Research Guides: English Language Practice: Reading Material

Choosing Reading Material

This guide is intended to help users find reading material for English language practice for college-level students.

Many databases offer the ability to sort search results. Look for limiters like Lexile Score, page count, or short/medium/long to help narrow down results.
Choosing material from magazines and newspapers can be beneficial since the type of writing used is more common and easy to understand.
The Lexile Score is the amount of difficulty a text will be to read. The higher the score, the more difficult the text.

Read It! This link opens in a new window
Adapted reading material in many subjects for English Language Learners with a basic foundation in English grammar.
- To create a shareable link to a document, click the Permalink button.
Academic OneFile This link opens in a new window
Full-text articles from scholarly journals and other resources in the sciences, engineering, business, as well as humanities and social sciences areas. Includes newspapers as well as news transcripts.
- To save documents you will need to have a Google Account to save to a Google Drive.
- To create a Google Drive account, click on Sign in with Google at the top of the page.
- To hear a document read aloud, click or tap Listen to expand the player and begin playback.
- To create a shareable link to a document, click the Get Link button.
Gale eBooks This link opens in a new window
Specialized reference sources such as almanacs, encyclopedias, and books on a variety of topics.
- To create a shareable link to a document, click the Get Link button.