English readings — Culture
300 original readings written by the FitForm team, graded B1 → C2 and sorted by topic. Reading is free and needs no account; exercises, vocabulary review and essay marking need a FitForm login.
The language of sport
English is full of expressions borrowed from sport, and people use them without noticing. Learning them is…
The grammar of politeness
English learners often master tenses and still sound rude, because politeness in English is carried less by…
The invisible work of translation
A good translation is noticed only when it fails. The reader meets a sentence that limps, looks up, and…
The song that everyone knows
Every culture has songs that nobody remembers learning. You did not sit down to study them. They arrived…
The last speaker
A language is declared extinct when its last fluent speaker dies. Linguists estimate that this happens…
The museum of ordinary things
Museums are full of gold and weapons because gold and weapons survive. Wooden tools rot, cloth decays, food…
The language of the kitchen
English food words carry a history that most speakers never notice. Cow, pig, sheep and deer are the animals.…
The translation that chose
A translator meets a sentence with two possible readings and must pick one. The original keeps both. The…
The second language that came back
A woman who had not spoken her first language since childhood began lessons again at sixty. Within three…
The festival that was invented
A village festival described as centuries old was designed in 1954 by a committee of four people, and the…
The recipe that changed countries
A dish sold in three cities under three names has one ancestor and three different claims of ownership, all…
The subtitle that chose a word
A character in a film says four syllables. The subtitle reads 'I understand'. A different subtitler, working…