Levels of English

These language guidelines represent a rigorous grading system unique to Penguin Readers. The guidelines for each grading level are based on the language which a learner at that level is likely to have studied in class or be able to understand from the context and illustrations. The Series Editors have used many resources to develop the guidelines:

• The British National Corpus (BNC) — a 100-million word collection of samples of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources
• The 2,000-word Longman Defining Vocabulary which is used in all Pearson Longman dictionaries
• The Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR)
• An analysis of vocabulary and grammar taught in modern, widely-used English Language Teaching textbooks