What B1 vocabulary means
B1 learners understand the main points of clear standard English on familiar matters, deal with most travel situations and describe experiences, hopes and opinions. The B1 list is large because it covers the vocabulary of work, study, the media and feelings, plus connectors such as nevertheless, although and whereas that hold longer texts together.
With vocabulary up to B1, learners can read intermediate graded readers, simple news and many blog posts. Unsimplified novels still contain too many unknown words for comfortable reading.
The 100 most common B1 words
These are the words on the B1 list you will meet most often in real English texts. Start with them.
- service
- season
- including
- term
- general
- president
- working
- per
- able
- process
- require
- series
- development
- charge
- whether
- policy
- march
- link
- former
- available
- sometimes
- current
- relationship
- tax
- rest
- department
- fund
- industry
- race
- foot
- main
- decision
- security
- property
- press
- county
- total
- sex
- comment
- standard
- election
- amount
- individual
- beat
- score
- operation
- loss
- worth
- benefit
- league
- network
- protect
- chief
- risk
- mile
- treat
- union
- management
- contain
- region
- approach
- central
- paid
- various
- cell
- district
- organization / organisation
- reduce
- career
- council
- sort
- gain
- amazing
- economic
- involved
- serious
- access
- army
- entire
- written
- financial
- measure
- currently
- legal
- respect
- suppose
- supply
- associate
- rise
- application
- content
- movement
- huge
- pain
- option
- treatment
- prove
- percent
- artist
- update
B1 words by part of speech
| Part of speech | Most common examples |
|---|---|
| Nouns | service, season, term, general, president, process, series, development, charge, policy |
| Verbs | service, require, charge, march, link, rest, fund, race, press, beat |
| Adjectives | general, working, able, former, available, current, main, total, standard, individual |
| Adverbs | sometimes, currently, completely, absolutely, immediately, definitely, particularly, generally, thus, directly |
How many words do you need for B1?
This list has 2,088 words. Together, the lists from A1 to B1 contain 4,341 words. The CEFR itself does not define word counts; these figures are the size of the CEFR-J and Octanove lists. Your real vocabulary also includes names, new words and specialist words that no list covers.
To measure your overall vocabulary, take the English vocabulary size test; it also estimates your CEFR level.
How to learn B1 words
At B1 the number of new words grows quickly, and word lists alone become inefficient. Read a lot at your level, look up words in context and keep only the useful ones as flashcards.
- Use the self-test above to see what share of the B1 words you already know.
- Pick one of the free B1 English books and start reading.
- Tap any word you don't know in Okuzeka to see its meaning in that sentence, in your language.
- Save useful words as flashcards with their sentences and review them over the next few days.
- When you score above 85%, move on to the B2 list.
Where this list comes from
The A1–B2 words come from the CEFR-J Wordlist, compiled by the CEFR-J project at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.
Okuzeka kept the single-word headwords and sorted them by word frequency. Other lists, such as the Cambridge English Vocabulary Profile or the Oxford 3000/5000, may give some words a different level, and a word's level can depend on the meaning being taught.
