A2 English reading
Nine classic tales, each one too long to finish in a single sitting. Free A2 English reading practice in the original texts, with a comprehension quiz on every tale.
Every shelf below this one gives you a story you can start and finish while the kettle boils. That is the right size for a beginner, and it hides one thing you will need later: nothing has to be remembered. A fable is over before you could forget it.
A book with chapters asks for something different. You put it down on Tuesday and pick it up on Thursday, and it expects you to still know who everybody is and what they want. That is a reading skill, and it is separate from vocabulary: plenty of learners who understand every sentence still lose a book somewhere in the middle of it.
This shelf is where you practise it, before the books arrive. The language stays close to the level below. The length does not.
The original text, every time. These are not graded readers. They are the tales as their writers published them, long out of copyright and hosted by us. Two of them — Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle and Charles Dickens’s The Signal-Man — carry heavier vocabulary than the rest, and are kept deliberately as the top of the rung. If a tale is too much today, the shelf below is not a step backwards.
9 tales, 8 writers
Shortest first. About 59,883 words in all, from 4,688 to 10,192 words each.
Questions
What is A2 English reading?
A2 is the elementary level of the CEFR scale, one step above complete beginner. At A2 you can follow a simple story told in everyday language. What changes on this shelf is not the vocabulary but the length: these nine tales run from about 4,700 to 10,000 words, which is longer than one sitting.
Are these the original texts?
Yes. Every tale here is the complete original text as its writer published it, out of copyright and hosted by readClassicly, not a rewrite or a graded reader. Two of them, Washington Irving and Charles Dickens, sit above A2 on vocabulary even though their plots are simple. They are kept on purpose, because a level that never reaches above itself prepares nobody for the next one.
What should I read before this shelf?
The classic short stories one rung below: fourteen stories by fourteen writers, from about 1,200 to 3,500 words each. That shelf teaches you to hold a writer’s voice. This one teaches you to hold a plot across a break.
Do I need an account?
No. Every tale, every quiz and the tap-to-translate vocabulary are free and open. An account only remembers where you stopped.
Where this shelf sits
This is the third rung. Below it are the classic short stories, which are shorter and end in one sitting; above it is your first book with chapters.
About 55,000 words of reading at this level is where words start repeating often enough to stick. That is a floor rather than a limit: its 1 shelves hold 59,883, and reading all of them is a perfectly good idea.
Your first book with chapters: short books read a chapter at a time: the step that turns a reader of stories into a reader of books. It is open whenever you are ready.
Go up to Your first book with chapters