INTRODUCTION
We all know that immersion is the tried & true way to learn a foreign language. After all, it’s how we got so good at our first language. The problem is that it’s extremely difficult to recreate the same circumstances when we learn our second language. We come to rely so much on our native language for everything & it’s hard to make enough time to learn the second one.
We aren’t surrounded by the foreign language in our home countries. More often than not, our families can’t speak this new language we want to learn. & many of us have stressful jobs or classes to attend regularly. Immersion can seem like an impossibility.
What we can do, however, is gradually work our way up to immersion no matter where we are in the world. & the way we can do this is through extensive reading & listening. If you have ever taken a foreign language class, chances are you are familiar with intensive reading & listening. In intensive reading & listening, a small amount of text or a short audio recording is broken down line by line & every new word is looked up in the dictionary.
Extensive reading, on the other hand, is quite the opposite. You read a large number of pages or listen to hours & hours of the foreign language without worrying about understanding everything. You look up as few words as possible & try to get through material from start to finish as quickly as you can. If you ask the most successful language learners, it’s not intensive reading & listening but extensive that delivers the best results. Volume is much more important than total comprehension & memorization.
In order to be able to read like this comfortably, you must practice reading in the foreign language for hours every single day. It takes a massive volume of text before your brain stops intensively reading & shifts into extensive reading.
This book hopes to provide a few short stories in English you can use to practice extensive reading. These stories were written for both beginner & intermediate students in mind, so they should be a little easier to digest compared to native English. While it’s no substitute for the benefits of reading native English, we hope these stories help build confidence in your reading comprehension skills overall. They offer supplementary reading practice with a heavy focus on teaching vocabulary words.
Vocabulary is the number one barrier to entry to extensive reading. Without an active vocabulary base of 10,000 words or more, you’ll be stuck constantly looking up words in the dictionary, which will be sure to slow down your reading. To speed up the rate at which you read, building & maintaining a vast vocabulary range is absolutely vital. This is why it’s so important to invest as much time as possible into immersing yourself in native English every single day. This includes both reading & listening.
We hope you enjoy the book & find it useful in growing your English vocabulary & bringing you a few steps closer to extensive reading & fluency!
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
To simulate extensive reading better, we recommend keeping things simple & using the short stories in the following manner. Read through each story just once & no more.
The words that have been written in bold appear on a vocabulary list at the end of each story. Whenever you encounter a word you don’t know, try to guess its meaning using the surrounding context before going to the dictionary. Alternatively, you could make the reading easier by first going over the vocabulary list & looking up any words unknown to you.
After completing the reading for each chapter, test your knowledge of the story by answering the comprehension questions. Check your answers using the answer key located at the end of the book.
Memorization of any kind, however, is completely unnecessary. Attempting to push new information into your brain forcibly only serves to eat up your time & make it that much more frustrating when you can’t recall it in the future. The actual language acquisition process occurs subconsciously & any effort to memorize new vocabulary & grammar structures only stores this information in your short-term memory.
If you wish to review new information that you have learned from the short stories, there are several options that would be wiser. Spaced Repetition Systems (SRS) allow you to cut down on your review time by setting specific intervals in which you are tested on information in order to promote long-term memory storage. Anki & the Goldlist Method are two popular SRS choices that give you the ability to review whatever information you’d like from whatever material you’d like.
It’s also recommended to read each story silently. While reading aloud can be somewhat beneficial for pronunciation & intonation, it’s a practice aligned more with intensive reading. It will further slow down your reading pace & make it considerably more difficult for you to get into extensive reading. If you want to work on pronunciation & intonation, take the time to do it during SRS review time. Alternatively, you could also speak to a tutor in the foreign language to practice what you learned.
Trying to actively review everything you learn through these short stories will slow you down on your overall path to fluency. While there may be an assortment of things you want to practice & review, the best way to go about internalizing new vocabulary & grammar is to forget it! If it’s that important, it will come up through more reading & listening to more English. Save the SRS & other review techniques for only a small selected sample of sentences you feel are the most important. Languages are more effectively acquired when we allow ourselves to read & listen to them naturally.
And with that, it is time to get started with our main character John & the ten stories about his life. Good luck, reader!
CHAPTER 1: ILLNESS & MEDICINE
For the past few days, John has had some difficulty breathing. He was 30 years old & it was a bit odd for someone of his age to have this symptom. Maybe if he was a smoker, things would make more sense, but John has never smoked a cigarette in his life. He decided to go see his doctor about it.
Luckily, he was able to schedule an appointment that very week & get himself checked out. At the doctor’s office, there was a considerable waiting period before you could be seen by the physician. John brought a book to read in the waiting room, but he found it hard to focus for very long, given his condition. After 20 minutes, he started to get a splitting headache. In anticipation of such a scenario, he kept over-the-counter pain relievers in his car. Following a quick trip & back, he washed down the pills with water from the water fountain & took a big sigh of relief.
The nurse called John back to room 107 & did some routine check- up procedures. She took his blood pressure, measured his height & weight & asked about his family’s history of health problems. John was fortunate enough to not have any hereditary health issues. There was no heart disease, cancer, diabetes, nor arthritis to worry about. The nurse also asked about any & all current drugs he was taking, but he replied that he doesn’t take any medication.
After John’s information was recorded, the nurse left the examination room & told him the doctor would be with him shortly. Just two minutes later, he was finally face to face with the man who could help cure him in no time. Dr. Spetzel was his name & he was as friendly as could be. The two chatted about John’s breathing issue & John went into more detail about his condition. Chest pains were occurring throughout the day, but there were no heart palpitations. There was a little coughing but no wheezing. The doctor placed his stethoscope on John’s chest & asked him to take a couple of deep breaths.
With a few subtle nods, it appeared Dr. Spetzel had reached a final diagnosis. It was asthma. He said it was common for adults to develop asthma & not just children. An inhaler would immediately curb his symptoms, but it’s a medication he would be required to take for the rest of his life to keep his symptoms at bay.
Carrying his prescription from Dr. Spetzel, John headed towards the pharmacy to receive his inhaler. He dropped it off at the customer service desk then started to wander around the store. It would be some time until his prescription was filled, so he browsed the various medicines on the store’s shelves. He saw tons of products to treat colds, allergies & the flu. There were even over-the-counter treatments for constipation & diarrhea.
The pharmacist called out to John, for it was time to pick up his prescription & head back home. While out in his car in the parking lot, John took his first dose & instantly felt much better. It became significantly easier to breathe & his chest pains subsided. He was grateful for the miracle of modern science & medicine. Throughout the ordeal, it occurred to John how important his health & body were to him. Being in a constant state of bad health would make for a very poor quality of life. His diet would be the first place to start making improvements.
CHAPTER 2: FOOD
John has been on a diet now for four weeks & has already lost five kilos. His new diet is very strict, but he follows it extremely closely.
For breakfast, he eats a small bowl of oatmeal cooked in the microwave with either water or milk. He also has a serving of fruit with his oatmeal, like a banana, strawberries, or a mango. & of course, what breakfast would be complete without a cup of coffee?
For lunch, John prefers to eat a light meal to maximize his weight loss, so he usually has a spinach salad. On top of his salad, he puts carrots, onions, cucumbers, croutons & nuts. Dressing tends to have a lot of calories, so he adds just a small dab. If the salad does not fill him up, he’ll also eat some soup. Usually, it’s tomato soup, as that is his favorite.
For dinner, there are a few options available, depending on what he wants that night. He can have a pasta & vegetable mix cooked in olive oil & Italian spices. Or he can have rice & beans topped with a garlic & onion sauce. He can also have a Thai curry dish with kale & sweet potato. All choices require some cooking, but it’s worth it in the end.
All was going pretty well for John until the fifth week started. Like many of us, he works a stressful & demanding job, so there wasn’t always enough time to prepare every meal. His energy started dropping, while his appetite & hunger started rising rapidly.
Soon, the small bowl of oatmeal for breakfast became the large bowl of sugary cereal. & the black coffee was now drowned in a high calorie coffee creamer.
The salad for lunch turned into fast food meals, since John was always running late for meetings. Originally, he was drinking water with this meal as well as every meal but now it was soda.
And dinner was just hopeless after a while. John would come home exhausted from work & could not bring himself to cook. Pizza, ice cream, french fries & snacks were much easier choices & helped take his mind off all the anxiety.
Several weeks later, he had regained all five kilos he had lost & even gained an additional five more kilos on top of that! The failure made John feel even worse. He vowed, for his next diet, that he would be even more strict & eat even less food.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t realize that the massive drop in calories is causing an equally massive dip in his energy levels & cravings for junk food. It would take many attempts before he finally learned that starting his diet with lots of healthy foods & slowly cutting down calories would be the wiser move.
CHAPTER 3: EXERCISE
John decides that he should really start taking better care of himself by exercising. It will help manage his stress & even help him lose the extra weight he put on. Starting next week, he will begin a jogging routine, where he will run five days a week.
On the first day, he wakes up extra early before work & puts on his tennis shoes, eager to get started. After some basic stretches, the jogging starts & everything seems to go well. Within two minutes, however, John is out of breath. He’s wheezing & his breathing becomes super heavy. & after just five minutes, the jogging is replaced by walking. While it would be easy to blame his asthma & call it quits, he admits the truth. He is out of shape.
As time passes, days become weeks. Weeks become months. John is now able to run continually for 30 minutes. Within a year or two, he could be running a marathon, he thinks. While he’s proud of his improvement, doing nothing but cardio has grown extremely boring, so a change of routine is the next step.
John’s friends Andy & Joe have invited him to come lift weights after work, so they all meet at the gym, eager to spend some time together. They decide to commit to a workout program five days a week, where they will work one body part per week: chest, back, shoulders, legs & arms.
Each day requires strenuous effort, but the endorphin rush at the end of each workout makes it all worth it. To cool down, the men relax by walking on the treadmills or sweating it out in the sauna for 10 minutes.
Some time passes & John decides that weightlifting isn’t a good fit for him. Andy & Joe get too competitive with it & the intensity of the workouts has become more painful than fun. At the gym, however, they offer yoga classes, so John signs up, eager to start.
The classes teach a variety of stretches & poses designed to loosen the body & calm the mind. The lessons are not easy by any means & they make all the students sweat. Yet, it’s not as intense as weightlifting. & it’s much more fun & relaxing than jogging. John leaves each class feeling refreshed & excited to come back for more. He even starts chatting with some pretty girls whom he looks forward to seeing every week. It’s a routine with an extra incentive to maintain.
CHAPTER 4: HOBBIES
“It would be really nice to go on a date with one of those girls from class,” John thinks to himself. “Hopefully, I can find something in common with one of them & maybe make a connection.”
His hobbies were somewhat relatable. Everybody likes watching TV & movies, including John, but would he be able to find a girl who likes video games? If not, could he find someone into professional baseball & basketball as much as he was? It would be amazing if he had someone to talk to about politics, history & government.
The first girl he met from yoga class was Jenny, who seemed really smart right away. She was a big reader, but of fiction rather than non- fiction. Her passion was literature & she could talk for hours about the current story she was reading. Besides that, she spent a lot of time taking care of her dog & taking him for long walks. & occasionally, she’d treat herself to a bottle of wine & watch horror movies.
Emily was the second girl he got to know from class, although she didn’t always have a lot of time to talk. There was always somewhere she needed to be. It was obvious that she was extremely fit & in great shape & John later learned that she was a female bodybuilding athlete & coach. If she didn’t have an appointment with a client, she was busy building her business. Emily had a big social media following & built a clothing brand that sold T-shirts, sweat shirts, hats & accessories. You could say she was a workaholic, but you had to admit she was very successful.
The last girl John spent time with was Jessica, who was a bit of a social butterfly. She had a large social circle of friends to talk to & hang out with. It was clear that she was an extrovert. If she wasn’t texting, she was out with friends, drinking & clubbing. On the occasion that she did decide to stay home, Jessica would watch Japanese anime & play video games.
John was immediately drawn to Jessica, as he finally found someone he could nerd out with about current & upcoming games. Their personalities, however, didn’t seem to match very well. The chemistry just wasn’t there. They never seemed to be able to talk about anything outside of their mutual hobby.
Emily never really had much time to talk, but Jenny was more than willing to spend some time together with him. John listened to her talk about all her favorite books & even convinced him to try reading a book via audiobooks. Jenny didn’t show much interest in sports or history, but she was attracted to the passion & energy John emitted whenever he spoke about subjects he cared about. Their mutual interest in one another was enough for them to start dating.
CHAPTER 5: WORK
While John’s social life was blooming, his life at work was the polar opposite. He works at an office for an insurance company, & while the pay is good, the workload is overwhelming.
Each morning, he checks his work email to find 50 new requests that have to be immediately dealt with. If he doesn’t quickly dispatch & process the emails before lunch, he will get caught behind schedule & most likely have to work overtime. It’s extremely stressful & more so when his boss is watching him over his shoulder.
John’s boss has to be strict with all the employees. One mistake & it could cost the company a small fortune. Not only will the employee be disciplined harshly, but the boss will be too.
Insurance is a difficult business to work in. It is not for the weak. Meetings, documents, & regulations are all of the utmost importance, & you cannot afford to miss or forget anything. You could be fired for it!
“How am I going to make it to retirement?” John asks himself at least once a week. & he’s lucky if this question only comes up once that week. Stress & anxiety are pushing him to his limits. It’s only a matter of time before he breaks.
What would life have been like if he had chosen a different college degree? What if he went into computer science? Would he have enjoyed
programming more? What if he pushed himself harder while playing for the college baseball team? Would he have made it to the professional level? What if he had made it as a pro-gamer back in high school & got to play video games for a living? It would have been a dream come true.
Life didn’t turn out that way for John, unfortunately. He might be stuck with a job he hates, but at least he has hope things will change. Many of his co-workers seem to lack that same hope. Depression & anxiety are common in his workplace, but there are a handful of colleagues who are fun to talk to & crack jokes with to lighten the mood. They make it just a little easier to get through each day. That makes all the difference.
There are others, though, who seem to be absolutely crushed by the harshness of life & are now just shells of their former selves. Those people scare John more than any boss ever has.
But when will things change? How will they change? The only thing that is certain is that something must change.
CHAPTER 6: ANIMALS & NATURE
To relieve some of the stress & anxiety he had been accumulating for quite some time, John set off on a nature walk. He heard that spending a day or two in the mountains would do wonders for him & his mental health. The isolation would give his mind time & space to detox & refresh. Animals would be his only companions during the walk.
His house was located in an apartment complex, so it was pretty rare to see any wildlife besides the occasional squirrel. Groundhogs & foxes were even rarer sights. Because he spent all his time indoors, he mostly saw spiders & house centipedes. He was not particularly fond of the latter.
It wasn’t too long of a drive to reach the mountains since the town he lived in was near a mountain range. Upon parking & exiting his vehicle, he was immediately greeted by a few deer grazing in an open field. They slowly picked at the grass & wagged their tails, not paying much attention to John. Then, suddenly, a large booming sound from far away caused them to scatter frantically. It was the sound of a gunshot. Hunting season must have started.
John was unsure where to begin hiking, but his question was answered when he saw some other hikers walking towards an opening in the forest. & what a beautiful forest it was! The evergreen trees & sun shining through them made for some breathtaking scenery. The lake added to the vastness of the place, & a feeling of smallness struck John from deep within.
He could see the life flowing through every little bush, insect, & bird he came across. A peaceful harmony could be felt in the air. Sure, there were bears & mountain lions far up somewhere in the mountains, but they too were part of the ecosystem that connected all life in the forest. The frogs on the lakeshore had just as much life as the beavers building dams. They may be different creatures, but they were both small fragments from the same world. They were made from the same chemical elements found scattered throughout the universe.
As the sun was setting, it became less & less safe to remain in the forest. It would be better to avoid nighttime predators, so John hiked back to his car. Exhausted from the journey, he sat in his car wondering about the next time he would come back. There would definitely be a next time, & it would definitely have to be with Jenny.
CHAPTER 8: STAYING AT HOME
It was a Sunday afternoon. John had no particular plans, so he slept in and allowed himself to catch up on sleep he had missed during the week. It would not be a completely lazy day though, for he had a number of household chores to do.
Perhaps most important of all were the unpaid bills that needed to be taken care of. Housing isn’t free, after all. Rent, electricity, water, internet, student loans, and phone plans all have payments due. Thanks to technology, however, all of these can be paid online without leaving the house.
Next, the laundry had piled up over the week, and a few loads would be necessary for the upcoming week. He never bothered to sort his laundry into whites, darks, and colors; instead, he would just throw in as much as he could each load, pour in some laundry detergent and fabric softener, and run the laundry machine.
While he waited for each load to finish, he figured he would stay productive by doing the dishes and vacuuming the house. John’s house was by no means spotless, but he did just a little bit each week to maintain what he could. This week, he would do some extra work in the kitchen. He cleaned out the fridge by throwing away expired foods. He also scrubbed the counters with disinfectant and brushed off all food crumbs to the floor. And he finished by sweeping the floor with his broom and dustpan. Mopping could wait another week, he thought.
John was more interested in spending the rest of his day at the computer playing video games. He was a fan of strategy games and could spend hours coming up with new strategies to try out against his friends online and even in single player games. When he needed a break, he would occasionally get up for a quick stretch, peer out the windows, heat up some food in the microwave, and sit back down for more gaming.
After spending too many hours in front of the computer, a small existential crisis would occur. Was it really all that wise to spend so much time gaming when it could be used for something more meaningful? Sure, there were videos he could watch online, but would that be any different? And so, he picked up the headphones in his bedroom and started to listen to some of the audiobook recommended to him by Jenny.
Listening to the book instantly felt like the right use of his time and even opened up the opportunity for some self-reflection. As he kept listening, he wandered around his house. He opened and closed his closet doors for no particular reason. He put his hand on the couch and let it glide over as he walked across. There was no dining room table to repeat this action, as he lived by himself and usually ate in the kitchen or out on the balcony.
Before he knew it, it was 10:00 pm. It was time for bed. While he didn’t finish the audiobook, he certainly had something new to talk about next weekend when he would go to the family gathering. He could even bring Jenny and introduce her as the one who introduced him to the book.
CHAPTER 9: FAMILY AND OCCUPATIONS
Jenny happily agreed to accompany John on his visit to his family gathering the following weekend. They were now officially a couple, and it would be a good time to introduce her to his mother, father, and brothers.
Also at the get-together was John’s uncle, named Doug. Doug was a mechanical engineer, who worked on all kinds of machines, including steam and gas turbines and electric generators. He was an extremely intelligent man, who helped guide John in his younger years.
While chatting with his uncle, he noticed his two cousins Michael and Joanne in the background. The three of them hung out quite frequently as kids and shared a lot of childhood memories. They grew apart as they got older, unfortunately, and lost contact with one another as they entered the workforce. Michael ended up working his way up to a management position at a retail store. And Joanne was a part-time hairdresser but a full-time mom.
Jenny was obviously overwhelmed by all the new faces, but she was able to get to know at least one person at the event. This person was John’s sister-in-law Olivia. From the very get-go, the two hit it off and established an instant rapport. Jenny was a journalist by trade, and Olivia was a writer for a TV show that was produced by the same media company they both worked for. While they had seen each other around the office, they had never met until now.
In the end, there were just too many people for Jenny to meet and even for John to catch up with. They briefly said hello to his grandmother and aunts, but they never got the chance to greet his nieces and nephews. All the kids were busy playing together in the backyard.
The family was able to take a group photo, which included Jenny, who was invited to join in. Every year, it’s John’s dad who is given the task to create the best family photo possible. Leaving the task to him makes sense, given that he’s a professional photographer.
The sun started going down, and the day was growing late. As everyone was leaving, John had another opportunity to speak with his Uncle Doug. He voiced his concerns about burning out at his current job at the insurance company and was considering a few possible paths he could take. Uncle Doug advised him that, even though he’s not sure where he wants to work in the future, he should definitely start taking classes as soon as possible. Waiting to start was the worst thing he could possibly do.
CHAPTER 10: EDUCATION
With a full-time job and a girlfriend, John’s schedule was pretty tightly packed. But for the sake of a better future, he enrolled in a graduate program for economics at his local university. John had already completed an undergraduate program and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, yet like most liberal arts degrees, it was not the greatest choice for seeking employment and starting a career.
This time would be different. With much more experience and wisdom, this opportunity to further his education would not go wasted. A graduate program in economics was going to be a formidable challenge, but if he succeeded, the rewards would be great. The classes he took at community college would be a cakewalk compared to this. Intense study and perseverance would be required.
The textbooks would often prove to be much more useful than the lectures. Some of the professors he had talked with such long-winded delivery that it was incredibly difficult to maintain focus in class. He could spend half the time reading chapters from the book and come away with double the information he got in the lecture hall. The teacher assistants, however, were most helpful, as they could explain complex concepts using very basic language.
To make the information stick, serious work was needed to be done outside the classroom. Study groups organized by students were instrumental in providing John the motivation and drive required to do well in the course. In the groups, students shared the notes they took in class and reviewed the information they thought would appear on the exams. Not all this time was serious though, as there were multiple breaks where chit-chat was encouraged as a means to vent built-up stress and frustration.
Finals for the first year were approaching, and anxiety filled the classroom during the last few lectures. On the test would be essay questions only; there would be no multiple choice. Cramming wasn’t going to get you anywhere on this test. You had to know the information in order to get a good grade. John and all his classmates paid hefty tuition fees, but not all would pass the test. It would be those who attended the lectures, participated in the study groups, and read extensively that would pass with high marks.
It was very much like learning a foreign language. Those who do the best are those who immerse themselves in the foreign language. They read as much as possible in the target language, and when they can no longer read, they spend all their free time listening to the target language. Immersion takes precedence over their old hobbies and lifestyles. That’s how they achieve high levels of fluency.
The question is not whether or not John passed the final exam. The true question is whether or not you will do what it takes in order to achieve fluency.