But first of all, what does it mean to be at the intermediate level of English versus the advanced level?

Let's quickly take a look.

If you're at the B1 level, that essentially means that you can understand the main points of basic and common situations.

So that could be subjects related to work, school, leisurely activities.

You can understand them and express them on a basic level.

If you're at the B2 level, you can do the same thing, except you can do it with a wider array of different subjects.

If you want to get up to the C1 level, that means you can understand a wide array of different subjects, and you should be able to understand it and articulate them in a spontaneous manner.

And now with C2, you can understand all of this and articulate it in a spontaneous manner, but you should also be able to have a deep understanding of advanced grammatical rules and advanced literary devices,

such as oxymorons, puns, and advanced idioms, to name a few.

Now, according to experts, the recommended amount of study hours to go from the B1 level of English up to the C2 level of English will probably be somewhere between 500 to 700 hours of studying.

Of course, people can achieve this in less or more time, but this is just to give you a rough idea of what to expect.

If you want to go from B1 to C2, you're going to have to improve your reading, your listening, your writing, your speaking, your grammar, and your vocabulary.

So let's dive into them.

If you're going to want to go from the B1 level to the C2 level of English, you're going to need to read texts about subjects that you are unfamiliar with, things that you don't know very much about.

It's very easy nowadays to find resources to do this.

You can simply go on the internet and search for topics about literally anything.

For example, if you don't read a lot about politics or if you don't read a lot about sports, you can choose either of those subjects and then try your best to understand what is being conveyed based on the context that you're given.

As you're reading these texts that you are a little bit less familiar with, try to use your best judgment.

If you don't understand what a word means or if you do not understand what an expression means, try to guess what it means based on the context that you're provided with.

Do not try to look up every single word you don't understand, or else this can get a little bit frustrating and it will not be very time efficient.

Now, let's look at how to get your listening skills from the intermediate up to the advanced level of English.

First of all, listen to subjects that you are less familiar with, similar to reading, but as you're listening to the subjects that you are less familiar with,

I want you to pay really close attention to advanced words that you're not familiar with and literary devices in English and how they're used.

This involves what we would call "wordplay."

A simple example of this could be an oxymoron, such as, this is terribly good.

Now, terrible means bad and good means good, but in the form of an oxymoron, using this literary device in English, it means that something is very good. It's terribly good. It's very good.

Little things like these are what you really need to pay attention to when you're listening in English.

Another thing that you need to do when you're practicing your listening is make an honest effort to understand all of the different accents of the English language.

Why is this important?

Well, if you ever go to a big city anywhere in the world in an English-speaking country, there are going to be people in that big city from all over the world.

You may encounter someone who is from India and speaks English with an Indian accent.

You may encounter someone from China who speaks English with a Chinese accent.

You want to have a strong enough command for the English language where you can understand people of all different backgrounds.

And finally, when you're listening, pay really close attention to how well-spoken people in the English language apply advanced grammatical rules.

I'll talk more about grammar later in this video.

Let's talk about how to get your writing skills from the intermediate level up to the advanced level.

You need to apply your observations from reading and listening into writing.

A very easy way to do this and to apply your writing skills is by expressing and forming an opinion about what you just watched or what you just read.

As you're expressing and forming your opinion, make an effort to actually try to apply the new vocabulary words and idioms that you've learned when you were reading and when you were listening.

This may seem small, but it's actually really, really important.

If you physically apply the things that you've learned, and if you physically use words that you are unfamiliar with, it will be very difficult to forget after using them enough times.

This somewhat ties in with speaking.

So how can you get from the intermediate to the advanced level of speaking in English?

It's a similar concept to writing.

You really need to physically apply.

You need to physically speak the words and the expressions that you learned when reading and when listening.

But in addition to this, try to use synonyms to the words that you already know and the expressions that you already know to avoid sounding too repetitive.

It's important to note that all advanced speakers of the English language have a wide array of vocabulary.

They do not overuse words such as literally or very.

It's okay to use these words in moderation, but you should not be using them every single sentence that you say or that you write.

Something that will help you with speaking is to find a role model.

Find someone whose style of speech you want to emulate.

From there, you can constantly adopt new words and new expressions that you want to adopt into your own arsenal of English vocabulary that you can use to speak.

Next, let's look at how you can improve your grammar.

Something that is tricky for people learning English as a second language is paying attention to the advanced ways that one can use the past, the present, and the future tenses in the English language.

You really need to pay attention to any conditions that are used, particularly in storytelling, in both spoken and written English.

However, do keep in mind that even native English speakers do not speak with perfect grammar, typically write with perfect grammar either.

To find sources with good English grammar, I would recommend that you use texts that have been published as opposed to interviews and podcasts.

With interviews and podcasts, especially if it's live, people are going to make mistakes.

With a published article, an editor has probably proofread the article on several occasions and made sure that the grammar is fairly well-written.

You can use that as a base and then you can apply your observations from there with your writing and with your speaking.

Now, finally, vocabulary.

Now, it's recommended by the experts that you should have at least 5,000 vocabulary words in your arsenal to be at the C2 level of the English language.

However, it's important that you also have a very extensive active vocabulary and not just an extensive passive vocabulary.

If you can understand everything in English, but you can't use everything in English because you've never practiced pronouncing it or expressing yourself enough, then you can't really become a fluent English speaker at the C2 level.

When you learn words, focus on physically using what you learnt and it will be almost impossible to forget if you've used it so many times that you couldn't forget even if you tried.

And those are the six ways to go from the intermediate level of English to the advanced level of English.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out on Instagram and I will respond.

And if you want to test your current level of English, I will leave a link in the pinned comment below for you to take that quiz.

That's all. Until next time.