"Range" means "options"

Okay. Irrespective of how many times I've addressed this issue over the past few months, I still think that I haven't stressed it enough, but let me repeat it yet again. Breaking down the barrier that separates the intermediate and the advanced levels is no easy task. I get that. It depends on multiple elusive factors that seem to be irrelevant to most learners, but not to a teacher. And, of course, one of those factors is range. Yes... range, also known as, versatility.

Whenever we discuss people, for example, we tend to go down the easy road: "she is laid-back". Okay. "She is...". Nothing wrong with that, except it's far too simple and, let's face, from a grammatical point view, it doesn't really matter if you say "She's tall" or "She's obstreperous". Yes. Tall is A1 material. Obstreperous, though, is more unusual, but at the end of the day the structure is the same, isn't it?

A speaker shows range when they are able to successfully depart from the obvious structure (in this case she is) and use a whole different set of strategies. Consider these options:

• An adjective: she's perky
• A noun: he's a slacker
• An adjective + a noun: she's a glib politician
• An idiom: she has a reputation for being a loose cannon
• A phrase verb: he creeps me out
• A full sentence: he has been a loyal friend through thick and thin

If you use all of those, your description will not be boring or robotic. Remember that students at the intermediate level tend to describe people by rattling off lists of adjectives (She's smart, tall, dark-skinned and French), which is neither realistic nor particularly interesting.

As a sophisticated speaker, you're expected to resort to more varied strategies. So, be ready to ask yourself if you can choose between two similar options as in these cases:

In short, remember that having only one option is never a good sign. You can (and should) do better than that.

Collocations and structure

There are numberless reasons why a particular sentence might be considered to be indicative of an advanced level of English. Sometimes it's the sheer sophistication of the vocabulary. On other occasions it's the structure that makes the difference. Finally there's the old "web of factors" that somehow paints a picture of complexity which is impossible to achieve with the toolkit you get at the intermediate level. Today I'd like to share two sentences that illustrate some of those factors. The first one is the kind of sentence in which collocations are key:

At the very least the Bohemian Club is an opportunity for the world's movers and shakers to forge connections, build insider ties and spread policy information well away from the eyes and ears of the citizens whose interests they claim to represent.

If you pay close attention to it you will soon realize that the structure is quite simple. It actually mirrors the skeleton of this other less ambitious sentence:

In fact, this group is great for meeting people away from your parents

That's why I believe that the key to the first sentence is not really the structure but those nice collocations, which, of course, follow the time-honored "rule of three":  to forge/connections, to build/ties, to spread/information. If you are not impressed just imagine an Indonesian learner of Spanish saying something like this: Por lo menos, aquellas reuniones me permitieron entablar conversaciones, establecer contactos y forjar amistades. Come on, admit it. Wouldn't you be impressed?

The sentence below, though, represents a completely different type of "advanced sentence":

[Boris] Johnson agreed that Northern Ireland would remain subject to EU market rules and to erect a trade border down the Irish Sea to police them, angering pro-British unionists who object to Northern Ireland being treated differently than the rest of the United Kingdom

Yes. There are three interesting collocations (erect-border/ police-rules / anger-unionists), but I would argue that it's the words marked in bold type that really hold the sentence together and allowed the author to expand an otherwise simple sequence. Not the lexical input. So, there you go. You may display your advanced command of the language by resorting to many different strategies. Challenge yourself and don't settle for the B2 approach. That's the only way to break down the glass barrier that prevents you from entering C1 heaven.