What can you read at each CEFR level?

The Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) describes what a learner can do at six levels, from A1 to C2. For reading, the 2020 Companion Volume has an overall scale and five scales for kinds of reading: correspondence, reading for orientation, reading for information and argument, instructions, and reading as a leisure activity. The last one is the scale about books. The table pairs it with the length of graded readers at the same level and with the free original books in our table.

The second column is our summary of the Council of Europe’s descriptors, not their exact wording; the sections below paraphrase them too. Penguin’s lengths are the publisher’s own ranges for its levels. The book levels in the last two columns were set by hand by our team, and the shortest book at a level is not always the easiest: a poem or a play can be harder than a longer novel. The CEFR describes readers, not books, so no level here is an official rating of a book.

Very little beyond texts written for beginners. The Council of Europe’s leisure reading scale describes an A1 reader as able to understand short illustrated stories about everyday activities told in simple words. Its overall reading scale adds that at A1 a learner reads very short, simple texts one phrase at a time, picking out familiar names and words and rereading as needed. Below A1, at Pre-A1, the overall scale mentions recognising familiar words with the help of pictures.

Graded readers at this level are short and tightly limited. Penguin Readers Level 1, which Penguin labels A1, has stories of 1,000 to 1,600 words written within 550 headwords; Oxford Bookworms Starter, also A1, uses 250 headwords. For comparison, learners at A1 typically score below 1,500 on the X_Lex test, which checks how many of the 5,000 most frequent English words they know.

Short, simple stories. The leisure reading scale says an A2 reader can read short, simple stories and comic strips about familiar, concrete situations written in high-frequency everyday language, and can follow the main points of short articles on everyday topics. The overall scale speaks of short, simple texts on familiar, concrete matters.

Penguin Readers Level 3 (A2) stories run 7,000 to 10,000 words within 1,000 headwords, and Level 4 (A2+) 11,000 to 14,000 words within 1,200. On X_Lex, A2 learners of English typically know 1,500 to 2,500 of the 5,000 most frequent words.

Your first novels, with a dictionary. B1 is the first level at which the leisure reading scale mentions novels: a B1 reader can follow the plot of stories, simple novels and comics with a clear, linear storyline in high-frequency everyday language, if they use a dictionary regularly. The same scale adds simple poems and song lyrics in plain language, and descriptions of places, events and clearly expressed feelings. The overall scale describes B1 as reading plain factual texts on subjects related to one’s interests with satisfactory comprehension.

Graded readers at B1 are still short. Penguin Readers Level 5 (B1) runs 15,000 to 18,000 words within 1,600 headwords and Level 6 (B1+) 18,000 to 22,000 within 2,000. On X_Lex, B1 learners of English typically know 2,750 to 3,250 of the 5,000 most frequent words.

Yes, many of them, with time and a dictionary. The leisure reading scale says a B2 reader can read for pleasure largely independently, adapting style and speed to different texts such as magazines, straightforward novels, biographies and poems, and using reference sources selectively. It also says a B2 reader can read novels with a strong narrative plot written in plain, straightforward language, provided they can take their time and use a dictionary. The overall scale notes a broad reading vocabulary but some difficulty with rare idioms.

That condition matters. On X_Lex, B2 learners of English typically know 3,250 to 3,750 of the 5,000 most frequent words, while an ordinary English novel needs 8,000 to 9,000 word families, plus names, for 98% of its words to be known. The two measures are not the same, but the gap explains why a B2 reader still reaches for the dictionary. Graded readers end around here: Penguin’s top level, Level 7, is B2, with stories of 22,000 to 26,000 words within 2,500 headwords.

Almost anything at C1, and anything at C2. The leisure reading scale says a C1 reader can read and appreciate a variety of literary texts if they can reread certain sections and use reference tools, and can read contemporary literary texts and standard non-fiction with little difficulty, catching implied meanings. At C2 a reader can read virtually all kinds of text, including classical and colloquial literature and non-literary texts in a range of genres, appreciating fine differences of style and both implicit and explicit meaning.

The X_Lex test tops out here: C1 learners of English typically score 3,750 to 4,500 out of 5,000 and C2 learners 4,500 to 5,000, so the test cannot tell C2 readers apart. Graded readers have little left to offer: of the four big English series, only Oxford Bookworms Stage 6 (B2–C1) and Cambridge English Readers Level 6 reach C1.

Not necessarily. The CEFR describes reading on its own scales, separate from listening, speaking and writing, so a learner can be B2 in reading and B1 in speaking, or the other way round. A course level or a single exam grade that combines several skills tells you less about the books you can read than your reading alone. To place yourself, read the descriptors above for two neighbouring levels and pick the one that sounds like your last book, not your textbook.

Then check one book directly. Read a page from the middle and count the words you could not translate. Five on a page of about 250 words means you know about 98% of the words, the share a study of learners reading a short story estimated as enough to follow fiction without help. For easy reading in quantity, Paul Nation and Rob Waring suggest no more than three or four unknown words on a page. If you stop more often, go one level down, whatever the label says. The full test is on Is this book right for my level?