The 5 Stages of English Language Proficiency, Explained
You look at a student’s overall score on last year’s summative English language proficiency (ELP) assessment. It tells you the student is “Developing” or “Expanding,” or assigns a level number. But how does that label inform your instruction? On its own, it doesn’t tell you what the student can already do or what to teach next.
The five stages of English language proficiency can serve as a better guidepost. Understanding your student’s stage can inform what to teach next, which scaffolds to use, how to group students, and where to focus your planning. They describe how multilingual learners move from understanding a new language to using it independently for academic work.
What Are the 5 Stages of English Language Proficiency?
The five stages come from research on second language acquisition by Stephen Krashen and Tracy Terrell. They describe how multilingual learners move from understanding a new language (comprehension) to using it independently for academic work (production). Each stage describes typical performance across the four language domains: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The five stages are:
- Preproduction
- Early Production
- Speech Emergence
- Intermediate Fluency
- Advanced Fluency
Let’s look now at how what you know (the student’s assessment score or assigned proficiency level) aligns with a corresponding stage.
How the 5 Stages Map to State Assessment Results
Each state or standards framework names and numbers its levels differently. The table below makes that connection within five common systems: WIDA, California’s ELD Standards, New York State ENL, ELPA21, and Texas ELPS.
| Stage | WIDA | California ELD Standards/ELPAC Levels | New York | ELPA21 | Texas (new ELPS) |
| Preproduction | 1 Entering | Emerging, ELPAC 1 | Entering | Beginning | Preproduction |
| Early Production | 2 Emerging | Emerging to early Expanding, ELPAC 1 to 2 | Emerging | Early Intermediate | Beginning |
| Speech Emergence | 3 Developing | Expanding, ELPAC 2 to 3 | Transitioning | Intermediate | Intermediate |
| Intermediate Fluency | 4 Expanding | Upper Expanding to lower Bridging, ELPAC 3 | Expanding | Early Advanced | High Intermediate |
| Advanced Fluency | 5 Bridging, 6 Reaching | Bridging, ELPAC 4 | Commanding | Advanced | Advanced |
A note on terms: this guide uses stage for the five-part research progression and level for the proficiency level as determined by the summative ELP assessments.
STAGE 1: Preproduction
Students at this stage are building receptive language. They listen closely and absorb sound patterns. They communicate through gestures, drawings, or single English words while they continue to think and reason in their home language. This stage is sometimes called the silent period. The name undersells the work involved, since students are sorting and comprehending a great deal before they speak.
What students can do: point to a labeled diagram, match words to images, copy words and phrases, answer yes or no.
Supports that help: visuals paired with every key term, bilingual glossaries, sentence stems that need only one or two words, and total physical response (TPR) tasks, where students show understanding through movement.
Classroom example: In a science lesson on the water cycle, a student labels a diagram with evaporation and condensation. The student then sorts picture cards into the correct sequence. Explaining the process aloud comes later.
STAGE 2: Early Production
Students begin producing short chunks of language: one- and two-word phrases and memorized expressions. Errors are frequent, and they are a good sign. They show students testing patterns they have started to notice.
What students can do: answer questions with short phrases, complete cloze sentences (sentences with a missing word to fill in), make lists and labels, read simple text with visual support.
Supports that help: explicit instruction in high-frequency academic vocabulary, word banks, and structured partner talk before writing.
Classroom example: In a history lesson, a student completes the frame “The main cause was ______” using a word bank of three options. The student shares the answer with a partner, then writes it down.
STAGE 3: Speech Emergence
Students produce simple sentences and short paragraphs and join classroom conversations. They understand more than they can produce, especially with academic text. Grammatical errors continue as their sentences grow more complex.
What students can do: ask and answer questions in complete sentences, retell a text in order, write a short paragraph with support, follow multi-step oral directions.
Supports that help: paragraph frames, graphic organizers that separate ideas from evidence, and explicit instruction in connecting words.
Classroom example: In an English class comparing two characters, a student fills in a Venn diagram. The student then writes three comparison sentences using signal words such as both, however, and while.
STAGE 4: Intermediate Fluency
Students communicate comfortably in social settings and handle grade-level content with moderate support. The work that remains is academic:
- discipline-specific vocabulary
- complex sentence structures
- the extended writing that content classes require
This is the most often misread. Strong conversational English can make a student seem fully proficient while academic language still needs targeted support.
(Researcher Jim Cummins described this as the difference between Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP). Social language typically develops within about two years, while academic language takes five to seven. For classroom strategies that build academic language, read BICS vs. CALP: What Every Teacher Needs to Know.)
What students can do: take part in academic discussion, write organized multi-paragraph text, read grade-level text with scaffolds, summarize and paraphrase.
Supports that help: instruction in how sentences are built and how ideas connect across a paragraph, models of the target text type, and revision routines focused on precision.
Classroom example: A student writes “the population went up a lot.” With instruction in precise academic language, the sentence becomes “the population increased sharply between 1890 and 1910.”
STAGE 5: Advanced Fluency
Students use English for the full range of academic purposes. They adjust register for audience and task, and they write at a level comparable to English-proficient peers. Support becomes light and targeted to specific tasks. Reclassification conversations usually begin at this stage, and districts weigh multiple measures before deciding.
What students can do: analyze and synthesize across texts, argue a position with evidence, use technical and abstract content-area language, revise independently.
Supports that help: continued attention to nuance, idiom, and each discipline’s writing conventions, plus monitoring after students exit language services.
Classroom example: A student writes a claim-evidence-reasoning paragraph for a science lab report. The student then revises it into a summary written for younger students.
Grouping Students by Proficiency Stage
Proficiency results do the most for your students when they drive grouping. Students at adjacent stages learn well together, which keeps small-group instruction manageable in a mixed-level classroom.
- Stages 1 and 2: heavy visual support and short productive tasks.
- Stage 3 and above, including long-term English learners: work on academic register and extended text.
This rotation works in secondary classrooms:
- Teach one group for 15 to 20 minutes.
- Meanwhile, the other groups complete independent or paired practice on the same language skill.
- Rotate so every group gets teacher-led time.
The shared skill focus holds the class together, and each group gets the support its stage calls for.
(For additional guidance on classroom-tested strategies, including a 45-minute lesson framework for mixed-level classrooms, read Insights from the Webinar: How to Manage a Mixed-Level ELD Classroom, or watch the full webinar recording.)
In Conclusion
A stage label doesn’t teach a lesson by itself, but it tells you where to start: what a student can already do, what support helps them do more, and which peers they’ll learn well alongside. Revisit a student’s stage whenever new assessment data comes in, and let it drive your grouping, your choice of scaffolds, and how much weight you put on academic versus social language.
The five stages won’t replace your judgment about an individual student. What they give you is a better starting point than assessment scores alone.
About Language Tree Online
Language Tree Online provides standards-based English Language Development (ELD) curriculum for multilingual learners in grades 6–12. The comprehensive curriculum includes teacher-led and online resources for all levels:
- Newcomers tier for newly arrived students
- ELD1 for students at proficiency Levels 1 and 2
- ELD2 for students at Level 3, 4, and long-term English learners
Students have ample opportunity to practice listening, speaking, reading, and writing throughout the curriculum.
Ready to find out more?
Our leveled ELD programs are designed for Newcomers/Beginners all the way to students on the verge of re-classification.