The English Grammar Profile allows us to see how learners develop competence in grammatical form and meaning, as well as pragmatic appropriateness, as they move up the CEFR levels. This provides us with typical, world-wide grammar profiles for each level.
Like vocabulary, grammatical forms often have more than one meaning. For example, the modal verb 'may' can be used with various meanings at different levels. The EGP teases apart these meanings, and tells us at which level we see learners of English using them correctly and appropriately - here's a sample of the results for 'may':
Weak possibility: "The weather may be hot."
Formal permission: "May I borrow your bike?"
'May well': "You may well find that this is not the case."
'May as well': "We may as well go home."
Watch Mike McCarthy's introduction to the EGP below, originally featured on Cambridge English Teacher:
How to access the EGP
The EGP is available as a free, online resource. See our EGP Demo for a quick tour of the resource. Please note that the Terms Of Use for this resource do not allow other organisations to promote commercial materials as “English Profile informed” without written permission from the English Profile core network members.
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If you have any comments about the English Grammar Profile, please let us know by contacting us.
