Explanation & Guide

Reading Material for ESL Students

“Tadoku” means “Extensive Reading” in Japanese, and our stories are designed for Extensive Reading (ER).

Please visit this website for more information about ER:

https://erfoundation.org/wordpress/

We offer 4 levels of graded reader for ER:

  • Level ❶ Stories → CEFR A1/A2
  • Level ❷ Stories → CEFR A2/B1
  • Level ❸ Stories → CEFR B1/B2
  • Level ❹ Stories → CEFR B2/C1

Click here for an explanation about CEFR.

At present, all graded readers are in English.

For Students of English as a Second Language:

Our Level ❶ Stories are designed for students who have already mastered most A1 vocabulary, while Level ❷ Stories are designed for students who have already mastered most A2 vocabulary, and similarly, our Level ❸ Stories are intended for students with B1 vocabulary, while our Level ❹ Stories are intended for students who are already comfortably reading text and vocabulary at the B2 level.

For Young Readers:

If your child is learning to read in English, the child can progress from Level 1 or Level 2 to higher levels, as long as they are comfortable with the vocabulary and grammar.

Each story has 5 parts:
1. Vocabulary
2. The Story
3. Questions
4. Answers
5. Story Data

Vocabulary: Students should study any unfamiliar vocabulary in this list before reading the story. These words are found in the story, and these words are one level above the student’s current CEFR level. Students will not need to know these words in order to enjoy and understand the story, but a quick study of these words before reading will improve the retention of new vocabulary knowledge.

The Story: After studying the vocabulary (or not), students can read this story and enjoy the illustrations. Students should be able to easily read and enjoy the story, and the text should not be too easy nor too hard. Students should quit reading any story that is too hard to understand, and students should quit any story that is not enjoyable. Typical graded readers are longer than our stories at Tadoku Lighthouse. These stories are meant to supplement other types of extensive reading practice, or serve as reading exercises for general study of the English language.

Questions: Each story is followed by five multiple-choice questions for measuring comprehension. Students who have carefully read the story should be able to answer these questions, and they can look back at the text if needed.

Answers: This section provides the answers for the questions above.

Story Data: Teachers, parents, or students can view data about the language of the story, including word count (token count) and the percentage of the story vocabulary for different CEFR levels. This section includes many other useful numbers and data for understanding the difficulty level of the English in each story.
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