VersaText Preloaded Texts
Information and links

Authentic texts

There are ten pre-loaded authentic texts.  The texts are: 
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Extreme weather could kill up to 152,000 a year in Europe by 2100, an online news story from the BBC, 5.08.17.

Czech Republic’s unrivalled system of marked walking trails, an article in Radio Prague International, 5.12.2003.

Naming as social practice, from Talk, Text and Technology,  Inge Kral’s book on a remote indigenous community in Australia (2012).

Mad Cows Disease, from an article by Deborah Mackenzie, BSE: it's not over yet. Mad mutton could be as big a threat as mad cows. 2012. 

How to get better at things you care about, the transcript of the TED talk by Eduardo Briceño. 

Building after bushfires . This is the short name for an article entitled, Before we rush to rebuild after fires, we need to think about where and how, from The Conversation, 17.01.2020.

Chunking, an article by Ben Zimmer in the New York Times Magazine, Sept 16, 2010.

Study Buddy is a parsnipped version of a text for a forthcoming book, You can do more with more.

Facing the mob in Wangarratta,  an open letter from Nick Cave to Jenny on his Red Hands blog , January 2019.
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A Guardian review of Michael Haneke’s film, Amour by Peter Bradshaw, 20.5.2012.

Graded Readers

There are ten graded reader texts kindly supplied by  Wayzgoose Press.

The short texts come from the anthologies:

• Urban Legends (UL) told by David Bohlke 
• Humans in Space (HS) by Martin Hajovksy
• Folk Tales (FT) told by Jessica Williams

CEFR A2
from Urban Legends (UL)

• The Keyhole
• The Hitchhiker
• The Selfie 

CEFR B1

• The Babysitter (UL)
• From Failure to Success (HS)
• Keloğlan and the Magic Stone (FT)
• The Musician (FT)

CEFR B2

• Mars in Our Future ( HS)
• The Gift of the Magi ​by O'Henry adapted by Dorothy Zemach
• The Monkey’s Paw by W.W. Jacobs adapted by Dorothy Zemach