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Are you a pre-intermediate (CEFR level A2) learner of English? Practise and improve your reading skills with these texts and exercises.

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7 tips for a tidy desk

Read the tips for keeping your desk tidy and then do the exercises to practise and improve your reading skills.

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A restaurant menu

Look at the menu and do the exercises to practise and improve your reading skills.

A train timetable

Look at the train ticket and timetable and do the exercises to practise and improve your reading skills.

About the Earth

Look at the quiz and answer the questions to practise and improve your reading skills.

Are you a good digital citizen?

Do the quiz to find out if you're a good digital citizen and then do the exercises to practise and improve your reading skills. 

Films and entertainment

Look at the magazine article and do the exercises to practise and improve your reading skills.

Finding a job

Look at the job adverts and do the exercises to practise and improve your reading skills.

Look at the adverts for things to do when going out and do the exercises to practise your reading skills.

Read the text about mind maps and then do the exercises to practise and improve your reading skills.

Look at the flyer and do the exercises to practise and improve your reading skills.

Look at the text and do the exercises to practise and improve your reading skills.

On the internet

Look at the website and do the exercises to practise and improve your reading skills.

Online safety poster

Read the poster and do the exercises to learn how to stay safe online and to practise your reading skills. 

Shopping signs and notices

Look at the advertisement and do the exercises to practise and improve your reading skills.

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Introduction to letters with beginning sound of words

200 exercises where you put the words in the correct order

Easy reading with interactive audio to help you understand.

Read words, put them in order, listen to audio to check.

Do this quiz on prepositions of place

Read and listen to the text and look for words in context.

Read and listening to passage, then complete exercises, look for words in context

A bank of stories based on topics to click through and read.

Rading with phonics. Interactive presentations, videos, and comprehension quizzes

Select a reading strategy, listen, watch, and read about the strategy

A2 Key Exam Guide: Multiple Matching

Reading & writing paper, how to approach, assessment focus, how it looks, student suggestion, practice exercises.

Context: This section is a part of the A2 Key Reading & Writing paper, designed to test reading comprehension through matching.

Task: Students are required to read seven questions and three short texts on the same topic. The task is to match each question to the correct text.

Objective: The goal is to locate specific information quickly and understand detail by reading carefully.

Scoring & Marks: The seven questions are worth seven points, so one point for each. There are 60 points available for the whole Reading & Writing paper.

• Understand the Questions: Start by reading each question carefully to know what information is needed.
• Read the Texts: Quickly skim through the texts to find relevant parts for each question.
• Detail Reading: Once a potential match is found, read that part of the text carefully to confirm it answers the question.
• Check All Options: Make sure to review all texts as more than one text could potentially answer the question. Choose the best match.
• Final Review: Before finalising the answers, review them to ensure accuracy and best fit.

This section assesses the ability to quickly locate specific information in texts and comprehend details accurately.

• Practise reading different types of texts to get familiar with various styles and topics.
• Develop quick reading skills to find relevant information efficiently.
• Pay attention to the specific details in texts to answer questions accurately.
• Train to discern between similar pieces of information to make the best match.
• Learn to make quick notes while reading the texts. This can help you quickly refer back to specific information without re-reading the entire text.

"Practising with various types of texts, especially focusing on quickly finding key information, really helped me in this section. It's all about matching the right information fast." - Carlos Rodriguez

We have a page on the site to practise: Real World Reading Multiple Matching Exercises

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Key reading & writing.

The Cambridge English: Key Reading and Writing paper has 7 parts and 32 questions. You get one mark for each correct answer in parts 1-5, and a maximum of 15 marks each for parts 6 and 7.

Reading and Writing are taken together - 60 minutes

• Reading part 1: understanding messages
• Reading part 2: three texts with questions
• Reading part 3: long text with multiple choice questions
• Reading part 4: text with multiple choice gaps
• Reading part 5: text with gaps
• Writing part 1: write a message
• Writing part 2: write a story based on pictures

Scoring The Reading part has 30 questions and there are two writing parts.

How to prepare for KET Reading and Writing

• Read the instructions carefully before you start each section.
• Take your time and don't hurry. There is plenty of time to answer all the questions.
• Study these vocabulary topics .
• Study grammar at A2 level.
• Study more reading exercises at A2 level.

Practice tests

• Part 1: short messages
• Part 2: text matching
• Part 3: text with multiple choice
• Part 4: text with m/c gaps
• Part 5: text with gaps
• Part 6: write an email
• Part 7: write picture story
• Reading and writing, test 2

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Cambridge A2 Key (KET): Reading and Writing Part 2

Reading and Writing Part 2

In this article, I’m going to show you everything you need to know about A2 Key Reading and Writing Part 2. You will learn what a typical task looks like, what common problems are and how to do the task in the best way so you get through it quickly and with a lot of marks.

If all of that sounds good to you, just keep reading.

What do you have to do in Part 2?

3-option multiple matching : You have to read seven questions and three texts and you must match the questions to the texts.

You can see that there are seven questions (7-13) and the three possible answers A, B and C. The letters represent the three texts below.

At the top, you can find the topic of the three texts (“Young blog writers”) and the three short texts about different people.

In Reading and Writing Part 2, you have to show that you can find specific information quickly but also find detail by reading the texts more carefully.

Also, you have to transfer all your answers onto an extra piece of paper that you get at the beginning of the test so don’t forget about that.

What is difficult about Part 2?

In A2 Key Reading and Writing Part 2, there are a few problems that I can often see with my own students. I want to share these problems with you so you won’t make the same mistakes.

Don’t get confused

In this part of the exam, you have to be very careful because the texts which you need to read are very similar so it is very easy to get confused.

Make sure to read the texts slowly enough to find the differences between the texts instead of choosing the first text with information that matches the question. All three texts might talk about a question, but you have to find the perfect match.

Time management

One of the biggest problems in Reading and Writing Part 2 is definitely timing. Many candidates run out of time because you only get 60 minutes to complete seven different tasks and you have to transfer all your answers onto the extra answer sheet. That gives you only around eight minutes to do each task – not a lot of time if you ask me.

Part 2 is one of the longer reading tasks because you read three different shorter texts so you need to be extra careful with your timing, but in the following section you will learn how to manage your time well in the Reading and Writing paper.

Tips and strategies for Reading and Writing Part 2

After we’ve looked at some of the problems that many students and candidates experience when they prepare for the exam, it is now time to learn how you can go through Reading and Writing Part 2 the right way.

We will start with some general tips and after that, I’m going to show you step by step how to do this part of A2 Key.

General tips

One of the best things you can do if you want to prepare for the A2 Key exam is to read regularly. You can start with only five minutes every day and if you enjoy it, you can do a little bit more. Simply choose a topic that you are interested in, for example, sports, music, fashion or films – there is no limit. Look for something like a magazine with lots of pictures so it is easier for you and do it.

After some time, you will see that it gets easier and easier, your vocabulary improves and you enjoy English even more.

Another good idea is to look for English classes near you. You don’t have to find a school with Cambridge preparation classes, but if you do, it’s even better. Classes can help you because you work with other people that want to improve their English just like you and you have a teacher who can help you with your questions.

Follow a plan

If you want to get a good result in A2 Key, you should know exactly what to do in the different tasks. I always tell my students to create a plan for each activity. This way, you know the next step even if you are nervous or running out of time. It can help you calm down and feel more relaxed, save time and get higher marks.

For Reading and Writing Part 2, a good plan looks like this:

Analyse the questions

• Go through the texts one by one

Double-check your answers

Now, let’s look at the different steps in detail.

The first thing you should do is to look at the questions because it is necessary to know what you need to look for in the text. Read the questions carefully and underline the most important words.

Here you can see the example questions from before with the keywords underlined. Sometimes you have to underline almost the whole questions, but sometimes just a few words are enough.

Remember to focus on the words that tell you what exactly you have to look for in the texts.

Go through the texts on by one

The next step is to match the texts to the questions. Many candidates make a big mistakes here because they try to do the task question by question. The problem with this strategy is that you have to read the texts many times until you get all the matches right.

Instead, start with the first text and check which questions you can answer. Then, move to the second text and lastly, to the third one. This can save you a lot of time and make it much easier.

Here is an example for you.

I had a look at the first text about Tasha and found information that connects this text to two of the questions – number 9 and 13.

In the blue part, she says that she likes ‘giving advice’, which means that she likes helping people and in the green section, she says that writing for a magazine (other type of writing) was more difficult than writing a good blog.

Repeat this step with the other texts and you will see that you can go through Reading and Writing Part 2 quickly and easily.

When you finish the task, go through your answers one last time and check if everything makes sense. We sometimes focus so much on the details that we don’t see the correct information.

So, always double-check your answers before you move on to the next task.

In this article, you have learned what a typical task in A2 Key Reading and Writing Part 2 looks like, what the biggest problems are and how you can do the task as quickly and effectively as possible.

Now, you should start practising. Go online and look for example tasks or take classes to meet other people who want to take the exam as well.

I hope this article will help you with your preparation.

Lots of love,

Teacher Phill 🙂

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Listening Practice Through Dictation with Transcripts

English Reading Exercises for A2 – A painless operation

English Reading Exercises for A2

1. Complete the table.

1 bleed   2 burn   3 cut   4 sprain   5 injure   6 broken

2. Complete the sentences with the words below.

bruise      fell over      hurt      hurts      pain      slipped

1   I’ve got a big black ……………………….. where I banged my arm.

2   I’ve got a ……………………….. in my shoulder.

3   My finger ………………………..

4   Joe ……………………….. himself when he was playing football.

5   My mum ……………………….. on the ice and ………………………..

1 bruise   2 pain   3 hurts   4 hurt   5 slipped, fell over

3. Read the text. Are the sentences true (T) or false (F)?

1   Lenkei took about half an hour to hypnotise himself.

2   Lenkei didn’t speak during the operation.

3   All the operations were successful.

It didn’t hurt!

In 2008, Alex Lenkei had a problem with the bone in his arm and he needed a serious operation. Normally, with an operation like that, the doctor gives the patient an anaesthetic so that he or she doesn’t feel any pain. But Lenkei refused the anaesthetic. Instead, he hypnotised himself and simply told himself that he could not feel any pain. That took about thirty seconds. Then the operation started. According to Mr Lenkei, pain signals do not reach his brain when he is hypnotised.

The doctor, David Llewellyn-Clerk, was a bit worried. He had to take some bone from Lenkei’s arm. He watched Lenkei carefully during the operation, as he wasn’t sure that Lenkei could feel no pain. ‘I didn’t think Mr Lenkei could hear us,’ said Dr Llewellyn-Clerk, ‘but half way through the operation, he said “How’s it going?”’ That’s when the doctor realised that Lenkei was not in pain. The operation lasted 83 minutes.

Mr Lenkei started hypnotising people when he was sixteen and is now an expert. It wasn’t his first operation without anaesthetic. In 1996, a friend hypnotised him before a thirty-minute operation on his stomach. Both operations were successful, so Lenkei had a third operation without anaesthetic in 2013,

1 F   2 F   3 T

Reading Strategy

When you do a matching task, follow these steps:

1    Read the text to get a general idea of the meaning. Do not worry if you do not understand every word.

2    Read the task and all the options carefully.

3    Read the paragraphs of the text carefully one by one and match them to the correct option.

4    Check that the extra options do not match any of the paragraphs.

4. Read the Reading Strategy. Then match the questions below with paragraphs 1-3 of the text. There is one extra question.

In which paragraph does the writer tell us …

A    when the first operation happened?

B    why Lenkei needed an operation on his arm?

C    what Lenkei did just before the operation on his arm?

D    on what part of his body the third operation was?

E    when Doctor Llewellyn-Check realised that Lenkei was not in pain?

F    when Lenkei first hypnotised someone?

G    what happens to pain signals in his body while he is hypnotised?

H    when Lenkei had his second operation?

I    how long the operation on his arm took?

J   what the doctor did to Lenkei’s arm during the operation?

A 3   B 1   C 1   D 3   E 2   F 3   G 1   H 3   I 2   J 2

Extra exercises

Read the text all the way through first so that you get a good general understanding before you try to answer the questions.

1. Read the Strategy. Then read the text in exercise 2. Choose the best summary (a-c).

a   The text describes what teenagers believe makes them happy.

b   The text gives tips for teenagers about different ways to be happy.

c   The text gives some information about how young people feel.

1 B    2 C    3 C

2. Read the text again. Circle the correct answer: True (T), False (F) or Doesn’t say (DS).

Happiness is … ? Your survey says …

So you’re between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. What makes you happy? There have been lots of surveys about teenagers and happiness and they all come to different conclusions. Some surveys say that most young people are happiest when they spend time with their family. Others say it’s when they’re with friends. Some teenagers think that getting good marks at school and passing exams makes them happy and others feel that it’s having a boyfriend or girlfriend that improves their lives. The problem is that there isn’t just one thing that makes everyone happy. Happiness is something different for each of us, and what made us happy last week might not make us happy next week!

However, there are some things that can help improve our mood when we’re feeling unhappy. Experts believe that exercise can make you a happier person – but how? Exercise releases chemicals in your brain that are related to a feeling of pleasure. Many people who exercise say that the more exercise they do, the more they want to do. Now we know why! In addition to this, exercise is also good for our physical health. So, if we know that we’re doing something healthy, that should make us even happier!

There’s another surprising idea to help make us happier. Although you might think that eating chocolate is bad for you, it seems that it is good to eat chocolate when we’re feeling sad. According to some research, experts say that eating chocolate can make us feel happy. Of course it isn’t healthy to eat too much, but chocolate releases chemicals in the same way that exercise does – and for some people it’s easier and quicker than running several kilometres or working out in the gym!

It’s also important to remember that we can’t all be happy all the time. There are times in our lives when things are going well and we feel good. But we can also we happy for brief moments and we should value these as well. For example, perhaps you’re sitting on a beach watching the sun on the water, with friends around you, and you feel happy. Remember that moment! Or maybe your dog does something silly that makes you laugh. Remember it! And when you feel sad, go for a run or eat some chocolate – you’ll soon cheer up!

1   The surveys show that teenagers and parents have different ideas about happiness.   T   F   DS

2   The things that make us happy never change.    T   F   DS

3   The surveys show that teenagers who do exercise are happier.   T   F   DS

4   When we feel depressed it’s good to do something active.   T   F   DS

5   Exercise and eating chocolate can produce similar results.   T   F   DS

6   It’s important to value even short moments of happiness.   T   F   DS

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English Texts for Beginners

English texts for beginners to practice reading and comprehension online and for free. Practicing your comprehension of written English will both improve your vocabulary and understanding of grammar and word order. The texts below are designed to help you develop while giving you an instant evaluation of your progress.

Prepared by experienced English teachers, the texts, articles and conversations are brief and appropriate to your level of proficiency. Take the multiple-choice quiz following each text, and you'll get the results immediately. You will feel both challenged and accomplished! You can even download (as PDF) and print the texts and exercises. It's enjoyable, fun and free. Good luck!

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