ESL Reading Exercises and Worksheets
Welcome to “Elementary to Pre-Intermediate Reading Comprehension Exercises”, now a multi-media collection of PDFs, videos, listening activities, and reading comprehension exercises designed to engage, inform, and challenge students with topical issues that shape our ever-evolving society. This unique multimedia journey will offer students a window into the fascinating worlds of cultural phenomena, technological advancements, urban development, careers, fashion, and emerging trends.
1 San Francisco – a tale of a city
his is a reading/listening comprehension exercise about a bellwether city, San Francisco. It’s a more advanced reading exercise focusing on social issues related to the development of cities and technology in the 21st century.
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2 The Intern
This is a reading/listening comprehension exercise about a day in the life of an intern and contrasts it with university life.
(download listening/speaking PDF)
(see the video on YouTube) NEW VIDEO!
3 Lipstick
A short history of lipstick. This is a reading/listening exercise which is useful practice for teaching the past tense. It’s also pretty interesting as a history of popular culture.
4 The Influencer
This is reading comprehension exercise about a day in the life of an online influencer.
5 Dall-e: the revolution will be visual!
This is a reading listening comprehension exercise about the new artificial intelligence text to image application Dall-e.
6 Shein: the best, and worst, of fast fashion
The fast fashion industry has become quite topical recently. I think it’s really interesting on many levels. I hope the vocabulary in this exercise is not too difficult but it’s unavoidable with a topic like this.
7 The Experiment
This is a reading exercise about a scientist or researcher conducting an experiment in a lab. It’s great for any kind of medical/science students learning English, but I think it’s good for English language learners generally.
8 The Huggy Wuggy Chronicles (pre-intermediate and up)
The exercises in the PDF below are based on the fascinating story of Huggy Wuggy, the bizarre and adorable monster that has taken the world by storm. This set of exercises explores the world of Huggy Wuggy, focusing on vocabulary, critical thinking, comprehension, and listening. Get ready to dive into a journey of terror, laughter, and cultural phenomena!
9 The History of the T-shirt
The t-shirt is one of those topics that just about everyone can relate to.
10 A day in the life of an online shopper
A fairly elementary reading comprehension exercise about an online shopper.
11 Learning a New Language
Learning a new language has a lot of benefits for the learner.
12 The Digital Classroom
The digital classroom is the classroom of the future. This reading explores some of its impacts.
13 The Weekend Market (with answers)
This is an English language reading comprehension worksheet about a visit to a weekend market. It is an experience that almost every student in the world can relate to and so it’s extremely suitable for an English language class. Click on the link or the image to download the PDF file.
( see the YouTube video of “The Weekend Market”)
14 Air Tags
This is a reading comprehension about Apple’s latest innovation, Air Tags.
Related Resources:
4 Reading Comprehension Exercises for Daily Routines
10 Adjectives Exercises Including Adjectives for People and Things
7 Picture-Based Present Continuous Worksheets (PDF)
8 Preposition Exercises for Location, Time and Movement (PDF)
5 Future Tense Vocabulary and Speaking Exercises
5 Useful Passive Voice Practice worksheets
6 Present Perfect Language and Speaking Worksheets
11 Incredibly Useful Past Tense Simple Teaching Activities (PDF)
8 Preposition Exercises for Location, Time and Movement (PDF)
15 Inventing a mRNA vaccine to save the world
Katalin Kariko and the story of mRNA
This is a reading comprehension exercise about the people who invented a vaccine for the coronavirus.
Inventing an mRNA vaccine (PDF)
16 Online shopping assistant (with answers)
An online shopping assistant takes online orders and walks around a supermarket or department store and collects items to packed and delivered. This exercise is about the daily activities of a supermarket employee in this line of work on the age of the coronavirus.
Online shopping assistant reading comprehension (PDF)
17 Autonomous vehicles reading comprehension (with answers)
The arrival of autonomous vehicles is a topical issue of our times. It’s a great way to to engage in a discussion about the impacts of new technologies.
Autonomous vehicles reading comprehension (PDF)
18 First Day at University (with answers)
I have found that another easy-to-teach topic is a student’s first day at university. This is a an experience that university students can identify with and works smoothly in the classroom.
19 High School vs University (with answers)
This reading exercise focuses on the differences between high school students and university students.
High School vs University (PDF)
20 Christiane Amanpour (with answers)
This reading worksheet is about the journalist Christiane Amanpour.
Related Resources:
10 opinion and argument writing worksheets
8 comparison/contrast templates and exercises
10 cause/effect writing activities
3 kinds of exercises for teaching transitions
6 memorable narrative essay writing practice exercises (PDF)
6 delightful descriptive paragraph and essay writing exercises (PDF)
11 essential exercises for elementary writing students (PDF)
21 What effect has technology had on our lives? (with answers)
This is an English language reading comprehension worksheet about the effects of technology. It is an excellent complement to any lesson focusing on technology and society. It also works well in a class when the teacher is trying to determine students’ knowledge of computing and internet vocabulary. I used it in a class with Thai ICT students and I could quickly asses the different English language abilities of the students.
What effect has technology had on our lives? (PDF)
thanks for sharing
I really appreciate what you did for me ! Thank you ever so much
Very good job
Big effort
Thanks a lot
Good job
Thanks a lot
Thanks. I appreciate any feedback.
Thank You very much for your amazing worksheets
Hi,
Thanks for the comments. I have updated the PDFs and fixed all the mistakes. By the way,
you just have to put a note on the page and I will fix mistakes immediately. This website is just a hobby and it’s demanding being webmaster, and web technician apart from designing and posting the teaching materials. I am a full time teacher toooooo…!!
Thank you for sharing reading comprehension ativities
Thank you so much for sharing. They are really good.
we need more reading comprehension.
Your reading comprehension plus the listening is very interesting, love it. Please include more readings. Really appreciate what you have done. Thank you very much.
Thank you so much for these readings, they’re very interesting!
Thank you very much for sharing .It was really useful to me and once again thanks for your extreme generosity
Thank you very much for sharing .It was really useful to me and once again thanks for your extreme generosity.
Very interseting and helpful
I really appratiate it,
Thank you so much
Very useful study material, specially for ESL students, interesting topics which are useful in our day to day life, making good conversational practices for young ESL learners. Thanks for sharing!