Novice low – Students have no functional use of the language and are only able to use words commonly used in English, such as food words, adios, hasta la vista, and other terms often used by English speakers.
Novice mid – Students are able to perform limited functions using memorized material. Students can count to 100, say days of week, months of year, name colors, and know a few nouns.
Novice high – Students are able to list words, speak with memorized sentences and questions, and are beginning to show ability to create a bit with the language, although mostly relying on what has been memorized in order to speak.
Intermediate low – Students have enough vocabulary memorized and enough structure learned to be able to create with the language, get through simple survival situations, and ask and answer questions. Mistakes in the language are frequent: agreement of nouns and adjectives, subjects and verbs, incorrect verb endings, and many other common mistakes are made, but the student is able to achieve the objective of being understood and is able to get around using the language. Students can speak in sentences, although verbs are often incorrect.
Intermediate mid – Students are comfortable with using the language to communicate, somewhat fewer mistakes are made in basic grammar, students are able to speak in short paragraphs and narrate in present tense. Students can handle most common survival situations and are able to communicate well with native speakers who are able to understand them fairly easily. Students can use idioms to communicate in past and future time, even though use of actual future and past tenses is sporadic at best.
