A Guide To Improving Spanish and Passing Exams

B2- Ok, all the levels are achievements to be proud of but at B2 you may notice that the natives stop
treating completely like a foreigner and engage you in normal conversation. You can survive about
90% of the situations that life throws at you and you can even engage in some of the beer fueled
debates that happen. Genuinely...well done!
C1- At a non technical level you rock. Sometimes people even confuse you for a local! You can sing
and joke and improvise and walk in on a conversation and get the gist of it immediately. In short you
now have super powers in the language. In Spanish the C1 level is a little strange. In the DELE B2
exam you may need to show off your ability in many testing situations. The readings are tough, the
grammar is comprehensively tough and the listening is, for want of another word, tough. At C1 level
however they assume you have the grammar, the reading becomes very formal- that is the amount of
english formal cognates increases and so you will recognise more words in the readings...even if you
didnt know you knew them. So, exams are not real life.
A0- You've don't have any words in the target language. You probably can't read a word either.
B1- Ah, everything the A2 has but more polished. If you have it you do use it and by gum are you
frustrated most of the time. You can have conversations, maybe even fluent ones. You still need
sympathetic listeners most of the time and you do best in one on one conversations.
A1- You can string a few sentences together- how are you? i'm from ireland. my name is David. In
terms of vocabulary at this level you probably have between 500 and one thousand words in your
active vocabulary (that is the vocabulary you can use, not just recognise) mainly in the areas of food,
directions, clothes, family and other simple but incredibly useful areas.
A2- You possibly have all the vocabulary you need to survive getting a bus, checking into a hotel,
asking for directions, ordering food in a restaurant...whether or not you can or do use it...At this
level you probably already have a grasp of some grammar. Perhaps you are already using some
version of the future (in Spanish, most people learn to say I'm going to + verb infinitive long before
they pick up the past tenses, or even that many irregulars in the present.)
C2- In the areas that interest you or are related to your profession (working in the target language)
you can actually out do the natives! No, they're still native, they'll always have that but through your
study and exposure you've taken a look at their language they rarely do. You sir or maddam, are a
legend.
From A1 to C2
To summarise levels (very simplistically) this is how they work. There are 6 levels. A1 and A2 are
beginners. B1 and B2 are intermediate. And C1 and C2 are...well pretty good actually. The people in
the Council of Europe who researched and put the reference levels together very wisely left it all a
little vague. So, there is no defining line between one level and the next. Everything is built on
general definitions of what you might expect a beginner (and so on) to know, not know or just
struggle with.