What can you do with a C2 level in English?

A C2 level of English is essentially a native level. It allows for reading and writing of any type on any subject, nuanced expression of emotions and opinions, and active participation in any academic or professional setting.

C2 level English skills

The official can-do statements are broken down into smaller chunks for teaching purposes. This more detailed skill breakdown can help you assess your own English level, or help a teacher assess a student’s level. For example, a student at the C2 level in English will be able to do all the things that a student in level C1 can do, and in addition he will be able to:

• Discuss issues related to science and technology, including robots and new inventions.
• Talk about celebrities, celebrity activism and gossip about celebrities.
• Use a variety of techniques for promoting creativity in your speech and writing.
• Discuss financial planning and give and understand advice about personal finance.
• Talk about stress in your life and the lives of friends and colleagues.
• Discuss techniques for doing research on a wide range of topics.

Although progress will depend on the type of course and the individual student, students can expect to reach the C2 level in English with 1000 hours of cumulative instruction.

Skills in detail:

Listening:

• Has no difficulty in understanding any kind of spoken language, whether live or broadcast, delivered at fast native speed.
• Can follow specialised lectures and presentations employing a high degree of colloquialism, regional usage or unfamiliar terminology.

Reading:

• Can understand and interpret critically virtually all forms of the written language including abstract, structurally complex, or highly colloquial literary and non-literary writings.
• Can understand a wide range of long and complex texts, appreciating subtle distinctions of style and implicit as well as explicit meaning.

Speaking:

• Has a good command of idiomatic expressions and colloquialisms with awareness of connotative levels of meaning.
• Can convey finer shades of meaning precisely by using, with reasonable accuracy, a wide range of modification devices.
• Can backtrack and restructure around a difficulty so smoothly the interlocutor is hardly aware of it.
• Can understand any native speaker interlocutor, even on abstract and complex topics of a specialist nature beyond his/her own field, given an opportunity to adjust to a non-standard accent or dialect.
• Can converse comfortably and appropriately, unhampered by any linguistic limitations in conducting a full social and personal life.
• Can hold his/her own in formal discussion of complex issues, putting an articulate and persuasive argument, at no disadvantage to native speakers.
• Can keep up his/her side of the dialogue extremely well, structuring the talk and interacting authoritatively with complete fluency as interviewer or interviewee, at no disadvantage to a native speaker.
• Can produce clear, smoothly flowing well-structured speech with an effective logical structure which helps the recipient to notice and remember significant points.
• Can give clear, smoothly flowing, elaborate and often memorable descriptions.
• Can present a complex topic confidently and articulately to an audience unfamiliar with it, structuring and adapting the talk flexibly to meet the audience’s needs.
• Can handle difficult and even hostile questioning.

Writing:

• Can write clear, smoothly flowing, complex texts in an appropriate and effective style and a logical structure which helps the reader to find significant points.
• Can write clear, smoothly flowing, and fully engrossing stories and descriptions of experience in a style appropriate to the genre adopted.
• Can produce clear, smoothly flowing, complex reports, articles or essays which present a case, or give critical appreciation of proposals or literary works.
• Can provide an appropriate and effective logical structure which helps the reader to find significant points.

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