English readings — Geography
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.
Where your food comes from
A plate of rice, vegetables and fish looks local, and much of it is. But the inputs behind it travel further…
What makes a city walkable
Planners have a word for how easy it is to get around on foot: walkability. It sounds vague, but it can be…
Why maps lie
Every flat map of the world is wrong. This is not carelessness; it is geometry. A sphere cannot be flattened…
What a map leaves out
Every map is a lie, and a useful one. The surface of a sphere cannot be laid flat without stretching…
The river that moved
Rivers look permanent on a map. On the ground they are among the least permanent things in a landscape. A…
The shadow on the well
Around 240 BCE a librarian in Alexandria measured the size of the Earth using a stick, a well and some…
The arable land that moved uphill
Maps of where crops grow are usually treated as fixed features of a country. Over a human lifetime they move,…
The wind that built a city
Why are so many old cities on the eastern side of their rivers, or the northern side of their hills? The…
The mountain that makes rain
Travel across a mountain range and the landscape frequently changes completely between one side and the…
The map with no names
A map of a country with the place names removed is still a political document. The lines are the argument.…
The last mile of the road
A road connecting two cities is usually built to the same standard along its whole length. The final…
The bus stop that moved fifty metres
Moving a bus stop fifty metres down the road cut use of that stop by a fifth. The buses were the same, the…
The border that followed a river
Two provinces agreed in 1908 that their boundary was the main channel of the river. The agreement was…
Why cities forgot to play
Photographs of Hanoi, London or São Paulo from the 1950s share an odd feature for modern eyes: children on…