Twenty connected B1 episodes across three gripping story arcs. Follow the characters from chapter to chapter while you master everyday conversation phrases, advanced collocations and high-frequency idioms. Click any word — or highlight a phrase — for a live translation in nine languages, then test yourself with a quiz.
Every episode is also available as a fast, printable text page with its vocabulary list and quiz — no app needed.
At B1 a story can carry a plot across twenty connected episodes, which changes what reading does for you. Instead of meeting isolated vocabulary, you follow the same characters, settings and themes, so words and phrases recur naturally and stick without deliberate memorisation.
These episodes are dense with the two things B1 learners most need and most avoid: phrasal verbs and idioms. They appear in dialogue where their meaning is recoverable from context, which is the only reliable way to learn them — a list of phrasal verbs learned cold is forgotten within a fortnight.
B1 is not twenty separate stories but three connected arcs: a design agency mystery in Soho, two friends chasing a stranger's backpack across Vienna, and a granddaughter trying to save her family bakery in Borough Market. Because the characters carry over, the vocabulary does too — you meet the same phrasal verbs and idioms several episodes apart, which is exactly the spacing that makes them stick. Read the arcs in order; within an arc, each episode assumes the one before it.
Read a whole arc across a week rather than an episode a day — six episodes is roughly forty minutes of reading, and the plot does the work of keeping the vocabulary alive between sessions. After each arc, go back to episode one and read it again: you will understand at least a dozen phrases that passed you the first time. The idiom and phrasal-verb sections on each page are the ones to revisit, because those are what separate B1 from A2 in real conversation.
Read episodes in order, one or two per session, and keep a running note of any phrasal verb or idiom you meet twice. Recurrence is the signal that a phrase is worth learning. At the end of each episode, try to summarise what happened in three sentences without looking back — retrieval is what fixes it.
Because repetition happens naturally. The same characters, locations and themes bring the same vocabulary back across episodes, giving you the spaced repetition that vocabulary needs without any flashcard work. It also builds the reading stamina that B1 and B2 exams test directly.
Do not stop to look each one up. Note the ones that recur, work out the meaning from how the characters use them, and only then check. A phrasal verb met three times in a story you cared about is retained far better than one memorised from a list.
It is a substantial part of the preparation, but not all of it. Reading builds the vocabulary, grammar recognition and speed that exams reward. You will still want targeted practice on the specific task types — multiple matching, gapped text — that your exam uses.
Pair your reading with the B1 grammar lessons and the B1 vocabulary lists, or check you are reading at the right level with the free placement test.
