Reading, reading, reading. Evaluating a website to practice reading comprehension.
The only part of my language learning that always go without a hitch is reading comprehension. Maybe the main reason of enjoying this learning activity more than other kind of tasks is that I love books and I like reading all sorts of texts. I have already read Shakespeare plays, tons of academic articles, literature essays, short stories and of course novels in English. Thus, I dare to say, that my reading skills are quite good in English. I wish I could tell this about my speaking skills...
Now, I would like to recommend a website, the dreamreader.net, where you can find hundreds of lessons to improve your reading comprehension. This is a free website designed to help learners and teachers find resources for practice. The texts are short and deal with interesting, varied topics such as 'The World of Lego' or 'The Bigfoot Mystery'. You can extend your vocabulary and your background knowledge at the same time in an entertaining way. Lessons contain a multiple choice quiz test which provides immediate feedback to the learner. The texts and the quizzes are printable freely and you can find vocabulary worksheets too among the attachments. What is extremely useful in my opinion, that every lesson has a downloadable audio version as well.
The site divides into 5 categories, Easy English, Interesting English, Fun English, Practical English and Academic English. The lessons of the Easy English category contain only pictures and pictograms, not full texts, so it can help practicing picture description for the language exams. The Interesting English section has lots of vocabulary building lessons full of useful idioms, synonyms, situations, and even slang expressions. Longer and more complex texts, stories can be found by clicking on the Fun English and Academic English buttons. This last category is also divided into beginner, low intermediate, intermediate, upper intermediate and advanced sections. You can find short texts, articles in different themes from gastronomy through travelling to science and culture. As for the Practical English part of the site, there are texts from advertisements, announcements, booklets, invitation cards, e-mails, messages, webshops etc. This content is relevant to our life thus offers useful knowledge people need in real everyday situations.