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EveryLingua Dictionary
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Chinese reading texts by level

50 texts from 1 to 5, 6 666 words in all, with 185 comprehension questions. Each text shows how much of it is explained in this site’s vocabulary — calculated, not claimed.

1 (10)

2 (10)

3 (10)

4 (10)

5 (10)

5  ·  177 words  ·  1 min

StoryEveryday life

Working from Home

What one office worker gained by working from home, and what she lost.

5  ·  171 words  ·  1 min

StoryEveryday life

The Old Street

An old shopping street, its empty shops and an attempt to revive it.

5  ·  161 words  ·  1 min

StoryEveryday life

What a Library Is For

A town library in an age of screens, seen from its reading room.

5  ·  307 words  ·  3 min

StoryTravel

An Old City by Bicycle

A cycling tour through narrow lanes, an empty plot where a lane used to be and a question with no simple answer.

5  ·  270 words  ·  2 min

StoryWork

The Bookshop

A bank employee gives up a safe job for a small bookshop — and has to find out what a bookshop is still for.

5  ·  251 words  ·  2 min

StoryEveryday life

Letters in a Drawer

After a grandmother’s death, a box of letters shows a love nobody in the family had ever heard spoken.

5  ·  275 words  ·  2 min

DialogueTravel

Planning a Trip Around the Crowds

Two travellers and an agent weigh a famous route against a quiet one — and a long bus ride.

5  ·  222 words  ·  2 min

DialogueWork

The Year-End Talk

A manager and an employee look back at a year: praise, one habit to change and a new responsibility.

5  ·  216 words  ·  2 min

MessageEveryday life

Buy or Rent?

Two friends weigh the parents’ offer of a deposit against the freedom to leave.

5  ·  191 words  ·  2 min

EmailEveryday life

Weekend Volunteers Wanted

The neighbourhood library needs help on Saturdays and Sundays — and says exactly what it asks and what it offers.

Learning words one at a time and practising grammar one point at a time is work on separate parts. A text is the first thing that needs both at once — and the only exercise where nobody tells you which rule is being tested.

What makes a graded text is a number: how much of it you already know at your level. If it is too low, reading turns into looking things up. Here that number is calculated for every text against this site’s vocabulary and shown with the text — together with the level that follows from it, next to the level on the label.

Every text is written for this site. Click a word to look it up without leaving the page.

What is measured here — and what is not

Coverage tells you about this site’s vocabulary, not about the text. If a text stands at 96 %, four words in a hundred are not explained anywhere here; they are then in the glossary next to the text.

The measured level can be below the stated one, and that is intentional. A set of minutes made up of perfectly ordinary words can be a very hard text — what makes it hard is the sentences they sit in. That is why the average sentence length is shown alongside.

Whether a text is good is measured by nobody here. That is for the reader to decide.