English readings — Engineering
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.
Designing against cheating
Soon after the first version reached real users, a problem emerged that no one on the team had anticipated.…
Writing a README that people read
A README is the front door of a project. Judges, teachers and strangers on the internet decide in about a…
The engineer who asked why twice
A pump in a factory kept failing. The maintenance team replaced it four times in two years, each replacement…
The bridge that swayed
When the Millennium Bridge in London opened in June 2000, around ninety thousand people crossed it on the…
The last two per cent
Anyone who has built something will recognise the shape of the problem. The system works. It handles the…
The silt behind the dam
A dam is designed around water. The thing that eventually defeats many dams is silt. Every river carries…
The building that breathes
An office in Harare was built without air conditioning in a climate where air conditioning is normal. It uses…
The invisible repair
A bridge that has never failed receives no praise. A bridge that fails and is rebuilt produces headlines, a…
The house that faces south
In the northern hemisphere, a window facing south receives sun for most of the day. A window facing north…
The bridge that was overbuilt
A footbridge designed for a crowd load it has never carried has stood for sixty years with almost no…
The switch that had to be ugly
The emergency stop on an industrial machine is a large red mushroom that must be struck rather than pressed,…
The tolerance that cost a week
Every part of an assembly passed inspection. The assembly did not fit, and nobody had made a mistake. A…
The pump that ran at night
A water utility cut its electricity bill by a fifth without reducing the amount of water it moved. It changed…
Engineering for the worst classroom
Most software is designed in the condition where it works best: a new laptop, fast internet, a quiet room,…