English level C1 Advanced (advanced)

The level of professional language proficiency that graduates of linguistic and philological faculties can boast of is the level of English C1 Advanced. This penultimate step can be compared with the wings spread behind the back. Having confidently overcome B2 and mastered C1, you can seamlessly integrate into the English-speaking society and not feel discomfort.

Advanced language gives a sense of freedom and comfort. You take off over the passed blocks like tense agreement, modal verbs and soar, enjoying the understanding and acquired skills.

The last stage - the Proficiency - is needed only for those who plan to engage in scientific activities, defend a dissertation in the UK or the USA and publish research results. For doing business, getting an education, successful employment, building family and business relationships, the C1 level is more than enough.

Let's figure out what you need to know and be able to tick Advanced.

What does English C1 mean?

Advanced means fluent communication with English speakers and understanding of 95% of the information in any form. Knowing English at this level, you can pass international exams for 8 - IELTS and 120 - TOEFL. Training takes, as a rule, from 6 to 9 months from the level of Upper-Intermediate to C1.

You can teach English to others and feel quite confident as a teacher. Take the level test to find out how professionally you know the subject and whether you are ready for this specialty.

Advanced Skills and Requirements

Those craftsmen who got to C1 can:

• express your thoughts on any topic without prior preparation and continue a competent dialogue for 8 or more minutes.
• use highly specialized terms, complex grammatical constructions, many synonyms, phraseological units and suitable examples from life, social networks, books or the media.
• speak naturally and beautifully, without bombast or awkward pauses.
• read New Yorker, The Guardian, New York Times, watch shows like Master Chef, Myth Busters, America's Next Top Model without subtitles and even understand the emotions of the characters.
• ask a question or understand a phrase in a conversation with a native speaker, because their fast speech is no longer an insurmountable obstacle, and the number of unknown words tends to zero.
• read without tension any literary genre, whether it be fiction, non-fiction, technical, popular science or psychological literature, using a dictionary no more than 1-2 times per page.
• after working with any kind of material, draw fundamental conclusions using such techniques as comparison, analogy, movement from the general to the particular.
• write stylistically correctly in compliance with the rules of punctuation and the use of vivid antonyms and synonyms.
• do not stumble over grammatical complexities and do not make mistakes in the rules.

Let's delve into the skills of people who boast C1.

Advanced Grammar

First of all, the highlight of C1 is the easy and unconstrained use of any grammatical constructions mixed up. In addition, you need:

• Understanding the passive voice (causative form).
• Recognizing nuances of tenses use depending on the implicit meaning.
• Knowing future indicators such as will, be going to, shall, would.
• Mastery of modal verbs and their equivalent variations: can and could, may and might, will and would, must, do not need to, need not and do not have to, ought to and should, dare and need, had better, etc.
• Confident use of other modal verbs : have succeeded in, be required to, manage to, be prepared to, have refused to, it follows that.
• Knowledge of modal verbs with Participle I and Participle II.
• Awareness of attributive forms in English and their types.
• Using counted and uncounted nouns, knowing exceptions to the rules.
• Stylistic techniques for the use of the definite, indefinite, and null article.
• Knowing the positions of adjectives and adverbs in a sentence: quite, rather, already, yet, still, even, only, etc.
• Understanding the place of prepositions in phrasal verbs and expressions.
• Right using of a substitute in a sentence.
• Recognizing whether and if.
• Reported speech.
• Clauses and linking words.
• Mastery of adverbs
• Conditional, wishes, unreal past.
• Emphatic structures and inversion.
• Pronouns and determines.
• Questions and short answers.

At the same time, all topics A1, A2, B1, B2 should also be studied up and down.

What does colloquial C1 mean?

Firstly, operating 5000-6000 words is the peak that only the most enduring and stubborn get to. It is with such a number of words and phrases that advanced knowledge of English is noted. Secondly, the number of topics that you can digest has exceeded a hundred. Let's look at what directions a person who won Advanced can and can reveal:

• Deep emotions and feelings.
• Life reason and the value system.
• Adulthood, maturity, the crises of 25 and 45.
• Memory, memories, historical events, and transformations.
• Fashion and art, image, and self-expression.
• Life in another country, adaptation, homesickness.
• Gender differences, trends, the emergence of new gender types.
• Types of tourism, changing travel concepts, our reality, and new rules for moving around the world.
• The right to vote, revolutions, democracy.
• The future of humanity and Earth.
• Work and discrimination, taxes, labor laws.
• Modern problems of society and their possible solutions.
• The role of the family in human life, adolescence, the formation of personality.
• Increase in crime, violence, methods of combating.
• Deviant behavior, ghettos, and the impact of education on crime.
• Urbanization and megacities, dystopias.
• Globalization and ecology, ways to save nature and animals.
• Types of escapism.
• Modern art: literature, music, movies.
• Diseases of the twenty-first century.
• Science and high-level technologies.
• Principles of parenting: trends and differences.
• Relationship: division of rights and responsibilities
• Consumer society: prospects.

A person can enter into a discussion on one of these topics and complete it brilliantly, putting the opponent on the linguistic shoulder blades with phraseological units, idioms, concise figurative phrases and sayings. mastered Advanced is equally good at business negotiations, and in conversations with unfamiliar native speakers, and in friendly correspondence, and in hot online holivars, and in small talk by the fireplace.

One of the icing on the C1 cake is the ability to express one idea in several ways. That is, a person can not only speak out, but can do it in the most elegant and complete way possible. It is already important not just to substitute words, but to select the most appropriate in meaning and topic.

Introductory words, connectors, conditional sentences are no longer terra incognita, but a means to achieve the goal - to hit the native speaker on the spot.

Vocabulary at the Advanced level

If you know English at an advanced level, you can easily implement Impersonal sentences, including archaic expressions, such as methinks and me thinkth. In addition, you skillfully insert Cleft Sentences to underline critical information and masterfully use Ellipsis. There are many compound nouns in your vocabulary that you juggle without losing the meaning of the sentence. In your vocabulary, among others, there are such diamonds:

• It strikes me that no one says it right.
• I would like to point out that we need to read the news.
• Overall, it is quite adequate.
• I am inclined to believe that you choose the exact pattern.
• It is my firm belief that the task should be done until Friday.
• On the one hand, we are old friends, but on the other hand, I really like that girl.
• So, weighing up the pros and cons, I cannot stay with you in this house.
• Unquestionably, his attitude will lead him to dangerous difficulties.

Cleft sentences

So-called split sentences are very common among English speakers. Let's look at an example of what you should add to your vocabulary:

• It was my wife who you chatted to on the messenger.
• It was not the young man who talked to my sister.
• It is the mothers who were disagreeing with this law most.
• What I ignore about my mom is her desire to control all around her.
• What happens if we often drink up a bottle of vine.

Impersonal sentences

English grammar does not allow an impersonal sentence to be without a predicate and subject, as, for example, in the Russian version: "Oh, it's hard", so the vocabulary of a person who knows the language in C1 suggests a number of impersonal sentences:

• It is unrealistic to write this article in one evening.
• It is hard for a woman to go through a divorce and be left with two children.
• It is difficult for me to breathe after an intense run.
• It is dangerous to behave that way with strangers.
• It is going to take me a few hours to get through this assignment.

Ellipsis

An ellipsis is understood as a sentence in which there is no subject or predicate, but these words can be restored from the context. Ellipsis is used to speed up and make speech more human. Surely, when watching a movie or show, you have seen things like this:

• jumped up into the car. Said Hello to the cute blonde driver. Took a phone and announced the route.

If we start translating, it will immediately become clear that the person speaks in the first person, tries to quickly get to the point or make the interlocutor smile, so he omits the subject “I”. Because everything is so clear.

This also includes phrases such as Trust me? Mary me? Nice to meet you. see you later. Miss me? understand?

The use of such phrases in the right place and at the right time will make the speaker closer to the native speaker, so do not be afraid to sometimes break the unshakable rules. A perfect textbook conversation inspires disbelief, and confident fluency helps to become one of your own.

What about reading?

Any literature. Any genre. Original. Here is a brief description of advanced reading.

Intermediate academic and technical texts are also within your purview. You can understand The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Atlantic, Bloomberg etc. If the article is "deep economic", then some gaps.

We recommend at this stage to include more varied texts in the reader's diet in order to polish the active vocabulary and understand the everyday vocabulary, like in the back of your hand. For example, you can read about the life of animals, medical pop, historical memoirs or encyclopedias about space.

Reading C1 is not just about reading, understanding and thinking over the places where unknown words are encountered. Ideally, working with a written source after reading involves the following tasks:

• Definition of keywords in the text.
• Brief annotation on the material: 5–10 sentences expressing the main idea, key ideas and thoughts.
• Extended conclusion on the text with a brief description of the content and the main idea.
• An essay with a personal point of view, expressing agreement or disagreement with the author and giving personal examples.
• Oral retelling and personal conclusion based on the material read.

In general, reading is a universal learning tool, so keep reading as intensively as time and energy allow.

C1 Advanced Idioms

What is the brightness of speech without idioms? We have selected for you a starter package for an advanced level. Get rich.

You should have up to 50 such set expressions in stock, not counting phrases similar in meaning.

Expressions in advanced English

We have also collected dozens of advanced expressions that will be useful for conversations with native speakers. Try to understand the meaning without an interpreter.

• In a moment of aberration, she allowed him to take her money.
• It was my old dream, so and I answered "Yes" with alacrity.
• Avarice makes people do awful things.
• Experts have recommended avoiding compatibility in challenging common legal problems.
• Megan rules her husband and children like a true despot.
• Our new teacher has deep empathy for children.
• He punished the hypocrisy of those lawmakers who do one thing and speak another.
• He has been a maverick since he was a kid.
• They face a myriad of obstacles being a family.
• I am a full novice at web development.
• The author managed to convey all the nuances of the mood of the people.
• She has a penchant for healing stray dogs.
• We all have felt the serendipity of important information coming just when we were least anticipating it.
• She took umbrage at my comments about her article.
• The policeman tried to appease the angry crowd.
• Some doctors claim that money has debased medicine.
• She will never forsake her feministic principles.
• His brusque behavior covers all his virtues.
• Offenses have a cumulative effect.
• Her physician was notably diligent in diagnosing.

If some words are unfamiliar to you, this is an occasion to refresh your vocabulary and add new elements to it.

Training

To keep your English at an advanced level, we advise you to follow these simple rules:

• Chat with people who have different accents. Or at least listen to a variety of speech in speeches and try to catch the meaning.
• Work out grammar rules to automatism. This is possible if you do not shy away from daily workouts and arrange a Big Review once a month with the identification of “sagging” zones.
• Keep up to date with world news so that you have something to talk about or correspond with. If you don’t have such a friend yet, then write your personal impressions and opinions about world events in a notebook.
• Find original word sources, such as Telegram channels or product catalogs printed in London. You can also take a blogging trip on the websites of UK marketing agencies. We are sure you will find a lot of interesting things there.
• Come up with 20 scenarios for your future conversations, for which look for an active vocabulary set. Over time, this will definitely come in handy.
• Structure new words according to lists: a business meeting, a discussion of literature, a stormy party.
• Practice understanding and reproducing informal speech. Only a living language will bring you closer to native speakers.
• Try to communicate in English in correspondence or sign up for a conversational course. As a rule, it is cheaper and includes a speaking club where you can support your English communication.
• Form simple habits that will become your way of life: read non-adapted literature in English before bedtime, listen to BBC News, download an English-language word-building game, make friends with a resident of California or London.

As a conclusion

We wish you good luck and perseverance, and assure you onion is worth peeling. So, if small strokes fell great oaks, then you can definitely get to Advanced or stay on it. So break a leg!