Writing at A2: Vocabulary and Grammar Control

A2 is the level where most learners first read a whole story on their own. It is also the level where a writer has the least room. This article explains what an A2 reader knows and which public lists describe words and grammar by level. It separates what a reader can follow from what they can produce, and shows where names, cognates and repetition give you room. It ends with a table of A2-friendly choices and one scene of mine written at A2 and again at B1.

What does writing at A2 mean?

Writing at A2 means writing for a reader who knows roughly the most frequent one to two thousand word families and a small set of grammatical structures. Almost every word you use must come from that band, and the sentences must use structures the reader has met. The story does the rest: a familiar setting, a concrete problem and events in order carry the reader past the few words they do not know.

The Council of Europe (2020) describes the A2 reader in two ways that matter to a writer. For overall reading, the A2 reader can understand short, simple texts on familiar matters of a concrete type, in high-frequency everyday language. For reading as a leisure activity, they can understand enough to read short, simple stories involving familiar, concrete situations. Familiar, concrete, short and high-frequency: those four words are your brief.

How many words is that? Milton (2010) reviewed studies that tested learners' vocabulary size against their CEFR level. Learners passing A2-level examinations scored roughly 1,500 to 2,500 on a test of the most frequent 5,000 words. Across several languages, Milton suggests that about 2,000 of those words may be needed to reach A2. The figures are broad and learners vary, so treat 2,000 as a ceiling rather than a floor.

Grammar is narrower still. The British Council and EAQUALS Core Inventory (North, Ortega and Sheehan, 2010) lists the present simple, present continuous, past simple, 'going to', 'can' and basic connectors at A1. At A2 it adds the past continuous, the present perfect, 'will', 'have to', 'should', common phrasal verbs, and the zero and first conditional. The past perfect, the passive, reported speech and the second conditional wait until B1. Grammar by CEFR Level walks through the sequence.

Which reference lists exist, and how to use them

Three public references describe English by CEFR level, and any writer can consult them. None is a rule book.

• The English Vocabulary Profile. Capel (2010) describes how it was built: words and, crucially, individual meanings of words were assigned to levels A1 to B2 using learner writing from the Cambridge Learner Corpus. Its rationale is what learners demonstrably know, not what they ought to know. Search a word and it tells you which of its meanings sit at A1, A2 or higher.
• The English Grammar Profile. O'Keeffe and Mark (2017) describe over 1,200 grammatical competence statements, each mapped to a CEFR level from the same learner corpus.
• The Core Inventory for General English. North, Ortega and Sheehan (2010) list the functions, grammar, discourse markers, vocabulary topics and text types that characterise each level from A1 to C1. It is the easiest of the three to read as a writer.

Use them in this order. Write the story first. Then paste the draft into a vocabulary profiler, or check your word list by hand against the Vocabulary Profile, and mark every word or meaning above A2. Then scan the draft for the structures the Core Inventory places at B1 and above. Each mark is a decision, not an error. How to Write a Story for English Learners sets out the full method.

One warning about meanings. Capel (2010) shows that the same word belongs at different levels depending on its sense. 'Keep' meaning 'have something and not give it back' is A2; 'keep' meaning 'continue doing something' is B1; most of its phrasal verbs are B2. Check the sense, not only the word.

What a reader can follow is more than they can produce

The two Profiles are built from what learners write. A reader can understand more than that. Webb (2008) tested learners' receptive and productive vocabulary with translation tests. Receptive vocabulary was consistently larger than productive vocabulary, and the gap was larger for less frequent words. So a word list drawn from learner output is a cautious guide for reading. If the Vocabulary Profile places a word at A2, an A2 reader almost certainly recognises it.

That gives you a little room above the level, but only a little. Hu and Nation (2000) gave learners a short story with different densities of unknown words and concluded that fiction read without help needs about 98% known words. On a 100-word page, that is two unknown words. Spend them on words the story needs, and make sure the context pays for each one.

A context pays for a word when the reader can work it out without stopping. 'She opened the drawer and took out a small silver key' pays for 'drawer'. 'She looked in the drawer' does not, because a drawer could then be anything.

Names, cognates, repetition and the word they must learn

Four things give you room that the word count does not show.

• Proper names cost nothing. A name is learned on the page where it appears. Use names for people, places, shops and pets instead of descriptions. 'Mr Haddad' is easier than 'the old shopkeeper'.
• Cognates help, and mislead. Capel (2010) found that close cognates lead learners to use a word earlier than average, while false friends lead to errors. If your readers share a first language, a word that looks the same in both is cheap. If they do not, treat it as any other word.
• Repeat on purpose. A story is built from words used again and again. Repeat the key nouns and verbs of your story rather than reaching for variety. Learners do not mind repetition; they mind confusion.
• Show, repeat, use. When the reader must learn a word for the plot to work, show it in a clear context on its first appearance. Repeat it on the same page, and use it a third time before the moment it matters. Let a character say it in dialogue if you can.

Repetition is also how the story teaches. Every word a reader meets several times in clear contexts is a word they may keep. How Many Times Must a Learner Meet a Word? covers the research.

A2-friendly and A2-unfriendly choices

The table sets out the choices that come up most often, with the reference each row was taken from. It is a checklist for the second draft.

The grammar rows come from the Core Inventory's lists for A1, A2 and B1. The English Grammar Profile (O'Keeffe and Mark, 2017) is finer-grained and may place a particular use of a structure lower or higher. What Can an A2 Reader Actually Read? shows the same limits from the reader's side.

The same scene at A2 and at B1

Here is one scene of mine, written twice, with the differences listed underneath.

• Tenses. The A2 version uses the past simple only. The B1 version adds the past perfect ('had almost missed') and the past perfect continuous ('had been saving').
• Sentence length. The A2 sentences average about eight words; the B1 sentences about fifteen, with a relative clause ('who ran the small shop').
• Vocabulary. 'Worn', 'recognised', 'pictured' and 'zipped' become 'old', 'knew', 'thought about' and 'put'.
• Stated or implied. At A2 the text says 'He thought about the new football boots'. At B1 the reader infers the temptation from 'the boots he had been saving for'.
• Repetition. The A2 version repeats 'money', 'wallet', 'shop' and 'bus'. The B1 version can afford 'it' and 'the seat in front of him'.

Notice what did not change. Both versions have the same problem, the same temptation and the same choice at the end. Neither tells the reader what Sami should do. The A2 version is the same story, told in the words its reader owns.

Checking an A2 draft

Five checks, in order, catch most problems in an A2 draft:

1. Count the words outside A2 on each page, ignoring names. More than two per hundred means rewrite that page.
2. Find every past perfect, passive and reported-speech sentence and retell it in the past simple or direct speech.
3. Underline every connector. A paragraph with none is chopped; add 'and', 'but', 'because' or 'so'.
4. Read the dialogue aloud. Each turn should fit in one breath.
5. Give one page to an A2 learner and ask them to retell it. If they can, the level is right.

The word count tells you where the reader will stop. The retelling tells you whether the story worked. How Is a Story Levelled to the CEFR? explains what an editor checks next.

How iRead handles this

iRead accepts original stories from writers, and its editorial team levels each accepted story by CEFR band, from A1 to C2. A2 stories in iRead are short, simple stories on familiar topics with high-frequency vocabulary. Writers are paid for accepted work and credited on the story, and narrators can record a read-along for it with a phone.

Key takeaway

Write the story, check words and senses against a public level list, keep the grammar to A2, and test one page on a real A2 reader.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. Council of Europe (2020). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. Companion volume. Council of Europe Publishing. rm.coe.int/common-european-framework-of-reference-for-languages-learning-teaching/16809ea0d4
2. Capel, A. (2010). A1-B2 vocabulary: Insights and issues arising from the English Profile Wordlists project. English Profile Journal, 1(1), e3. doi.org/10.1017/S2041536210000048
3. O'Keeffe, A., & Mark, G. (2017). The English Grammar Profile of learner competence: Methodology and key findings. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 22(4), 457-489. doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.14086.oke
4. North, B., Ortega, A., & Sheehan, S. (2010). A Core Inventory for General English. British Council / EAQUALS. www.eaquals.org/wp-content/uploads/EAQUALS_British_Council_Core_Curriculum_April2011.pdf
5. Milton, J. (2010). The development of vocabulary breadth across the CEFR levels. In I. Bartning, M. Martin & I. Vedder (Eds.), Communicative proficiency and linguistic development (Eurosla Monographs Series 1, pp. 211-232). www.eurosla.org/monographs/EM01/211-232Milton.pdf
6. Hu, M. H.-C., & Nation, P. (2000). Unknown vocabulary density and reading comprehension. Reading in a Foreign Language, 13(1), 403-430. doi.org/10.64152/10125/66973
7. Webb, S. (2008). Receptive and productive vocabulary sizes of L2 learners. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 30(1), 79-95. doi.org/10.1017/S0272263108080042