Reading Exercises

These pages contain reading exercises on various topics that you can choose according to your interests. Each exercise includes a reading, pre-reading vocabulary, comprehension and vocab quizzes, and suggested questions for discussion and essay-writing. Learners can use these exercises for self-study, while teachers will also find them useful material for classroom-based lessons. 
Four reading exercises for learners who are passionate about the environment, with topics including endangered species, pollution and eco-communities. If you care about the earth, but find it difficult to express your opinions and concerns in English, these pages will help you.
Four reading exercises for learners who are passionate about the environment, with topics including endangered species, pollution and eco-communities. If you care about the earth, but find it difficult to express your opinions and concerns in English, these pages will help you.

Movies Vocabulary

Movies can be divided into several different genres. There are exciting action movies with gun fights and car chases, and horror movies that make us jump in our seats. There are comedies that make us laugh, and dramas that make us cry. Sci-fi movies show us what the future might be like, historical films tell us stories from the past, and documentaries show us real people and events.

After watching a movie, you might want to ask questions like:

• "Which character did you like the best?"
• "What did you think of the plot?"
• "Did you like the cast?"
• "What was your favourite scene?"
• 
  

Everyday English in Conversation

Does it happen to you that sometimes you feel frustrated because you find yourself unable to express yourself clearly and yet when you hear native speakers, you feel that it is so simple and easy?  In this section, we will focus on learning idiomatic and everyday expressions to help us deal with daily conversational situations. 

Now, surf into Everyday English in Conversation!!!

On tenterhooks

enterhooks aren't directly connected with tents, nor are they the hooks used by butchers, as the common misspelling 'tenderhooks' might suggest. A tenter is a wooden frame, often in the form of a line of fencing, used to hang woollen or linen cloth to prevent it from shrinking as it dries. The tenterhooks are, not surprisingly, the hooks on the tenter used to hold the cloth in place.

Tenters are no longer everyday objects but a hundred years ago, in wool weaving areas like the North of England, they were a common sight on the land around the many woollen mills, called 'tenter-fields'. It is easy to see how the figurative expression 'on tenterhooks', with its meaning of painful tension, derived from the 'tenting' or stretching of fabric. The expression was originally 'on the tenters'. The English West Country playright John Ford was the first to record that expression in the play Broken Heart, 1633:

Passion, O, be contained. My very heart strings Are on the Tenters.

Towards the end of the century the more accurate 'on the tenterhooks' began to replace the earlier phrase. This first example that I have found of it in print is in the 1690 edition of a periodical that was published annually between 1688 and 1693, The General History of Europe:

The mischief is, they will not meet again these two years, so that all business must hang upon the tenterhooks till then.

Hell has no fury like a woman scorned

As you'll answer it, take heed
This Slave commit no Violence upon
Himself. I've been deceiv'd. The Publick Safety
Requires he should be more confin'd; and none,
No not the Princes self, permitted to
Confer with him. I'll quit you to the King.
Vile and ingrate! too late thou shalt repent
The base Injustice thou hast done my Love:
Yes, thou shalt know, spite of thy past Distress,
And all those Ills which thou so long hast mourn'd;
Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd,
Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd.

The last words of Humphrey Bogart

Bogart was a long term heavy drinker and smoker and was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus in 1956, although he had probably been suffering with the condition for some time before but had refused to see a doctor.

His last words are widely reported to be "I should never have switched from Scotch to Martinis". This is certainly a false attribution. The line first appeared in a source that was unconnected with Bogart, the novel What Are the Bugles Blowing For?, which was written by Nicolas Freeling and published in 1975. It was later attributed to Bogart, apparently for no better reason than it sounded like something that he might have said. Other collections of obituaries list his last words as "Goodbye, Spence". This has somewhat more validity as it was actually spoken by Bogart, to Spencer Tracy, the night before his death. Tracy had visited Bogart in hospital and on leaving had said "Goodnight, Bogie", to which Bogart relied "Goodbye, Spence". Tracy reported this as Bogart's way of communicating that he knew his end was near.

Humphrey Bogart's actual last words, "Goodbye Kid. Hurry back", were spoken to his wife Lauren Bacall. She left his hospital bedside briefly to pick up their children. He was comatose when she returned shortly afterwards and never regained consciousness.

161 Phrases 'Coined in the US

No country has a closer association with the language of Olde Englande than the USA. From the days of the first Puritan settlers to recent cross-Atlantic tweetings, the two countries have shared in the development of English. Many words and phrases used in the USA have retained Elizabethan English meanings and pronounciations that have long disappeared in the Mother Country. Of course, there are many American phrases which are used there but haven't been adopted outside the country; for example, 'blue plate special', 'lead-pipe cinch' and 'presto chango' are widely understood in the US, but would procure puzzled looks in other English-speaking countries.

Here's our list of (some of) the many English phrases are were 'coined in the USA' and now used around the world.

Silence is golden

As with many proverbs, the origin of this phrase is obscured by the mists of time. There are reports of versions of it dating back to Ancient Egypt. The first example of it in English is from the poet Thomas Carlyle, who translated the phrase from German in Sartor Resartus, 1831, in which a character expounds at length on the virtues of silence:
"Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule. Not William the Silent only, but all the considerable men I have known, and the most undiplomatic and unstrategic of these, forbore to babble of what they were creating and projecting. Nay, in thy own mean perplexities, do thou thyself but hold thy tongue for one day: on the morrow, how much clearer are thy purposes and duties; what wreck and rubbish have those mute workmen within thee swept away, when intrusive noises were shut out! Speech is too often not, as the Frenchman defined it, the art of concealing Thought; but of quite stifling and suspending Thought, so that there is none to conceal. Speech too is great, but not the greatest. As the Swiss Inscription says: Sprecfien ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden (Speech is silvern, Silence is golden); or as I might rather express it: Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity."That fuller version - 'speech is silver; silence is golden', is still sometimes used, although the shorter form is now more common.

The same thought is expressed in a 16th century proverb, now defunct - as many present-day feminists would prefer it:

"Silence is a woman's best garment."

Silence has in fact long been considered laudable in religious circles. The 14th century author Richard Rolle of Hampole, in The psalter; or psalms of David, 1340:

Sleep tight

Sleep tight' is a very well-used phrase in many parts of the English-speaking world. It's common at bedtime in the form of the rhyme "good night, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite".

There are many meanings of the word 'tight' and it's no surprise that there are several theories going the rounds as to the origin of 'sleep tight'. One is that the phrase dates from the days when mattresses were supported by ropes which needed to be pulled tight to provide a well-sprung bed. This was the notion that was put forward on a 2008 BBC antiques show, when the presenter lay on an oak settle to demonstrate the support provided by the understringing and to confidently pronounce "hence the expression 'night, night, sleep tight'". This explanation seems unlikely, as it is the bed rather than its occupant that is tight and no one (in my experience) ever wishes furniture a good night's sleep. He would have had more luck had he opted to say that 'settle down to sleep' derives from 'settle' or 'seat' - which it does.  
The phrase 'sleep tight' itself was common in the late 20th century, and there could hardly have been a better way of cementing any phrase into the popular consciousness than by Lennon and McCartney using it in the lyrics of a song at the height of Beatlemania. That's where it found itself, in Good Night on the White Album in 1968:

Now it's time to say good night,
Good night. Sleep tight.

'Sleep tight' didn't derive from either bedcoverings or ancient furniture and, in fact, isn't a very old expression at all. The first citation of it that I can find is from 1866. In her diary Through Some Eventful Years, Susan Bradford Eppes included:

By hook or by crook

'Hook' is a word with many meanings and as a consequence it appears in numerous English phrases - 'get one's hooks into', 'hook, line and sinker', 'on/off the hook', 'sling your hook' and, most notably, 'by hook or by crook'. That last phrase is one of the holy grails of etymology; many people are sure they know the derivation but, in truth, the origin is rather obscure. We can be sure that it is a very old phrase and that it was in general use by the late 14th century.
There may be examples of a form of the expression in the writings of John Wyclif from around 1380, but scholars aren't sure of their date. The first substantiated citation is from John Gower'sConfessio Amantis, 1390. :

What with hepe and what with croke they [false Witness and Perjury] make her maister ofte winne.

Gower didn't use the modern 'by hook or by crook' version of the phrase, but it is clear that he was using the reference to hooks and crooks in the same sense that we do now.

The earliest example of the modern usage of the phrase that I can find is in Philip Stubbes'The Anatomie of Abuses, 1583:

Either by hooke or crooke, by night or day.

As is my habit when the origin of a phrase is uncertain, I'll present the most commonly suggested theories and leave the rest to you:
Suggestion number one is that 'by hook or by crook' derives from the custom in mediaeval England of allowing peasants to take from royal forests whatever deadwood they could pull down with a shepherd's crook or cut with a reaper's billhook. This feudal custom was recorded in the 1820s by the English rural campaigner William Cobbett, although the custom itself long predates that reference. 

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush

By how long the phrase predates Ray's publication isn't clear, as variants of it were known for centuries before 1670. The earliest English version of the proverb is from the Bible and was translated into English in Wycliffe's version in 1382, although Latin texts have it from the 13th century:

Ecclesiastes IX - A living dog is better than a dead lion.

Alternatives that explicitly mention birds in hand come later. The earliest of these is in Hugh Rhodes' The Boke of Nurture or Schoole of Good Maners, circa 1530:

"A byrd in hand - is worth ten flye at large."

John Heywood, the 16th century collector of proverbs, recorded another version in his ambitiously titled A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the prouerbes in the Englishe tongue, 1546:

"Better one byrde in hande than ten in the wood."

The expression fits well into the catalogue of English proverbs, which are often warnings, especially warnings about hubris or risk-taking. Some of the better known examples that warn against getting carried away by some exciting new prospect are: 'All that glitters is not gold', 'Fools rush in where angels fear to tread', 'Look before you leap', 'Marry in haste, repent at leisure', 'The best-laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley'.
The Bird in Hand was adopted as a pub name in England in the Middle Ages and many with this name still survive.

English migrants to America took the expression with them and 'bird in hand' must have been known there by 1734 as this was the year in which a small town in Pennsylvania was founded with that name.

Other languages and cultures have their own version of this proverb, notably the Czech 'Lepsi vrabec v hrsti nez holub na strese' (A sparrow in the fist is better than a pigeon on the roof.).

Gordon Bennett!

The elder James Gordon Bennett was born in Banffshire, Scotland in 1795 and emigrated to the USA, eventually becoming a journalist and founding the New York Herald in 1835. Bennett had a natural talent for journalism and the paper flourished. An editorial in Harper's at the time expressed the opinion that "It is impossible any longer to deny that the [city's] chief newspaper is the New York Herald". Other rivals, while accepting Bennett's nose for a story, weren't impressed with what they saw as his 'gutter press' methods. In 1836, in a pre-cursor to the chequebook/kiss-and-tell journalism now so popular with tabloid newspapers, he published a notice offering to reward any woman who "will set a trap for a Presbyterian parson, and catch one of them flagrante delicito [sic]". He was unblushing in what was then seen as improper descriptions of his relationship with his wife - describing her 'most magnificent' figure and publishing details of their wedding and the birth of James Gordon Bennett junior in 1841.

James Gordon Bennett Jr. inherited his father's talents for journalism and controversy, not to mention his multi-million dollar estate - and he's the Gordon Bennett that the phrase refers to. He took over control of the New York Herald in 1866, by which time he was well into an enthusiastic and hedonist playboy lifestyle, indulging in spending the family fortune on air and road racing in the USA, England and France.

He was a significant promoter and patron of sports, especially those requiring impressive and expensive equipment, for example international motor racing, ballooning and air racing. He gave several sponsorships in these fields, notably the Isle of Man Bennett Trophy races of 1900 to 1905 (subsequently a trials course on the island was named after him). A long-distance hot-air balloon race (The International Gordon Bennett balloon race), which still continues, was inaugurated by him in 1906.

Bennett was also a chip off the old block, not unlike many wealthy people of his era, in that he wasn't especially concerned by people's opinion of his behaviour. He has the unenviable record, as bestowed by the Guinness Book of World Records, of the 'Greatest Engagement Faux Pas', for the manner in which his engagement to the socialite Caroline May was broken off in 1877. The engagement was big news in New York society circles. The Edwardsville Intelligencer, reported it in November 1876:

"The trousseau of Miss May, who is to marry James Gordon Bennett, has arrived from Europe, where it was collected at an expense of $20,000, according to gossips. It is said to be the most elaborate and beautiful ever prepared for an American lady."

It is reported that at the 1877 New Year's party held by his fiancee's father, he became so drunk that he mistook the fireplace for a toilet and urinated in it in front of his hosts and their guests. Whether or not that story is true is now difficult to verify. It is certainly the case that the marriage didn't go ahead and that the Mays weren't best pleased with Bennett - as this piece from The Perry Chief, January 1877, indicates:

"James Gordon Bennett was publicly horse-whipped this morning, by Frederick May, brother of the girl to whom Bennett was engaged to be married."

He took to his heels and travelled to England, ending up in Melton Mowbray. Perhaps he had heard of the town's paint the town red story and thought he would be at home there? Even the thick-skinned Bennett had the wind taken out of his sails by these events and he remained single until he was 73, when he married the Baroness de Reuter.

There are many other stories listing his excessive and occasionally boorish exploits. These didn't stop him being an successful and innovative journalist though. He invested heavily in developing on his father's news empire. In 1868, with the simple brief of 'find Livingstone' he sent the travelling correspondent of the New York Herald - Henry Morton Stanley, to track down and interview David Livingstone in Africa. After a long search Stanley was ready to give up but was encouraged by Bennett which, when he eventually located his prey on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, resulted in what has become one of the most famous of all journalistic lines - "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"

From 1877 Bennett lived in Europe and continued to run the New York Herald from his $600,000 314-foot yacht, the Lysistrata. He died in 1918.

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater

What is unusual about this phrase is that, quite by chance, the mischievous author of 'Life in the 1500s' hit on a correct date - the proverb did originate in the 1500s. 'Throw the baby out with the bathwater' is a German proverb and the earliest printed reference to it, in Thomas Murner’s satirical workNarrenbeschwörung (Appeal to Fools), dates from 1512. Murner wrote in German of course, but we hardly need a translator as he was good enough to include a woodcut illustrating the proverb. The expression was part of everyday German language from then onward (as 'Schüttet das Kind mit dem Bade aus') but didn't emerge in English until the 19th century. The Scottish philosopher and German scholar Thomas Carlyle was well acquainted with German proverbs and translated it in an essay denouncing slavery entitled Occasional Discourse on the Nigger Question (written in 1849 and published in 1853):

And if true, it is important for us, in reference to this Negro Question and some others. The Germans say, “you must empty-out the bathing-tub, but not the baby along with it.” Fling-out your dirty water with all zeal, and set it careering down the kennels; but try if you can to keep the little child!

Despite going against the establishment view on slavery that was held in his day, Carlyle wasn't quite the freedom fighter we might imagine. His analogy compared the dirty bathwater to slavery (to be discarded) and the 'little child' to the useful service provided by the slave (to be kept). He suggested that "the Black gentleman is born to be a servant and is useful in God's creation only as a servant". What he in fact proposed was that servants should be hired for life and given payment, not kept as slaves.

The proverb, in the form of 'do not empty out the baby with the bath water', was in general use in English from the late 19th century onward.

Guide to Reading for English Learners

Do you want to become a better reader? Many English learners have this goal in mind. This guide to reading can help you.

In this guide you will learn about: reading and why it matters; reading materials for English language learners; typical tasks found in English-language reading tests; general reading tips to become a stronger reader; where you can find reading materials; reading strategies for better comprehension; and common reading categories to choose from. You can also look at the reading glossary for any words about reading that you don't understand.

Why Reading is Importatnt?

If you really want to improve your English abilities, begin by improving your reading comprehension. By improving your reading comprehension, you will also improve your writing and speaking abilities. It is a proven fact that people who read a lot write better, have a more developed vocabulary and speak with greater fluency than people who don't read much.

One of the questions most often asked by students learning English as a second language is, What's the best way to learn English? The answer to that question is simple. Read, read, read. Of course, the material you read must be written in English. Another tip that will improve your reading comprehension and overall language skills is to read aloud. While you are reading aloud, record your voice with a tape recorder. Then, listen to your recording while rereading the passage you just read and recorded. By recording and listening to your voice, you will soon get used to hearing yourself speak English. When you are used to hearing yourself speak English, English will become more natural to you. This will make it easier for you to speak English. For more advice on improving your English, read the selection in the left menu entitled Reading Strategies

There are several reading selections for you to choose from listed in the menu to the left. Some of the selections have quizzes, so you can test your understanding. I hope to have quizzes for all the selections soon, so check