A1
A1 · Beginner Stories
Tap a story to read it in full and collect its key vocabulary. Each highlighted word is chosen to grow with your level.
Vocabulary Hub · Learn with Stories
Read your way to a richer vocabulary
Choose your CEFR level. Every story is hand-levelled so you absorb new words naturally, exactly where they belong in real, modern English.
A1
A1 · Beginner
Ten everyday-life stories with live word translation and a comprehension quiz in each.
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A2
A2 · Elementary
Detailed real-life stories — interviews, travel and health — with live translation and a quiz in each.
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B1
B1 · Intermediate
A serialised, binge-worthy drama — 20 connected episodes across 3 story arcs, packed with idioms and phrasal verbs.
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B2
B2 · Upper-Intermediate
A long-form novel — 20 immersive 500–1000-word chapters across 4 acts, rich in idioms, collocations and advanced grammar.
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Prefer word lists? Study the vocabulary directly
Stories teach words in context; these level-by-topic lists let you review them fast. 5,500 words from A1 to C1 — each with pronunciation, an example sentence and flashcards.
Four tracks, four different reading experiences
The four levels here are not the same material rewritten at four difficulties. Each track uses the format that suits the level, because what a beginner needs from a story and what an upper-intermediate reader needs from one are different things. Read the descriptions below before you choose — the format matters as much as the difficulty.
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A1 · twenty standalone stories
Short, self-contained scenes from everyday life — a morning, a shop, a bus journey. Nothing carries over between them, so you can read in any order and stop whenever you like. Deliberately repetitive: the same high-frequency words recur across stories, which is how the A1 core gets automatic.
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A2 · twenty longer real-life stories
The same standalone format with more happening in each — job interviews, travel plans, a visit to the doctor. Sentences link together rather than sitting side by side, so this is where you meet the connectors and past forms that turn a list of events into a narrative.
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B1 · a serialised drama in three arcs
Twenty connected episodes with recurring characters, written to be read in order. Serialisation is the point: wanting to know what happens next is what gets you to episode ten, and by then you have met the same idioms and phrasal verbs enough times for them to stop being vocabulary and start being language.
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B2 · a novel in twenty chapters
Four acts, 500 to 1,000 words a chapter, with the kind of sustained plot and character work that requires you to hold information across chapters. Rich in collocation, register shift and implication — the things B2 is actually assessed on, and the things a short text has no room to demonstrate.
Which track should you start with?
Pick by comfort, not by ambition. Open the first story of the level below the one you think you need and read a paragraph: if you get through it without stopping, move up; if you are reaching for a translation more than about once every fifty words, drop down. Reading slightly below your level is close to harmless and reading well above it stalls almost everyone, so when you are between two levels, take the lower one and read twice as much.
The other thing worth knowing before you commit is the shape of the journey. A1 and A2 are browsable — dip in, read one, come back next week. B1 and B2 are commitments, because a serial and a novel only reward you if you keep going. If your English time is unpredictable, start at A2 even if you could manage B1, and switch to the drama once you have a routine that survives a busy week. If you would rather not guess at all, the free placement test gives you a CEFR level in about twenty-five minutes.
What happens inside a story
Every story on every track carries the same three tools, and they exist to keep you reading rather than to give you something else to do. Tap any word and its translation appears inline, in your language, without leaving the page — the point being that you never lose your place, because stopping to open a dictionary is what breaks the flow that makes reading work. Key words are marked in each story: not every unfamiliar word, but the ones worth keeping at that level, and any of them saves to your flashcard deck in one tap. A comprehension quiz closes each story, and it is worth doing even when you are sure you understood, because answering questions forces you to retrieve what you read instead of merely recognising it.
What none of these tools can do is give you the repetition. A word met once in one story is a word you will not have next month. The reading itself is the mechanism — the same vocabulary coming back in a slightly different sentence, five stories later, until it stops needing translation. That is why the tracks are twenty stories long rather than five.
Questions readers ask
Do I have to read the stories in order?
At A1 and A2, no — each of the twenty stories stands alone, so you can read them in any order or skip the ones that do not interest you. At B1 and B2 the answer changes: the B1 track is a serialised drama whose twenty episodes run across three connected arcs, and the B2 track is a single novel in twenty chapters. Those two are written to be read from the beginning, because the characters and situations carry over.
How do I know which level to read?
Open a story one level below where you think you are and read the first paragraph. If you understand it without stopping, move up. If you are looking up more than about one word in fifty, move down — that is roughly the point at which a text stops being learnable from context and becomes translation practice. If you would rather not guess, the free placement test gives you a CEFR result in about twenty-five minutes.
What happens when I tap a word in a story?
The translation appears inline, in your own language, without leaving the page or losing your place. Each story also carries a set of key words chosen to be the ones worth keeping, and any of them can be saved to your flashcard deck in one tap. Keeping the reading unbroken is deliberate: stopping to open a dictionary is what breaks the flow that makes reading work in the first place.
Is there a comprehension quiz after each story?
Yes. Every story ends with a short comprehension quiz, and it is worth doing even when you are confident. Answering questions forces you to retrieve what you read rather than simply recognise it, and that act of retrieval is what moves the vocabulary from something you understood once into something you can use.
How long does each story take to read?
An A1 story takes about three to five minutes, an A2 story five to eight, a B1 episode roughly ten, and a B2 chapter of 500 to 1,000 words around fifteen. Re-reading a story you have already finished is time well spent — the second pass costs half as long and is where much of the vocabulary actually settles.
Are the stories free to read?
Yes. All eighty stories across the four levels are free, with no account required to read them, tap for translation or take the quizzes. Creating a free account only adds the optional extras: saving key words to your own flashcard deck and keeping your place across devices.
Read more about learning this way
If you want the reasoning behind graded reading rather than the practicalities, two longer articles cover it: why word lists fail and what graded reading does instead, and a level-by-level guide to short stories for beginners. For the word lists themselves, the vocabulary library holds the same words sorted by topic.