English Profile

A long-running research programme that produces reference-level descriptions (RLDs) of English for the CEFR, specifying which words, phrases, and grammatical features learners typically control at each of the six levels. Founding partners are the University of Cambridge (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge English Language Assessment, the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics), CRELLA at the University of Bedfordshire, the British Council, and English UK. Its public outputs and tools live at englishprofile.org.

Background

When the Council of Europe consolidated the Threshold–Waystage–Vantage trio into the CEFR in 2001, the framework deliberately stopped short of language-specific content: it described what users can do, not which English they use to do it. Reference-level descriptions were proposed to fill that gap on a language-by-language basis. English Profile is the English-language project in that wider effort, validated by the Council of Europe and built on the Cambridge Learner Corpus — an annotated collection of more than 250,000 anonymised exam scripts across CEFR levels — together with the wider Cambridge English Corpus.

Components

The two flagship resources are the English Vocabulary Profile (EVP) and the English Grammar Profile (EGP). EVP is a searchable database of words, phrases, phrasal verbs, idioms, and individual senses, each tagged with the CEFR level at which learners typically use it productively, with corpus examples. EGP catalogues grammatical features — structures and functions — by the level at which learners reliably produce them, also drawing on the Cambridge Learner Corpus. Both resources separate British and American English where evidence diverges.

Use in ELT

EVP and EGP feed directly into syllabus scoping, Coursebook writing, item development for Cambridge English exams, and Materials Development more generally. Publishers tag readers and graded materials by EVP level; teacher-trainers use EGP to scope grammar progressions; researchers cite both in CEFR-alignment studies. The English Profile Journal, published by Cambridge University Press, hosts the underlying research, and the volume English Profile in Practice (Harrison & Barker, 2015) collects case studies of classroom and publishing applications.

References

• English Profile Programme: englishprofile.org
• Harrison, J., & Barker, F. (Eds.). (2015). English Profile in Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• English Profile Journal (Cambridge University Press, 2010–).