How English level tests work, and what a free quiz can tell you

What the CEFR actually is

The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, usually shortened to CEFR, is not a test. Cambridge English describes it as an international standard for describing language ability, and says it describes that ability on a six-point scale, from A1 for beginners up to C2 for those who have mastered a language. The six points are A1 and A2, B1 and B2, C1 and C2, and the Europass self-assessment grids published by the European Union group them as elementary, independent and proficient.

What sits underneath each point is a set of can-do statements. The Europass grids spell them out skill by skill, in the learner's own voice. The Europass grid's A1 listening descriptor reads: "I can recognise familiar words and very basic phrases concerning myself, my family and immediate concrete surroundings when people speak slowly and clearly." Its C2 writing descriptor reads: "I can write clear, smoothly-flowing text in an appropriate style." Both sentences are the Council of Europe's wording as the European Union publishes it, quoted here rather than rewritten, because the exact words are the thing being described. The framework covers listening, reading, spoken interaction and production, and written expression.

Two things follow from that, and both matter here. The framework is a description, so anyone can read the descriptors and think about where they sit; the grids are published for exactly that. But a level awarded to you by an examination is something else: it is a judgement made by trained people, against those descriptors, from evidence they collected under controlled conditions. The framework being public does not make the judgement public property.

The tests that do assign a level, and what each one measures

Four names come up repeatedly. They are listed here so you can tell them apart, not recommended: which one counts is decided by whoever is asking you for a level.

• IELTS. Taken in an Academic version and a General Training version, plus a version accepted by UK Visas and Immigration as proof of English proficiency. The organisation says the Speaking and Listening sections are the same in both versions, while the Reading and Writing sections differ, so the choice between them turns on why you are taking it.
• TOEFL iBT. Educational Testing Service says the test measures all four academic English skills, reading, listening, speaking and writing, the way they are actually used in a classroom, which is the framing that explains its academic vocabulary and lecture-style listening.
• Cambridge English exams. A family of qualifications rather than one test, each placed on the CEFR scale; Cambridge English publishes a diagram showing all of its English exams on the framework, which is what lets an employer compare one of its certificates against another country's exam.
• EF SET. A free online test that describes itself as the first standardized test to be fully aligned to the CEFR, designed to align to the full CEFR spectrum, and it publishes the score band it treats as each level, from 1 to 30 for A1 up to 71 to 100 for C2.

The shared feature is procedure. Each of these tests asks the same skills of every candidate under the same conditions, with items whose difficulty has been measured in advance on real candidates, and each reports on a scale that has been held steady across administrations so that a band this year means what it meant last year.

Why a free quiz cannot assign a level

It is not a matter of asking more questions. Four things are missing from any free quiz, including the one on this site, and none of them can be added by lengthening it.

• It never sees you produce language. Two of the four CEFR skills are speaking and writing, and a multiple-choice question cannot sample either. Recognising the right sentence among four is a different act from building one yourself, and the gap between the two is wide and varies from person to person.
• There are no trained raters. A speaking or writing sample means nothing until someone trained against the descriptors judges it, usually with a second rater to check. That labour is most of what a paid exam charges for.
• The items are not calibrated. Exam questions are trialled on candidates first so that each one's difficulty is known, and scores are equated across versions so that two sittings mean the same thing. A quiz written in one pass, however carefully, has none of that behind it.
• The conditions are not controlled. Nobody checks who is answering, whether a dictionary is open in the next tab, or whether the test was taken twice. An exam result carries an identity check and a room; a browser tab carries neither.

So a free quiz that hands back a letter and a number is telling you something it cannot know. That is why the English level test on this site reports a score out of 100 and accuracy for each skill, and stops there.

How to use a skill breakdown instead

A per-skill breakdown is more useful than a label for the plain reason that a label gives you nothing to do on Monday. Treat the five rows as a work list, in this order.

• Read the rows, not the total. A high total hides a weak skill; a low total usually has one skill dragging it. The row with the lowest accuracy is the one to work on.
• Turn the row into a daily habit with material you would use anyway. Vocabulary from a news article, register from the work emails already in your inbox, collocations from a podcast transcript, reading from a manual or a recipe.
• Work on production alongside recognition. Write three sentences using each word or pattern you missed and say them out loud. Neither this test nor any other multiple-choice quiz will build that half for you.
• Retest after a fortnight and compare the same rows. Movement in one skill over two weeks is a real signal; movement in a total is noise between two short tests.
• Keep the answer review. The explanation attached to each question you missed is the study material, and it is more specific than any level would be.

If you do need a level on paper, for a university place, a job or a visa, go to the exam that the institution accepts and budget for it. A free quiz is preparation and diagnosis; it is not a certificate, and nothing you do to it will make it one.