CEFR: Self-Analyze Your English Language Skills

Posted On: January 25, 2021

One of the ways we track your progress through our coaching and training programs is through the use of the CEFR self-assessment tool.

Take a look at the video below to help you understand how to use this tool to assess your language skills.

How can I use the CEFR to analyze my English level?

[00:00:01] This is Jennifer, I would like to walk you through and help you understand how to use the CEFR self-assessment language tool for training programs at Authentic Journeys. You will need to go through this document to self assess yourself as we start a program and as we go throughout the program and maybe at the end of the program, definitely at the beginning and the end. So let’s take a deeper look at just the grid itself.

[00:00:30] What we have here are our language skills here along the left side, and we have our scores on the other top part here. Our levels, we could say levels or scores…

[00:00:44] Now, actually, before I get into this, you might be wondering what is CEFR? So, it stands for Central European Framework of Reference for language. And it was created specifically for professionals like you who are using English as a second, third or other language in a business environment.

[00:01:03] So let’s take a look at these communication skills … English language, communication skills, listening and reading, that’s under understanding. That’s pretty self-explanatory. Your listening comprehension and reading comprehension, then spoken interaction.

[00:01:22] Spoken interaction refers to the ability to actually hold, maintain and continue a conversation. Spoken production refers to just being able to speak in English. You can form sentences, you can say something in English. You might be able to give a presentation or deliver a status update.

[00:01:42] It’s a situation where you’re not having a conversation, but you’re able to actually talk in English and writing is pretty self-explanatory as well. So the scores along the top A1 and A2 are are beginners.

[00:01:59] A1 is low beginner, A2 is high beginner. B1 low intermediate, B2 high intermediate, C1 low advanced and C2 is high advanced.

[00:02:15] And believe it or not, not all native speakers are C2 it can also depend on the topic that we’re trying to listen to, read, talk about or write about.

[00:02:25] So what I want you to do is kind of you look at your skill on the left side. You read across until you feel ok… this this is where I’m at. So you just read across. You keep reaching across until you think, OK, that one’s too hard for me. Like, let’s say you get to B2 and you realize, oh, that B2 is too hard for me under listening, B1 one is good.

[00:02:46] So then what you have to do is you have to come to the Excel tracking sheet and you would put in your score at the start of the program. You can see where you would do that here under the yellow part. So you would if you were listening and your B1, you would put your score here at the start of the program. At the beginning of the program, you have to fill out these two columns. So you would put in B1 if you think listening is B1 for you and then you put in your desired score. Usually it would only go up by one or two points.

[00:03:26] So if we go back to this, the CFR grid, for example, what you can see here is that like if you pick a B1, it’s realistic that you could make it up to B2 in in two or three months.

[00:03:45] I’ve seen people progress to be able to do that, but going from B1 to C1 might be a bit of a challenge.

[00:03:52] But then some people look at it like, oh, if I put C1, then I’ll definitely get to B2. So you can you can justify it in that direction as well. So I want you to actually analyze yourself on each of these and they they might not all be one. Like maybe listening is B1, but reading could be C1 for some people because you’re really good at reading and then for spoken interaction, that might be a little lower because maybe having a conversation is a little more challenging than just producing English, maybe producing English some people might B2 and C1 and then writing skills for many people I train at or either had A2 or B1.

[00:04:34] So that actually goes to the question of what are the lowest scores or minimum scores, I should say, for… for you to have to be able to be successful in this program. So let me show you this. We go back to the goal tracker here. And if we go to the CEFR on your Goal Tracker Excel sheet, some of these are highlighted in red. So the ones that are highlighted in red are highlighted in red because of the fact that let me come back in here.

[00:05:12] The one highlighted in red refer to the the levels, the lowest level that you should be at at the start of the program for you to grasp what we are teaching in the program. But in some cases, I mean, even when we’re looking at listening, if you’re not a B1 one, if you’re an A2, you’re still… you still can be successful in the program if your other scores are kind of at or above the the red highlighted ones.

[00:05:46] So I hope this kind of helps you to understand how to use the CEFR, self assessment tool.

[00:05:54] And let me actually come in here completely.

[00:05:57] If you have any questions, obviously you can reach out to me.

[00:06:00] I had hoped to create this video in less than two or three minutes, but there’s a lot of details there. So do try to take some time to go through it. If… if you would like to do that, it’s a really helpful tool. I’ve definitely seen people use this tool to their advantage to improve their language skills. And as you go through it and as we go through the programs that you are in with Authentic Journeys, if you have any questions about activities you can do to improve your language skills in listening, reading, writing, speaking, spoken production or spoken interaction, you can definitely ask me which of the activities in the training program map to those skills, or I can give you some activities to do outside of the scope of the program. You can do those on your own as well. So yeah, definitely go through that and let me know if you have any questions. So thanks for listening and looking forward to seeing the session. Bye.

Want to know how we can help your teams in India to propel your business with US Americans? We have worked with over 4,000 professionals from 50 companies in the subcontinent. See our completed projects lists and then get in touch with us for more information.