Are you ready for intermediate level English? pt 1

How good do you think your English is?  What level do you put yourself?  One of the scales of language assessment is the CEFR or Common European Framework of Reference.  If you see A1, A2, B1, B2, C1 or C2 on your English textbooks then that's what that means.  Common European Framework of Reference - it’s an awful name but it is a useful system for measuring language ability.  Here is the structure and descriptions.

Click for larger image

What is intermediate level?

Here is how CEFR defines B1: the ability to maintain conversation and the ability to independently deal with problems in day-to-day life.  Let me make this clearer.

Some people like to talk a lot and some people hate talking.  Some people are very social and some people like to be alone most of the time.  This is not important for measuring your level of English.  What is important is your ability.  Can you have a conversation of 5 or 10 minutes with somebody in English?  Not, do you like having conversations of 5 or 10 minutes with somebody in English?

Is your English good enough to call the plumber,
explain the problem and arrange for him to fix this?
(Photo from Flickr)

With the problems of day-to-day life, some people can fix washing machines and some people can’t, some people know how to pay their bills on the internet and some people prefer to pay their bills at the bank.  It is not a problem if you cannot do these things, it is a problem if you cannot do these things because your English is not good enough.

A2 vs B1: What's the difference?

There is a big difference between A2 and B1 and it is more than grammar and vocabulary.  B1 learners are independent learners and users.  An intermediate student takes more responsibility for their learning and becomes more autonomous (another word that means ‘independent’).  Let’s look at the description in more detail:

Can deal with most situations likely to arise whilst travelling in an area where the language is spoken.

If you travel to another countries are you confident that you can deal with a restaurant?  Book a hotel on the phone?  Deal with a taxi driver who needs directions?  Deal with the police if necessary?  I had to deal with the Mexican police once because I was parked in the wrong place – it was not easy.

Is your English good enough to deal
with a parking ticket if you need to?
(Photo from Flickr)

Would you feel confident going to an English-speaking country and using your English for these things?

Can describe experiences and events, dreams, hopes and ambitions...

This is probably the most difficult part of B1.  Can you describe these things and people understand you?  Can you talk about a funny situation that happened last week?  Can you explain what you want to be doing in one year?

... and briefly give reasons and explanations for opinions and plans.

Can you explain why you want things like good English, a better English score or a job with an international company?  Can you have a full conversation about these ambitions and plans?

Cambridge ESOL

The CEFR and the Cambridge Exams (Click for large image)

Cambridge identifies the difference between A2 and B1 like this, “Understanding at Level B1 differs in that it goes beyond merely being able to pick out facts and may involve opinions, attitudes, moods and wishes.”

Basically this means a few things.

1.  You need to be able to give and support opinions and attitudes.  Compare these two examples:

A2:  I want this chair.  It is comfortable.

B1:  I would prefer this chair because I think it is better for my back.

The B1 example is more polite (“I would prefer”), shows opinion (“I think”) and explains the situation (“better for my back”)

2.  You need to change your vocabulary to help the listener understand your mood or feelings.

A2:  I am not happy because you failed my essay.
A2+:  I’m upset with my essay grade.  I don’t think you were fair.

or

B1:  I was disappointed that you gave me a low grade.  I think it was better.

or

B1:  I was surprised that you gave me a low grade.  Could you look at it again?

All of these examples basically give the same information: feeling + reason.  However, the B1 examples are better because they all give the information in a more polite way using vocabulary that is less direct and argumentative.  The A2+ example certainly uses better grammar and vocabulary but it is still direct and argumentative.

B1 users of English needs to understand the context of the situation (a student complaining to a teacher) and understand that argumentative language is not the correct English to use for a positive result.

3.  Another example would be this.

A2:  I need to leave 10 minutes early.  I have an appointment.

B1:  Could I leave 10 minutes early today?  I have an important appointment and I shouldn’t be late.

Again, both of these sentences give the same information.  However, B1 makes a polite request (“Could I...?”) but A2 gives an order (“I need...”).  Also, B1 gives more relevant information (“important appointment” and “shouldn’t be late”).  B1 shows a better attitude and will probably have permission to leave early whereas A2 probably will not.

Some tips for assessing yourself:

1. Ask yourself, how many times does someone stop me and ask me to repeat?  How many times does someone stop me and want me to explain again?  How many times does a person chatting with me not understand my ideas.  Not the words, the ideas.
2. How long does it take me to write an email in English?  How much help do I need to use my English in my job?   Can I write a clear email that is easy to understand for users of English?  When I get emails in English, do I always/usually/sometimes need help to understand the meaning?
3. Do I make phone calls/Skype calls in English for my job or do I get someone else to do it for me?  Do I understand, more or less, voice messages I get on my phone in English?

Useful Links/References

Cambridge ESOL Teacher Support:  This website is for teachers of English but it is useful to clearly explain the types of situations that a learner needs to deal with well to be a B1 learner.

Wikipedia page on the CEFR:  This gives you another description of the different levels.  Unfortunately there is no Simple English Wikipedia page for this.  Read my article about writing Wikipedia articles to improve your English and then perhaps try to write a Simple English page. :-)

Improve Your English, Edit a Wikipedia Page!

A few months ago I gave my students in Argentina a project and I think it worked very well.  We took the English Wikipedia page of the local city, Gualeguaychú, and we improved it.

How did the students do this?

My students looked at the Wikipedia article in the original language (Spanish) and then used this information to improve the English version.  Here is a comparison between the original Spanish and the English article before the students started the project.  As you can see the English article is MUCH smaller.

We copied the English article into Google Docs, shared the document with everybody and then the students started to work on building and improving the article.

Here is what they achieved.

As you can see, the English article is still shorter than the Spanish but it has significantly more information than it had.  This is okay, the English article doesn’t need to be as big as the original Spanish.

Click here to get higher resolution pictures of the Spanish, the old English article and the new English article.

What has this project done?

• The students worked together, learning from each other and improving each other’s English.
• The students have improved their vocabulary and their translation skills.
• The students have helped to advertise their home town.

See the Wikipedia pages here: Gualeguaychú (English) and Gualeguaychú (Spanish)

The Rules

If you want to improve your English with some friends or classmates then I think this type of project is a great way to do it.  However, if you want a project to succeed then you need to have rules.  These are the rules that we had.

1. Try to use the original Wikipedia article (if it exists) as a guide to help you build the English article but don’t worry if they are not exact translations.  Remember, good translations are often not exact translations.
2. Very Important - Don’t be afraid to make corrections of paragraphs that other people have written.  This is a collaborative piece of work.
3. Don’t invent information - everything in the article must be fact, not fiction.
4. You are not allowed to talk about personal opinions - these will be removed by Wikipedia.
5. Only do as much work as you want to do.  When it stops being fun, take a break!
6. If you are going to add photos, they need to be your photos or photos which are not copyright.  Copyrighted images cannot be used on Wikipedia.
7. Set a deadline and stick to it!  Give the project a week or a month.  Any more time than this will cause people to lose motivation.  At the end of the project deadline, take your work in Google Docs and update the Wikipedia page.  The article doesn't need to be perfect at the end - you can always continue to edit and improve it on Wikipedia.

Ideas

Writing about your hometown is a good topic.  Other topics you could work on might be famous local people (actors, authors, poets) or famous local people from history (inventors, military people, authors, etc.), maybe events in local history, or local buildings of historic significance.  If you don’t like history then you could important areas in the area (parks, theatres, museums, etc.).  Wikipedia doesn’t need to be your only source of information for your English article, if you do start doing some research you might learn something new about where you live.

Let me know how it goes!

Favourite Websites for English Practice, pt 2 (Reading)

A couple of months ago I posted about my favourite websites for listening activities for the Internet.  Already I have a lot more listening websites I want to suggest but today’s post, as I promised, is a suggestion of a few websites that would be useful if you wanted to improve your English through reading.

As I already posted, reading is a VERY valuable and useful activity in English (and any language you are studying).  It helps to improve our vocabulary and the more reading we do, the faster we become.  One of the problems with reading activities is that most people don’t enjoy reading a computer screen for long periods of time.

News & Online Newspapers

This is why short news articles are an obvious thing to recommend.  A free, commuter’s newspaper in Britain, the Metro, is also available online (commuter is a person who travels to work every day).   They have a website but if you want to feel like you are reading a newspaper then they have a virtual newspaper you can read as well.  For this service you need to provide an email address and then you will receive a free, virtual newspaper every week day.  The level of English is not too high but you will still get a lot of useful vocabulary. 

If you are more interested in business and finance then you might want to look at a website connected to the Metro newspaper, http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/.  You can read articles about various topics in the financial world and there are lots of comments about these articles which are perfect to see how people “talk” about these topics.  If you want to improve your financial/business English but you are at a lower level, the BBC and British Council have made a website for you, Business Magazine.  The articles are short and clear and each article has learning exercises connected to them as options for extra practice.

General Interest

If you don’t want to read a newspaper regularly, then you might want to go so the Wikipedia Simple English site.  I love Wikipedia and I think it is one of the most useful websites on the entire Internet.  Sometimes the articles are very complicated so for learners of English I recommend the Simple English site.  There are not as many articles as in the main Wikipedia English site, but there is a lot of information and it is designed for learners of the English language.

Extensive Reading

If you want to do more extensive reading (as I suggested last week) then I recommend these two websites; Lit2Go and LoudLit are both websites with classic English-speaking stories, such as work by Jane Austen or A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.  The great thing about these websites is that you can listen to someone reading the stories while you follow (read) the story.

One more website that is certainly worth looking at is ESL Reading.  It has a variety of different reading materials as well as some learning activities.  I haven’t had much time to look at this site in detail yet but it looks good to me.

Please let me know what you think and, as always, any comments are welcome.

Gordon