What does a word's CEFR level mean?
The Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) describes language ability on six levels, from A1 (beginner) to C2 (proficient). A word's CEFR level tells you at which stage learners typically meet and learn it. In the CEFR-J Wordlist, house is A1, decide is A2, nevertheless is B1, genuine is B2, and in the Octanove list scrutiny is C1 and meticulous is C2.
Teachers use word levels to choose and simplify reading material, test writers use them to control difficulty, and learners use them to decide which new words deserve a place in their flashcards first.
| Level | Example words |
|---|---|
| A1 | house, friend, eat, happy, borrow |
| A2 | decide, journey, achieve, survive, consequence |
| B1 | nevertheless, career, encounter, typical, insight |
| B2 | genuine, anticipate, reluctant, controversy, identical |
| C1 | scrutiny, elaborate, timid, drawback, ludicrous |
| C2 | meticulous, ephemeral, paramount, disseminate, forlorn |
Where the levels come from
Levels A1 to B2 come from the CEFR-J Wordlist, a list of about 7,800 English words graded by the CEFR-J project at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. Levels C1 and C2 come from the Octanove Vocabulary Profile, which extends the same approach to advanced words.
When a word is in neither list, the checker estimates its level from how frequent it is and marks the result as estimated. A word ranked around 8,000th, for example, is usually learned at C1. Estimated levels are less reliable than listed ones, especially for technical words, slang and new words.
What the frequency rank tells you
The rank is the word's position in a list of about 32,000 English lemmas ordered from most to least frequent. The is number 1. A word in the top 1,000 appears on almost every page you read; a word ranked 15,000 might appear once in a whole novel.
Frequency is a practical guide for learners: the higher a word ranks, the sooner it is worth learning, because you will meet it more often.
- Top 1,000: the core of English. Learn these first.
- 1,001–3,000: common words for everyday topics.
- 3,001–5,000: fairly common; needed for comfortable reading.
- 5,001–10,000: less common; typical of novels and newspapers.
- Beyond 10,000: uncommon, literary or specialist words.
Why one word can have more than one level
Many words have several meanings and parts of speech. Book as a noun is A1, but book as a verb (to reserve) is learned later. Word lists usually give the earliest level at which a word is taught, and that is the level shown here. The definitions under the result list the most common meanings.
This is also why a single level cannot tell you everything about a word. In real reading, the meaning depends on the sentence, which is why the Okuzeka reader explains each word in its context.
Check a whole text instead
To check every word of a paragraph or an article at once, paste it into the A1–C2 vocabulary level checker, which sorts the words by level, or the CEFR text level checker, which also estimates the level of the whole text.
