| Reading Skills | Level | Your Performance |
| Reading | Low(0-14) | Test takers who receive a score at the LOW level, as you did, typically understand some of the information presented in academic texts in English that require a wide range of reading abilities, but their understanding is limited.
Test takers who receive a score at the LOW level typically
- have a command of basic academic vocabulary, but their understanding of less common vocabulary is inconsistent;
- have limited ability to understand and connect information, have difficulty recognizing paraphrases of text information, and often rely on particular words and phrases rather than a complete understanding of the text;
- have difficulty identifying the author's purpose, except when that purpose is explicitly stated in the text or easy to infer from the text; and
- can sometimes recognize major ideas from a text when the information is clearly presented, memorable, or illustrated by examples but have difficulty doing so when the text is more demanding.
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| Listening Skills | Level | Your Performance |
| Listening | Low(0-13) | Test takers who receive a score at the LOW level, as you did, typically understand the main idea and some important details of conversations. However, test takers at the low level may have difficulty understanding lectures and conversations in English that involve abstract or complex ideas and recognizing the relationship between those ideas. Test takers at this level also may not understand sections of lectures and conversations that contain difficult vocabulary or complex grammatical structures.
Test takers at the LOW level typically can
- understand main ideas when they are stated explicitly or marked as important but may have difficulty understanding main ideas if they are not stated explicitly;
- understand important details when they are stated explicitly or marked as important but may have difficulty understanding details if they are not repeated or clearly marked as important, or if they are conveyed over several exchanges among different speakers;
- understand ways that speakers use language to emphasize a point or to indicate agreement or disagreement, but generally only when the information is related to a central theme or is clearly marked as important; and
- make connections between the key ideas in a conversation, particularly if the ideas are related to a central theme or are repeated.
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| Speaking Skills | Level | Your Performance |
| Speaking about familiar topics | Fair(2.5 - 3.0) | Your responses indicate you are able to speak in English about your personal experiences and opinions in a mostly clear and coherent manner. Your speech is mostly clear with only occasional errors. Grammar and vocabulary are somewhat limited and include some errors. At times, the limitations prevent you from elaborating fully on your ideas, but they do not seriously interfere with overall communication.
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| Speaking about campus situations | Limited(1.5 - 2.0) | Your responses indicate that you have some difficulty speaking in English about information from conversations, newspaper articles, university publications, and so on. While you are able to talk about some of the key information from these sources, limited grammar and vocabulary may prevent you from fully expressing your ideas. Problems with pronunciation make it difficult for listeners to understand you at times.
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| Speaking about academic course content | Fair(2.5 - 3.0) | Your responses demonstrate that you are able to speak in English about academic reading and lecture material, with only minor communication problems. For the most part, your speech is clear and easy to understand. However, some problems with pronunciation and intonation may occasionally cause difficulty for the listener. Your use of grammar and vocabulary is adequate to talk about the topics, but some ideas are not fully developed or are inaccurate.
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| Writing Skills | Level | Your Performance |
| Writing based on reading and listening | Limited(1.0 - 2.0) | Your response was judged as limited due to
- failure to understand the lecture or reading passage;
- deficiencies in relating the lecture to the reading passage; and/or
- many grammatical errors and/or very unclear expressions and sentence structures.
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| Writing based on knowledge and experience | Limited(1.0 - 2.0) | You attempted to express your opinion, but your response indicates notable deficiencies such as
- your response contains insufficient detail;
- your ideas and your connections of ideas are difficult to understand because of many grammatical errors and/or very unclear expressions and sentence structure; and/or
- your response is only marginally related to the question that was asked.
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