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Linguapress.com

Intermediate English resources

Graded English reading texts with vocabulary guides, and also lesson plans, interactive exercises and audio:
CEF levels B1 and B2, Cambridge First Certificate.
UK - USA - Canada - topical - cultural - technical - fictional

TOPICAL TEXTS - make the most of the things people are talking about !

Who is King Charles III ?
Read about him in this B1 text: Britain's new king With audio -

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Teachers: For more ideas for using reading resources in the classroom see Reading comprehension .

Interactive resources: Many articles come with interactive worksheet resources that can be used in class, done on paper, or filled in on screen.

Reading texts for intermediate English - CEF levels B1 and B2

A collection of reading resources mostly about life and issues in Britain and the United States, in intermediate level English - with word guides, exercises and classroom activities

1. Topics about life in Britain

Britain in general

Society

And new texts available only in the Linguapress paperback - ► A Background to English

The Mother of Parliaments! The English / British parliament is almost 1000 years old.

Cambridge new and old - The historic university city is the heart of Britain's "Silicon Fen".

Dialogues

Icons

London

Sport

2. Topics with a North-American theme

Alcohol, Prohibition and Al Capone B1 level, a simple but interesting text with interactive worksheet.

Profession : Cowboy New audio There are still cowboys working today in the American west

George Washington - With audio - the story of America's first president

Hollywood & Superheroes New audio

Focus on Canada An introduction to Canada in intermediate-level English

USA: Still looking for Gold Out west, the gold rush is not yet over...

USA: who was Buffalo Bill? With audio - Remembering one of America's great folk heroes .

USA: Team sports, American style Why do the USA and Europe have different sports?

Elvis - he's still the "King" and his home Graceland, in Memphis, is a major tourist attraction.

The story of Silicon Valley What is Silicon valley, where is it, and why ?

The story of Coca-Cola. New audio The name "Coca-Cola" is the best-known name in the whole world.

The story of Blue Jeans. The world's most popular garment was first created in 1873

Hollywood - its life and times A short story of Hollywood, in easy English.

America's oil - a love affair Americans use a lot of energy; but the cost of oil is going up.

USA: Winter sports USA Americans love winter sports, because their winters are so cold

USA: Close encounters with a Twister - A tornado strikes....

And new texts available only in the Linguapress paperback ► A Background to English

Go West, young man! The phrase that built America - With audio

Plastic pollution; how can we stop it? - With audio

3. Other resources - short stories, technical English, songs, cartoons

Short stories - teenage fiction (► see also short stories)

Songs

Technical subjects

Cartoons

Original strip cartoons in simple English

English for A2 B1 and B2 levels. Intermediate English reading resources

CEFR / TELC - levels (A2) B1 or B2 (Threshold - intermediate)

ACTFL - levels Advanced-low - Advanced-mid.

Readability

Most Linguapress Intermediate texts score as follows on the Flesch-Kincaid scales:
Grade : between 6 and 8,
Readability level : either

70 - 80 Fairly easy

To Understand Flesch Kincaid scales, see the Linguapress Readability guide

Simplified English ?

The "simplified English" in these items is not simplistic English, nor is it artificial English.
It is real English, with the difficulties ironed out. Resources in this section vary in difficulty from low intermediate English to advanced intermediate (equivalent of up to Cambridge First certificate of English level, or CEFR * levels A2 to B2), and are designed for students with (the equivalent of) at least two to four years of high-school English behind them - not for beginners.

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Most items in the Linguapress intermediate English archive can be easily printed for classroom use. See Printing Linguapress English resources

* CEFR - The Council of Europe's Common European Framework of Reference for languages.

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Intermediate English reading - index of free resources

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Intermediate English reading texts for EFL / ESOL | B1 and B2 texts with vocabulary guides and exercises for classroom and private study

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A coincidence is defined as a series of events and circumstances which seemingly have no apparent connection to each other but wind up being related by pure chance. Whenever a mysterious crime occurs, investigators will attempt to solve it by piecing together the events and circumstances surrounding the case. However, complications can ensue when a coincidence enters the picture. An investigation can be seriously hampered when one is forced to look into events that, at first glance, appear to be connected to the crime but turn out to be nothing more than a bizarre coincidence. In many of these cases, the coincidence had no direct connection to the crime but made for an interesting "story-within-a-story."

10The Deaths of Iqbal Al-Hilli and Her Secret Ex-Husband

A French cyclist named Sylvain Mollier was also found dead at the scene, presumably at the wrong place at the wrong time. To this day, investigators have been unable to determine who was responsible or what their motive might have been, and the shooting has been described as the perfect crime." If that wasn't enough, the murders were also followed by an astonishing coincidence.

None of Iqbal's family or friends knew this wasn't her first marriage. In February 1999, Iqbal was working in the U.S., and, to get a green card and remain in the country, she agreed to marry an oil worker named Jim Thompson. The marriage did not work out, and the couple split up the following year.

When Iqbal left the country, she eventually remarried and started a family with Saad al-Hilli but never told anybody about her previous marriage to Thompson. However, the marriage ceased to be a secret after a stunning turn of events. Mere hours after Iqbal al-Hilli's murder, Jim Thompson suffered a fatal heart attack while driving through his hometown of Natchez, Mississippi. Naturally, there was some suspicion of foul play, but it appears that Thompson's death had no connection to his ex-wife and was nothing more than an unfortunate coincidence.

9The Disappearances of Stacy Peterson and Her Mother

Three years earlier, Drew's third wife, Kathleen Savio, was found dead in her bathtub in what was initially believed to be an accidental drowning. Drew collected a substantial life insurance policy, but Stacy's disappearance prompted another investigation into Kathleen's death. In 2009, Drew was charged with his ex-wife's murder and eventually sentenced to 38 years in prison. He remains the prime suspect in Stacy's disappearance, but her body has never been found.

Stacy's disappearance was just the latest in a long line of tragedies for her family. In an eerie coincidence, Stacy's 40-year-old mother, Christie Cales, had also vanished under suspicious circumstances nine years earlier. Christie had six children but lost two of them during the 1980s when they were infants. Christie abused drugs and alcohol, was often in trouble with the law, and had a turbulent relationship with her husband.

The couple often neglected their children, but when they divorced in 1990, Christie's husband got sole custody. In 1998, Christie was living with her boyfriend in Blue Island, Illinois. On March 11, she apparently walked out of her home and never returned, and that was the last anyone ever saw of her. Much like with Stacy, Christie's family has always suspected that her spouse was responsible for her disappearance, but there wasn't enough evidence to charge him. Officially, both Christie Cales and her daughter remain missing.

8The Murder Victim Who Succumbed to a Rare Blood Disease

He had previously spent time in prison for trying to poison his wife, so it seemed like his punishment would be severe. However, Jones would not face a murder charge when he went to court, as a remarkable set of circumstances would allow him to plead guilty to the lesser charge of aggravated assault and battery.

In a stunning coincidence, it turned out that even if her boyfriend did not beat her, Sara Tolbert still would have died the following morning. After a medical examination was done on Tolbert's body, it was discovered that she was suffering from a rare blood disease called sickle-cell anemia.

At the time Jones assaulted her, Tolbert only had hours to live before the disease became fatal. Two different medical examiners officially concluded that Tolbert died of natural causes, so it was impossible to prove that Jones's beating played any role in her death. In the end, the judge agreed to accept Jones's guilty plea to assault and battery but stated that the defendant would have been indicted for murder were it not for the unlikely coincidence.

7The Wrongful Conviction of Dennis Maher

Maher would be charged with the attacks, and after an unsolved rape from the previous summer was also pinned on him, he was sentenced to life in prison. Years later, he got in touch with The Innocence Project, an organization dedicated to helping wrongfully convicted people. They successfully lobbied for DNA testing on the evidence, and it excluded Maher as the perpetrator of the rapes. In 2003, he was released after serving 19 years in prison for crimes he didn't commit.

Unfortunately for Maher, he had been railroaded because of an unbelievable series of coincidences. The second victim told police that her attacker wore a red-hooded sweatshirt and military-style jacket and had threatened her with a knife. Later that night, while exiting a liquor store, Maher garnered a cop's attention because he wore a red-hooded sweatshirt. A military jacket and a knife were later found in Maher's vehicle.

Given the circumstances, it seemed perfectly logical to believe Maher was the attacker, especially after the victims identified him. However, at the time, Maher was a sergeant in the United States Army, so it wasn't unusual for him to have a military jacket and military knife in his vehicle. After DNA testing exonerated Maher, it became apparent the victims who identified him were mistaken and that he was just a tragic victim of bad luck. The real perpetrator was never found.

6The Mary Morris Murders

However, the case took a surprising turn three days later when a 39-year-old woman was found dead inside her car in the same vicinity. She had been beaten and shot with her own gun in a failed attempt to make her death look like suicide-the victim's name: Mary McGinnis Morris.

Shortly before her death, Mary McGinnis Morris had made a frantic phone call to 911 while being attacked. Attention soon turned toward Mary's husband, Mike Morris, who stood to collect a substantial life insurance policy from his wife's death. While Mike had an alibi during the time of Mary's murder, phone records showed that he made a four-minute call to Mary's cell phone two hours after her frantic call to 911.

Mike claimed that no one answered the call and let Mary's phone ring for four straight minutes. This led to a theory that Mike hired someone to murder his wife but that they killed another person named Mary Morris by mistake. A contract killer may have taken Mary Henderson Morris's missing wedding ring as proof that they completed the job. However, police have since leaned toward the position that the two Mary Morris murders are nothing more than a bizarre coincidence and have no connection to each other. Nevertheless, they both remain unsolved.

5The Disappearances of the Palmer Brothers

When Michael never returned home, he was reported missing. Michael's bicycle was later discovered in the Little Susitna River, and his wet, muddy sneakers were found 180 meters (600 ft) away. A search of the river turned up no trace of Michael's body, and he has never been found.

Believe it or not, Michael's older brother, Chucky, would also disappear under mysterious circumstances over a decade later. On April 13, 2010, 30-year-old Chucky was staying with friends and relatives at a cabin in the Talkeetna Mountains. That night, they decided to take a ride through the area on their snowmobiles. However, much like his younger brother, Chucky became separated from his group at some point and was never seen again.

The following day, his snowmobile was found, but there was no sign of Chucky or any footprints in the area. Chris Palmer, the oldest sibling in the family, had stayed behind at the cabin the night Chucky disappeared. He now had to go through the ordeal of searching for a missing younger brother-for the second time in 11 years-and coming up empty.

4Couple Reports Murder Before Being Charged With Unrelated Murder

Shortly after, a young married couple named Tracy and Karen Wilkes happened upon Davis's overturned car and reported her murder to the police. In a strange coincidence, the couple would soon find themselves embroiled in another murder in the area-which they themselves committed.

About 45 days after the Davis murder, Tracy and Karen Wilkes burglarized and burned down the Treutlen County home of 69-year-old Moril V. Hudson, shooting him three times in the head. The couple attempted to flee the area and escape to Alabama. When Tracy decided to return home to retrieve some items, he was subsequently arrested. Shortly thereafter, Karen was found living in a trailer in Alabama and had the murder weapon in her possession.

On August 23, they were both formally charged with murder, burglary, and arson. Naturally, authorities started to suspect that the couple who found Kirsten Davis's body was actually responsible for her murder. However, they both passed polygraph tests, and there is no evidence they committed the crime. Tracy and Karen pleaded guilty to the Hudson murder and went to prison, but Kirsten Davis's senseless-and seemingly random-murder is still unsolved.

3The Lucia De Berk Trial

After an investigation, the hospital concluded that these deaths were unnatural and decided to press charges against De Berk. On March 24, 2003, she was sentenced to life imprisonment on four counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder.

Since there was no physical evidence against De Berk or any witnesses to her crimes, statistics were used as the lynchpin of the prosecution's case. They claimed that De Berk's presence in the hospital when all these deaths took place could not be coincidental. An expert testified that the odds of it being a coincidence were 1 in 342 million. However, De Berk had numerous supporters who believed she was the victim of a miscarriage of justice and appealed her conviction.

They sought to debunk the statistics from De Berk's trial, which had been presented by an unqualified law professor. A professor of mathematical statistics argued that the odds of all these deaths being a coincidence were 1 in 48. The case was heard in front of the Supreme Court of the Netherlands, which agreed that the statistical evidence was flawed and granted a new trial. A new investigation concluded that De Berk's alleged murders were likely natural deaths. In April 2010, she received a not guilty verdict and was exonerated.

2The Elisa Lam Case

Elisa Lam's 2013 disappearance was strange, to say the very least. It unfolded at the Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, a place marked by a history of death, suicide, and serial killers. Days before a hotel worker discovered Lam's body in the main water tank, the LAPD released surveillance footage of Lam acting bizarrely in an elevator. The oddities definitely didn't end after the video went viral, baffling even the most rigid skeptics. Some of the coincidences surrounding Lam's disappearance and death are downright creepy.

Several days before Lam's body was found by LAPD in the hotel's water tower, guests had complained about the low water pressure and weird tasting and discolored water. The film Dark Water, released in 2005, has a basic storyline that mirrors Lam's case. There's also the case of a death metal musician who posted a video about staying at the Cecil hotel a year before Lam. Some of his music mentions women being chased and murdered, sparking some to attempt to connect him to Lam's death. After Lam died, a tuberculosis outbreak plagued Los Angeles, especially among the homeless community in Skid Row by the Cecil Hotel. The test for tuberculosis was literally her name in reverse order: LAM-ELISA, which stands for Lipoarabinomannan (LAM) Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA). Conspiracy theorists immediately speculated that Lam was effectively a biological weapon of sorts sent to deal with an out-of-control homeless population in LA.

The questions surrounding Lam's disappearance and death have not been thoroughly answered. However, her death was ruled accidental by the LA County medical examiner.

1The Trunk Murders

Seven years later, two trunk murders took place within one month of each other. On June 17, 1934, an unclaimed trunk was discovered at Brighton Railway Station containing the dismembered torso of a young woman. Her head, arms, and legs were missing but, one day later, a suitcase containing the legs was found at another railway station. The victim was five months pregnant, but there was no indication about who she was. To this day, the identity of the woman and her killer remains unknown.

In an attempt to solve the murder, police started searching through residences in the area. Incredibly, they would find a trunk containing another dismembered woman. The decomposing victim was identified as a 42-year-old prostitute named Violette Kaye, who had been missing since May. When Kaye disappeared, her boyfriend Tony Mancini told everyone she left for Paris. The trunk containing Kaye's body was found inside Mancini's flat, and he was arrested and charged with her murder. At trial, Mancini's defense team argued that Kaye had been killed by someone else.

When Mancini found her, he was worried about being accused of the murder, so he decided to dismember her body and hide it inside a trunk. Believe it or not, the jury bought Mancini's story and acquitted him. In 1976, Mancini finally confessed to Kaye's murder, but he could not be tried for the crime again. Despite their similarities, the two Brighton trunk murders were determined to be unrelated.

Robin Warder is a budding Canadian screenwriter who has used his encyclopedic movie knowledge to publish numerous articles at Cracked.com. He is also the co-owner of a pop culture website called The Back Row and recently worked on a sci-fi short film called Jet Ranger of Another Tomorrow. Feel free to contact him here.

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10 Crime Stories With Strange Coincidences - Listverse

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A coincidence is defined as a series of events and circumstances which seemingly have no apparent connection to each other but wind up being related by pure chance. Whenever a mysterious crime occurs, investigators will attempt to solve it by piecing together the events and circumstances surrounding the case.

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'The ghost train is for kids!' said Claire.

'People look pretty scared when they come out,' said Peter, trying to pull her to The World's Scariest Ghost Train. 'Come on, it'll be fun!'

'They're pretending,' said Claire. 'They know it's not real, so what's there to be scared of?'

'OK,' Peter said, as he bought a ticket for himself and the rest of their group.

Maybe it was time to go home, Claire thought. But there was one thing left to do at the fair - buy a candyfloss. It was impossible to finish a candyfloss. They were just too big and too sweet, yet, at the same time, there was nothing there. It must be possible though, she thought, as she paid for her huge pink sugar cloud. She set herself a challenge. Tonight she was going to eat a whole one. For that, she needed time, and that meant walking home by the train tracks instead of through the town centre.

It wasn't very dark yet. She stepped off the dirt and onto the track. Each wooden sleeper was just the right distance apart so she could step from one to another easily. Of course, Claire knew not to walk on train tracks anywhere else - it was stupid and dangerous. Only last year some boys in the big city died playing on the tracks. But there was nothing dangerous here.

No one in Fellside had any memory of a train using the railway tracks. There wasn't even a train station. The tracks suddenly finished as if the engineers ran out of wood and iron. Claire always thought of them like those cartoons where the cat tries to catch the mouse and the mouse puts down tracks in front of his speeding carriage until he runs out.

The train tracks were a mystery, but an old one and nobody wondered about it now. They were just there, and that was that. The tracks vibrated as she walked. She could feel it and then she could hear it too. It was getting stronger and louder. She looked behind her. A round light, small but getting bigger, was coming towards her. It couldn't be ...

A train.

The wheels screamed louder against the rails as the driver slowed the train. It couldn't stop before it reached her. Luckily, Claire fell to the right, off the track. She was screaming but she couldn't hear herself above the noisy old train. Its carriages passed her, empty.

Where is it going? she thought. The tracks end in a couple of miles.

A man put his head out of the window of the engine and shouted. 'Don't you know it's dangerous on the tracks?'

'But ... there aren't any trains!' Claire said. But there was clearly a train now, whatever was true before. It's not real, she told herself.

'This isn't real,' she repeated out loud. But the heat coming from the engine felt real.

'You can't keep walking on the tracks, so you're going to have to ride the train the rest of the way.'

'No!'

'Not scared, are you?' he said. 'If it isn't real, what's there to be scared of?' He was using her own words to Peter.

She couldn't stop herself climbing the metal stairs up to the train's engine, candyfloss in hand.

'Sit,' he said, as the train slowly started moving again.

'Where are we going?' Claire asked.

'End of the line,' he said.

'Oh, OK!' That wasn't far. The tracks ended near here. The driver said nothing.

She didn't want the candyfloss. It takes forever to eat a whole one, she thought. It just wasn't possible.

'Er ... excuse me?' Claire shouted, because it was as noisy inside the train as outside. 'How long until we get there?'

'As long as it takes to eat a whole candyfloss,' the driver of the real ghost train said. The pink cloud in Claire's hand looked the same size as when she took her first bite.

'How long is that?' she asked, but she already knew the answer.

He turned to face her. Except now there was no face. There was nothing under his cap at all. 'Forever.'
Nicola Prentis

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'The ghost train is for kids!' said Claire. 'People look pretty scared when they come out,' said Peter, trying to pull her to The World's Scariest Ghost Train. 'Come on, it'll be fun!' 'They're pretending,' said Claire. 'They know it's not real, so what's there to be scared of?'