A1 in one sentence
At A1 you can understand and use familiar everyday expressions and very basic phrases, introduce yourself, ask and answer questions about personal details, and interact simply — provided the other person speaks slowly, clearly, and is willing to help you.
Two clauses in that description do the real work, and both are conditions rather than abilities. "Provided the other person speaks slowly" means A1 comprehension is not robust: the same sentence at natural speed is not understood. "And is willing to help" means the exchange depends on your listener cooperating — repeating, simplifying, filling in the word you are reaching for.
This is not a criticism of the level. It is what makes A1 a real and worthwhile achievement rather than a consolation prize: it is the point at which English stops being a wall of noise and becomes a language in which you can, with goodwill on both sides, get something done.
What you can do at A1 that you could not do before
Descriptors are abstract, so here are four things that become possible at A1 and are genuinely impossible below it. If three of these sound like you, A1 is your level.
Check into a hotel you have already booked
You give your name, hand over a passport, understand a room number and catch that breakfast is at seven. The exchange is short, the vocabulary is predictable and the receptionist is expecting exactly this conversation — which is why it works at A1 and a phone call to the same hotel would not.
Buy lunch without pointing
You read a price, ask for the thing you want, understand the total and say whether you are paying by card. This is the most common first real use of English, and the moment it stops requiring a pointed finger is a level change you can feel.
Fill in a form about yourself
Name, nationality, date of birth, address, occupation. Reading the labels on a form is a distinct skill from listening, and at A1 it is usually the stronger of the two, because the words are fixed, visible and unhurried.
Say who you are in five sentences
Where you are from, what you do, whether you have brothers or sisters, what you like. It comes out slowly and mostly in the present tense, and it works — someone who has just met you now knows something true about you in English.
What A1 does not yet include is worth stating just as plainly: you cannot follow a conversation between two other people, you cannot read a news article, and you cannot handle an unscripted phone call. None of that is a failure at A1. It is the next level.
How long A1 takes to reach
Cambridge English suggests roughly 90–100 guided learning hours to reach A1 from beginner level. It presents this as a guideline rather than a promise, because a learner’s background, study intensity and exposure outside lessons all affect the time required.
Reaching A2 is listed at roughly 180–200 guided learning hours cumulatively. Subtracting the published ranges puts the A1-to-A2 step at about 80–110 hours; that step is our arithmetic, not a separate figure published by Cambridge English.
A guided learning hour, in this system, means an hour of structured, teacher-directed study. It deliberately excludes everything else you do — the podcast on the way to work, the film with subtitles, the vocabulary app on the sofa. That exclusion is why the published figures look small against the number of months learners actually report, and why comparing your own elapsed time against them is the wrong use of them.
Source: Cambridge English, Guided learning hours. Ranges are quoted as published; any step between two levels on this page is stated as a span because it is arithmetic on two ranges, not a figure anyone publishes.
Guided hours count teacher-directed study only. What they leave out, and the four things that stretch or shrink a real learner's total: How long does it take to learn English?
The grammar A1 is built out of
A1 grammar is small, and every piece of it is load-bearing. There is almost nothing here you can leave until later: the verb be, the present simple and the articles are not topics that come up occasionally — they are in every sentence you will produce for the next two levels.
The named structures above are The Verb Be, Present Simple Tense, Indefinite Articles: A and An and Past Simple Tense. In total this site publishes 27 A1 grammar lessons:
- Subject Pronouns
- The Verb Be
- English Word Order
- Possessive Adjectives
- Possessive 's
- Singular and Plural Nouns + There is / There are
- Demonstratives: This, That, These, Those
- The Imperative
- Some and Any: Quantifiers
- Countable and Uncountable Nouns
- Wh- Questions: Question Words
- Questions with Do and Does
- Can and Can't: Ability
- Like, Love and Hate + -ing
- Have got and Has got
- Would Like
- Indefinite Articles: A and An
- Numbers, Dates and Telling the Time
- Present Simple Tense
- Was and Were: Past Simple of Be
- There was and There were
- Past Simple Tense
- Present Continuous Tense
- Present Simple vs Present Continuous
- Adjectives
- Adjectives vs Adverbs of Manner
- Conjunctions
Each of these has a full written lesson with rules, examples, the mistakes beginners actually make, and a quiz. Working through them in the order they are listed is the order they are taught in, which is not alphabetical and not accidental.
The full index, in teaching order, is on the A1 grammar hub.
A1 vocabulary: how many words
A1 is usually described as a vocabulary of around 500 to 600 words. Our own A1 lists carry 300 words across 15 everyday topics — Food & Drink, Family & People and Numbers & Time among them — each with a definition, British pronunciation, an example sentence and one-tap flashcards. That is deliberately fewer than the outer estimates, because at this level a word you can actually produce is worth five you have merely seen.
Browse all 15 of them on the A1 vocabulary hub.
A1 against the exams
A1 is largely below the range the major international exams are designed to measure. That is not a gap in the exams — it is what they are for. Reporting it plainly is more useful than filling the row with a number.
| CEFR level | IELTS band | TOEFL iBT (1–6) | TOEFL iBT (0–120) | Cambridge exam | Cambridge Scale | Duolingo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A1 · Beginner | not reported | 1 – 1.5 | 0 – 23 | A1 Movers (young learners) | 100 – 119 | 10 – 55 |
| A2 · Elementary | 3.0 – 4.0 | 2 – 2.5 | 24 – 43 | A2 Key | 120 – 139 | 10 – 55 |
These alignments are approximate, and every organisation that publishes one says so. The CEFR describes what a learner can do; an exam score summarises how one person performed on one test on one day. The two do not convert, they correspond — bands overlap at the edges, different exams disagree by half a level, and an institution’s own published requirement always outranks any comparison chart, including this one.
- A1: IELTS is not built to measure this far down the scale, and a sitting at A1 would not tell you anything you did not already know.
- A1: The Duolingo English Test reports the bottom of its scale as one A1–A2 band and does not separate the two.
The practical reading of this row: do not sit an international exam at A1. It will cost money and tell you something you already know. A free level check is the right instrument at this stage.
The full chart, with all six levels and the reasoning behind each column, is on the CEFR to IELTS, TOEFL and Cambridge comparison page.
How to tell whether you are at A1
The clearest test is not a grammar question. It is this: can you have a two-minute conversation with a stranger who is trying to help you? If the answer is yes, and it collapses the moment they stop trying, you are at A1.
The second signal is what happens when you meet a sentence you do not understand. Below A1, nothing in it is recognisable. At A1, you catch two or three words and can sometimes guess the rest from the situation. That partial grip is the level.
- You recognise more English than you can produce, by a very wide margin.
- You can read a simple sign, menu or form faster than you can follow the same words spoken.
- You answer questions about yourself, but rarely ask one back.
- Numbers, dates and times are still slow, even though you know them.
What comes after A1
A2 is where the past tense arrives properly, and with it the ability to tell someone what happened rather than only what is happening. It is also where English starts working in situations nobody has prepared for you: a pharmacy, a delayed train, a message to a colleague.
The route from here is not more A1. It is finishing A1 — all of it, including the pieces that feel boring — and then starting A2 with the past simple and the present perfect.
Read what the next rung involves: A2 — Elementary.