A further selection of texts can be found by selecting the Reading Comprehension option which is listed under the Reading options on the VLC home page.

There are also the Reading for fun passages using Sherlock Holmes stories, the dialog and story of the film Casablanca, and also articles from the SCMP and EarthBase, which feature the Active Dictionary pages that allow direct links to the online dictionary, as well as some miscellaneous Cloze (gapped) passages specifically written for ESL learners. Some texts are also done as Proof Reading exercises.

A reading text with dictionary link

Of special interest is the Listen and learn section which includes RealAudio sound along with the text.

How to study.

Internet online news is a valuable source of texts, and we try to make it easier to read them by providing explicit help with vocabulary, and any difficult words which you might not know can be looked up in the Net Dictionary. The exercises are mostly mutlple choice vocabulary gap fills, or grammar based gap fills or multple choice comprehension questions. 

Before reading the texts be sure to study any vocabulary items listed at the top, and check their entries in the Dictionary. To select the missing words choose from the items listed in the drop down combo boxes as in the example below.

A vocabulary exercise

As with many other VLC exercises, the Vocabulary window appears at the bottom of the frame. This allows you look up words in the Dictionary by typing in the edit box, and it where any Active Dictionary references will appear.

The Vocabulary window

Some exercises such as the Reading Comprehension passages have multiple choice questions which appear in a smaller window at the foot of the frame, as in the next example. The highlighted phrase is linked to a bookmark in the main text window. Mouse-clicking on the link will display the bookmark reference at the top of the text window.

The Questions windows

Text Profiling for Vocabulary Study.

Other special VLC features which enable you to more easily study and identify vocabulary for texts are the Unique Word and Word Frequency text profile utilities. These enable you to list all the words used in any text, and compare the words with word frequency lists which are displayed in different colours. You can see easily how many words in a text are common or unusual, and these are also Active Dictionary pages so that any words can be referred to the dictionary.   

A Word Frequency Profile for a Text

You can do this for any text by pasting the text into the Text Area provided. If it is a VLC text use the browser Edit Menu functions to select and copy the text. Some VLC texts already provide word profiles which can be viewed by clicking the links. All the texts in the Cloze and Reading Comprehension sections have word profiles.