A1 · First steps
Everyday topics in short, simple sentences.
- Polly Orders a Coffee Polly's first cafe order: good afternoon, a coffee with milk, do you have churros, the check please, how... ? Quiz included Audio
- Polly at the Market Berta takes Polly to the market. Polly buys fruit for the first time: what is this, two apples, how much, a... ? Quiz included Audio
- The Animal That Makes Cubes Wombats make cube shaped poop, and now we know why. Audio
- This Bird Sleeps While Flying Frigatebirds fly for many days and sleep only a little. Audio
- The Lunch a Whole Country Eats In the Dominican Republic, everyone eats the same lunch at the same time. Audio
- Dinner Cooked by a Volcano In the Azores, people cook food inside a hot volcano. Audio
- The Last Train Tomas misses the last train in Tokyo and sleeps in a tiny room. Audio
- The Empty Cup On his first day, Pedro drinks from a cup that is not his. Audio
A2 · Getting started
Longer stories about daily life, past and future.
- A Hill Full of Holes Men dig the blue stone out of the hill by hand, because machines would break it. ? Quiz included Audio
- The Stone Came Down the River Polly learns that the blue stone came down from the mountains, and that it has a name. ? Quiz included Audio
- The Blue Stone on the Beach Polly flies along a coast between mountains and the sea, and finds a strange blue stone. ? Quiz included Audio
- The Riders Arrive The riders arrive with jet skis and long boards, ready for the giant waves. ? Quiz included Audio
- The park next to my house A squirrel describes the small park next to its tree: the pigeons by the benches, Mr. Badger and his bread,... ? Quiz included Audio
- The City That Puts Gold On Ice Cream Kanazawa in Japan makes almost all of the country's gold leaf, and wraps whole sheets of it around soft ice... ? Quiz included Audio
- One Crater, Two Colors Polly finds a huge old crater with two lakes, one blue and one green, joined together under a strip of land. ? Quiz included Audio
- Climbing Back Up Polly climbs back up and leaves. ? Quiz included Audio
B1 · Finding your flow
Polly's weekly adventures and real-world stories.
- One Café, Two Countries In one small town, the border between Belgium and the Netherlands runs straight through streets, houses and... ? Quiz included Audio
- The Lake That Sits Below the Sea Polly finds the largest lake in the Caribbean, saltier than the ocean, lying in a valley lower than the sea. Audio
- Walk Upstream and You Will Find It The blue stone came down the river, not out of the sea. Polly follows it up into the mountains. Audio
- Eight Kilometres With Nothing On Them Polly finds an empty protected bay at the far corner of the country, then flies home over the coffee... Audio
- The Road That Runs Out of Room Polly arrives in the southwest of the Dominican Republic, where the mountains meet the sea, and finds one... Audio
- The Race Where the Cheese Always Wins Once a year in England, people chase a wheel of cheese down a dangerously steep hill, and the cheese almost... Audio
- The Day a Real Bug Broke a Computer In nineteen forty-seven, engineers found an actual moth stuck inside a giant computer, taped it into their... Audio
- The House Split Between Two Countries In a small town on the Belgian-Dutch border, some houses sit in two countries at once, and the front door... Audio
B2 · Building confidence
Real places, real news, richer language.
- Two Brand New Animals, Each the Size of a Fingernail Scientists in Montenegro just described two snail species new to science, found on limestone cliffs in a... Audio
- The Shrimp With a Sun Inside Its Claw A small ocean shrimp snaps its claw so fast that it creates a flash of heat nearly as hot as the surface of... Audio
- The Army That Lost To Birds In nineteen thirty-two the Australian military was sent against emus eating the wheat crop in Western... Audio
- Chimpanzees Have Accents A new study of more than eleven thousand recorded calls found that young chimpanzees in different parts of... Audio
- Teaching a Computer to Speak Whale Researchers are using artificial intelligence to search for real structure inside the clicking patterns of... Audio
- The Slow Heartbeat of Trees Laser scans at night revealed that trees pulse gently every few hours, possibly pumping water through their... Audio
- Ten Thousand Athletes, One Opening Night The 2026 Asian Games, hosted jointly by Aichi and Nagoya, Japan, bring together roughly ten thousand... Audio
- The Bank That Only Takes Cheese An Italian bank keeps a vault holding more than half a million wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano, accepted as... Audio
C1 · Stretch yourself
Rich, natural texts about places, history and ideas.
- The Town That Lives Inside One Building Almost the entire population of Whittier, Alaska lives inside a single fourteen storey building, reached... Audio
- One Cafe, Two Countries In the Belgian Dutch town of Baarle, the international border runs straight through streets, houses, and... Audio
- The Castle Its King Barely Lived to See Bavaria's King Ludwig the Second poured a fortune into a fairy tale castle he would inhabit for barely a... Audio
- Walking Across the Floor of the Sea Twice each day, the tide withdraws for kilometres along the Wattenmeer coast, inviting walkers onto the... Audio
- Your Phone Isn't Dead. It's Just Cold. A phone that shows forty percent battery and then dies the moment you step into the cold has not run out of... Audio
- Honey That Has Outlasted Empires Honey sealed inside Egyptian tombs thousands of years ago remains perfectly edible today, and the reason... Audio
- The Octopus That Slipped Its Lock An octopus named Inky vanished from a New Zealand aquarium overnight, and the ingenious route he took to... Audio
- Fresh Water at the Bottom of the Sea Cliff At the foot of the staircase Polly finds cold fresh water coming out of the rock at sea level, and finally... Audio
C2 · Near native
Texts written the way native speakers write.
- Two Species Nobody Had Named, Found on a Cliff Face Scientists in Montenegro have described two snail species new to science, found on limestone cliffs in a... Audio
- The War Australia Lost to Emus In nineteen thirty-two the Australian military was deployed against emus devastating the wheat crop in... Audio
- Chimpanzees, It Turns Out, Have Accents A new study of more than eleven thousand recorded calls finds that young chimpanzees in different parts of... Audio
- The Bank That Lends Against Cheese An Italian bank stores and ages more than half a million wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano, accepted as... Audio
- Why Your Map Would Be Wrong By Lunchtime Satellites tick at a different rate than clocks on the ground, and without a deliberate correction your... Audio
- The Glow Your Skin Never Stops Emitting Human skin gives off a faint light around the clock, invisible to the eye, as a Japanese team confirmed by... Audio
- What Really Carries Your Words Across an Ocean Almost everything sent between continents travels not through satellites but through cables lying on the... Audio
- The Hotel That Crosses Borders While You Sleep On a European night train, a traveller falls asleep in one country and wakes in another, with the Alps... Audio