?
0:48 - A1: Beginner
2:19 - A2: Elementary
4:57 - B1: Intermediate
7:40 - B2: Upper-Intermediate
11:20 - C1: Advanced
13:46 - C2: Mastery

📜 SOURCES & ATTRIBUTIONS:

Secure English Language Test GESE Grade 2 (A1) Saliha

A2 GESE grade 3 Mock speaking exam London

Hoyeon Jung speaking English on Jimmy Fallon 🔥🔥

LanguageCert IESOL B1 Sample Interview Sara

B2 First / Speaking Test

C1 Speaking test 1 Part 1

Extra: The Language Barrier(Penelope Cruz talking about learning English)

[hyun-shik]

The A2 can tell you they went to the bar.
The B2 can talk to you at the bar.
The C2 can help you study for the bar.

[mehornyasfk]

I don't know about other languages, but for German it's like:
- A1: You can go to the supermarkets without problems (at least before the cashier asks: Sammelst du Payback Punkte?).
- A2: You can go to almost anywhere by yourself just fine, if the trains don't come late and change platforms, like 95% of the time.
- B1: You can hold simple conversations with the locals.
- B2: You can hold normal conversations with the locals who are not Bavarians, Austrians, or Swiss Germans.
- C1: You'll have no problem leading a normal life here, I guess...
- C2: You can understand German jokes now, which are non-existent. So C2 is useless.

[Eruptor]

The pub test is a legit good way to see if you're b2.
I've been learning French for a few years and I met some French people at a club and we spoke for hours and hours, I understood everything and I said everything I wanted to, they never were confused or adapted to me.

This was the first time I was able to call myself fluent without feeling cringe about it.

This was definitely one of the greatest highs/feelings I've ever had, I fit in and was respected for the work I put in and felt part of the culture and language I once simply couldn't understand.

[thesupperdud]

I've been learning German on and off for something over a year, and I feel like I'm at a higher level for reading and writing vs speaking and listening. I've always been intimidated by listening comprehension and coming up with responses to potential conversation. I'm just now realizing that when it comes to fully immersing yourself in learning a language that there are going to be times when you'll have to step out of your comfort zone. I've started to branch out and watch videos of German speakers with subtitles, and I even think to myself in German sometimes! It's a rough ride, but I just have to keep reminding myself that with enough practice I'll begin to see major improvements in my conversational abilities :)

[juanzapata]

I already knew Spanish at a C1 level, but in the past 8 months I went from nothing to B2 in Portuguese. I'm so proud!!!

[icelang]

A1, A2 but when will she B-1(be the 1) for me?😢

[karlajoycefonseca]

I've been learning English by myself for three years, and for a long time I felt stucked in intermediate level, I couldn't make any progress about grammar and vocabulary. Then I just relaxed about it and exposed myself to conversations with native speakers and this worked so well. Some friends noticed my improvement and they mentioned I sound much more smother.

" I still don't know my English level but I feel totally comfortable speaking" 😊

[gogakushayemi]

I like that you add that many natives would not test at C2. The truth is that a lot of the skills and vocabulary that are necessary for C2 are not neccessary in daily life, so if a person is not particularly academic or involved in certain fields, they just never use those skills. C2 requires being able to comment on topics like politics and medicine and technology and many people have not done that since A Level General studies class (or equivalent). Honestly, people take C2 as the Holy Grail. C2 is amazing and is to be celebrated, but you are fine without it on most days. As an example, I live and work in Japan. I have been here for almost 15 years, but I have never formally studied Japanese. I would test around B2 or C1, I think, but I haven't taken a Japanese test since I got my N2 a decade ago. However, every day I answer the work phones in Japanese. I read and prepare documents in Japanese. I attend meetings in Japanese. I watch movies on the big screen in Japanese. My French, on the other hand, is C2 and my university major. It is better grammatically than my Japanese for sure, but there are tons of things that I would not be confident in doing in French. Ask me to write an argumentative essay on women's reproductive rights though? I will give you a magazine-quality piece.
Things I would add... These levels really are just a guideline and not set in stone. While A1 learners are very similar, when you look at B1 and up, there are a whole range of profiles. One person will write more elegantly than they speak. Another understands everything they read or hear, but has less spoken vocabulary. And it is important not to confuse spoken fluency with actual language level. I did duolingo, textbook and 5 months of tv before my first attempt at having a conversation in (Taiwanese) Mandarin. By conversation 3, I was speaking fluently (i.e. I didn't have to really pause and search for for words), but I was still a low A2.
Also, the peripheral abilities are greatly influenced by how much experience you have with language as a whole, not necessarily just with the language you are learning now. I teach in a Japanese high school and if my students can't remember a word, they just freeze. Meanwhile, in my very first Mandarin conversation, I was trying to talk about the pandemic and obviously, I do not know pandemic words in Chinese. But I said something like, "Many people sick now. We can not travel, " and my tutor immediately figured out what I wanted to say and taught me the words. This paraphrasing is something you mention for the B levels, but it helps that Mandarin is the 13th language I studied. (I do not actually speak them all. Hahaha. Nopes.) The skills that I had picked up from previously asking for words in so many other languages, and maybe even my skill at English (I used to be really good at English, even compared to native speakers, before I moved to Japan and Japan ate my English) really makes it intuitive to find ways to explain the most difficult of concepts in words that 3 year olds use. To add to that, I started watching unsubtitled TV at A2, because my tutor gave me a show to watch on Youtube. It tricked me because episode 1 had English subs and the others didn't. I figured I had already started, I might as well continue. Now, if a show has subs, I use them; if it doesn't, meh, still watching. This only seems to apply to Taiwanese Mandarin, though. I do not watch shows from mainland China without subs. I do not watch any of my other A1 or A2 languages without subs. The other languages I watch with no subs are French (C2), Spanish (C2), Italian (B2) and Portuguese (because it sounds like Spanish) and Japanese (because I live here), so it really is hard to say why that skill carried over only to Taiwanese shows. Was it just because I happened to watch that first show because I had already started it???

[poisonarrow]

English - C1/C2 (I hold a certificate C1)
Dutch - C2 (Mother language)
German - B2/C1 (I hold a certificate in B2, although 1.5 years ago)
Spanish - A2
Russian - A1

[paulwalther]

I agree with you on the not forgetting a language once you make it to a solid B2. I studied tons of German in my 20’s and then stopped using it completely afterwards and at 45 it’s just a little rusty. I understand everything fine and I can still talk if needed. Ignoring it for over 15 years. This blows my mind.

[pia_mater]

I've been studying English for 12 years and I'm still barely C1 which is so frustrating... I feel like the people in the language learning community often underestimate how long it takes to learn a language

[WhiteSpatula]

A few milestones for me, when learning Spanish, were..
1) Understanding voices over a PA system or in the midst of a lot of background noise.
2) Understanding “yawn-speech” (as I call it, and a bit of wordplay with “yon-speech”) or in other words, still comprehending someone when their speech trails off or is otherwise muffled or interrupted by a yawn, a hiccup, or a slightly ill-timed bite of food, or in any other way that native speakers would presume to be negligible.
3) Understanding unfamiliar accents within a target language. For example, when I first heard a woman in Buenos Aires speak Spanish with a Japanese accent, it really threw me, as I speak NO Japanese, but within a few minutes of conversation I was secretly delighted to realize my brain was able to cut right through both her accent and her occasional grammatical errors.
4) Thinking and even dreaming in a target language. How thrilling it was every time I caught my mind simply bypassing English in order to complete my thoughts directly in Spanish! One caveat: Although I consider myself fluent in several languages besides my native English, to this day I still have to perform any and all mathematics in my head in English.
5) Lastly, on one memorable occasion, I was having a conversation in Spanish with two native speakers (again in Buenos Aires) when a colleague from Colorado approached and asked me a question in English. I later calculated that in that moment, I had not heard or spoken English in over two weeks. I blinked at him, utterly nonplussed, thinking he had just said something in Greek or Russian or who-knows-what. A few moments later I realized that I did in fact understand him and that I had just heard (for only a fleeting moment) my own native tongue as if through foreign ears. IT WAS POSITIVELY BIZARRE! And to this day, I always advocate for fellow native English speakers to exercise unlimited patience with foreigners learning our tongue. Besides so many great discrepancies between written and spoken English, we regularly pull off some very odd tricks in this language we all take for granted! So I say to anyone out there learning to speak English, welcome to the neighborhood, do please ignore those who scowl, stick with it, take all the time you need, and BRAVO!

[yiannisroubos]

I honestly think Ollie is the best language teacher on YouTube. Something about his presence shows an honesty that’s hard to find on the platform.

Keep it up Ollie . I bought the Russian story books at my local book store .

[ivanbuianov]

Even despite the fact that I fully understood this video I still hesitate that I reached B2/C1 level :) Why is that?
I really enjoy English thanks to your videos, Olly. Thank you!

[josephbaumann]

Thanks for clarifying what each level of fluency means. I haven't been keeping up with my Italian studies for the last 4 years. I believe I was at a B2 level. I just started speaking again to brush up on my skills and I can't believe how much I remember. Sometimes words come to me that I forgot I knew. Sure, the fluidity of my speech isn't what it was, but it will come back in time. I agree once you reach B2 level you will not forget what you have learned.

[CouchPolyglot]

I feel like A1-A2 levels are a lot of fun cause you learn so fast and it is a beautiful discovery phase 😍B1 is enough for most communication situations and with B2 you can do almost anything on daily life and with friends, even at work if it is not too complex or does not have to be 100% precise, like with translation jobs. For business, if possible of course it is best to have a C1. I feel like C2 is almost impossible to reach 🤯

[lilyofluck]

There should be levels below A1. Like A0 being, "you know a couple select phrases and 20-100 words."

[crimsonhawk]

I learned nearly to B2 in French via college and haven't used it in forever, but whenever we used to travel to Europe, I could read Le Monde just fine. Very very cool feeling

[chadbailey]

Great video! It’s taken me forever to realize A1, A2, etc aren’t benchmarks you reach, like steps on a staircase, but more phases you pass through! Like, I can’t truly say I’ve achieved A2, until I’ve gone completely through that phase and am now beginning my B1 journey. It’s so fascinating! Can’t wait to reach B1 for input!

[Herbert.]

I started learning French two and a half years ago and have reached C2. Only just moved to France, but am constantly being taken for a native – studying language sciences in French without any issues.

How? Spent a lot of time with a French girl, listened to French podcasts, watched French TV series, read French literature and spoke French any chance I got. Also studied the grammar a lot.

It's a lot of hard work. But if you do it out of love, it breezes past instantly and is incredibly rewarding!