Annette Capel explores how learners’ capabilities develop between B2 and C1, and how we can help them make the step up.
How is a C1 learner different from a learner at B2? I’ll be investigating this question at the 2014 IATEFL Conference in Harrogate, in a workshop entitled Moving up: B2 and C1 learner profiles.
The use of the word ‘profile’ is significant, as most of the content of my workshop derives from the many years of data-driven research that have been carried out within the English Profile Programme. I’ll be focusing on findings drawn from the English Grammar Profile (EGP) and from my own project, the English Vocabulary Profile (EVP). This interactive online resource is available on free subscription via the main English Profile website; you can sign up here. In the rest of this post, I’ll be taking a brief look at the four important questions I’ll be asking in my workshop.
What language is typically known and used at each CEFR level?
English Profile is a long-term research programme coordinated and supported by its founding partners, Cambridge University Press and Cambridge English Language Assessment. Its main aim is to describe the Common European Framework of Reference – or CEFR, as it is better known – for English. Although the CEFR has helped to set teaching and learning priorities for English across the levels A1 to C2, the fact that it is ‘language-neutral’ means that it does not describe the actual language that attaches to each of its six levels.
To fill this gap, and develop reliable ‘Reference Level Descriptors’ that will describe the actual language used at each level, all English Profile researchers painstakingly analyse the empirical evidence of large text corpora: the 55-million word Cambridge Learner Corpus and the 1.2 billion word Cambridge English Corpus for first-language use. This will enable us to arrive at a set of practical resources for materials writers and for teachers wanting to cover level-appropriate language in the classroom.
What ‘new’ grammar do I need to teach at B2 and C1?
In my workshop, we’ll be exploring at which CEFR level tenses and structures are commonly introduced. The examples chosen will include the future perfect simple for assumptions about the present (interestingly, not how the future perfect traditionally tends to be covered in the ELT classroom), passive reporting clauses with can, and non-defining relative clauses with whose.
As the specificity of these grammar areas suggests, one of the overall messages coming out of the English Grammar Profile research is the need to revisit core grammar points more than once across the CEFR levels, with appropriately increasing challenge and broadening scope of uses. On the English Profile website, you can find some preliminary insights from this research, called the ‘Grammar gems’, where some of the observations of the EGP research team are outlined.
How can I develop my students’ vocabulary beyond B2?
It is obvious to most practising teachers that there is a considerable amount of useful vocabulary that can be given to learners beyond the basic concrete topic sets. The English Vocabulary Profile has looked in depth at these areas of vocabulary development: frequent words in English with multiple meanings – for example, the verbs make, take and keep, and nouns like thing and way – phrases and collocations, phrasal verbs, idioms, and word families. We’ll be considering two of these rich and powerful aspects of vocabulary teaching, phrases and word families, in the workshop, with practical suggestions on how to incorporate them meaningfully into a syllabus.
As an example, think about these phrases and decide in what contexts they would be useful to students: all things considered, and all that, all along. At which CEFR level do you think they are known and used? You could check this by visiting the English Vocabulary Profile online.