Who Teaches to ILR 4—and Who Actually Needs to Learn at That Level?
Most conversations about foreign language learning stop at “fluency.” It’s a soft, stretchy word—comfortable for marketing, vague enough to mean anything from ordering dinner to debating constitutional law. But there is a level beyond fluency, one that few people talk about and even fewer ever reach: ILR Level 4 , the realm of near‑native proficiency. This level is not about speaking well. It’s about thinking in the language with the same flexibility, nuance, and cultural intuition that you use in your first language. It’s the ability to read between the lines, to catch the joke before it’s explained, to shift registers without conscious effort, to navigate ambiguity without slowing down. It’s the level where the language stops being a tool and becomes a cognitive habitat. So who teaches to this level—and who actually needs to learn it? Who Teaches to ILR 4? (Almost No One) Reaching ILR 4 requires a very specific kind of teaching, and the truth is that most language progra...