A2 English Vocabulary List, Elementary CEFR Words

A2 is where beginners become elementary speakers. Daily routines, preferences, past events, and simple plans.

Roughly 6–12 months of study.

About A2

A2 doubles your A1 vocabulary to around 1,000 words and shifts the focus from surviving to handling familiar situations. You add daily routines, simple past-tense narration ("I went, I saw, I bought"), shopping and travel vocabulary, descriptions of feelings, and words for talking about plans and preferences. Phrasal verbs start showing up regularly: get up, look for, find out, give back.

Who this list is for

If you can describe your day, talk about last weekend in simple sentences, and order food without panic, you're around A2. Most learners reach A2 after 6–12 months of consistent study. This is the level where short conversations with strangers become possible, even if you still avoid abstract topics.

How to study

A2 is where many learners plateau because the early novelty wears off. The fix is to start consuming real input: news in simplified English, beginner podcasts, kids' books. Keep a 5–10 word/day spaced-repetition habit, but also start collecting words from what you read and watch. Words you meet in context stick faster than words from a list.

The list (1311 words)

Some example sentences come from the Tatoeba Project (tatoeba.org), CC BY 2.0 FR. The rest were written for MindDory. Tatoeba, CC BY 2.0 FR.

Where do the words after this list come from?

A list has an end. The words you keep for good usually turn up somewhere else — in a page you read, a show you watched, or a conversation you had — one at a time, and rarely at the level you planned for.

MindDory connects to Claude, Cursor, and other assistants that speak the Model Context Protocol, so a word you meet while you are chatting is saved to your deck as a flashcard without you leaving the conversation. There is no copy and paste, no CSV export, and no browser extension.

How the assistant connection works

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