Guides · Stories
Short stories in English for ESL learners.
Two complete stories, from London and Melbourne, and the opening of a third from Arizona, with the grammar each one teaches, British, American and Australian English, and a lesson for teachers.
November 7, 2026
In a study published in 1983, Warwick Elley and Francis Mangubhai sent 250 illustrated storybooks in English to each class in eight rural schools in Fiji, schools that had very few books. The 380 children in those classes were learning English as a second language, and their sixteen teachers were shown two ways of getting them to read the books. After eight months, the children had progressed in reading and listening comprehension at twice the rate of 234 matched children who stayed on the normal structured English course. After twenty months the gap was wider, and it had spread to other skills.
The books weren’t chosen to teach grammar. They were chosen to be read: short, interesting, and plenty of them. That is still the best brief we know for a short story in English for an ESL student, at any age. Below are two complete stories that meet it, one from London at A1 and one from Melbourne at A2, and the opening of a third, from Arizona, at B1, with what each one teaches and how to use it in class.
The short answer
Good short stories for ESL students are written at the reader’s level, short enough to finish in one sitting, and about something worth finishing. Two complete free ones are on this page, Kenji in London: The Wrong Bus (A1) and The Last Train (A2), plus the opening of The Long Road (B1). Read each one for the story first, then go back for the grammar.
And read every kind of English. These three are set in Britain, Australia and the United States, each spelled the way its setting spells. Write in one variety; read them all.
Facing Pages · bilingual stories
English stories with your own language on the facing page
228 original stories in Spanish, French and English, with your own language on the facing page, matched sentence by sentence. The first episode of every series is free, and there’s no account to make.
Reading this on a computer?
Scan the code with your phone’s camera. It opens the App Store or Google Play, whichever your phone uses. No account needed.
Or text yourself the linkWhat “at your level” means
A story is at your level when you can follow it without stopping more than a few times a page. We write ours to hard limits, and the three below keep to them:
| Our limits | Beginner (A1–A2) | Intermediate (B1) |
|---|---|---|
| Length | 150 to 300 words | 400 to 700 words |
| Sentences | 10 words on average, 14 at most | 15 words on average, 22 at most |
| Vocabulary | About the 1,000 most common words, plus up to 8 topic words | About the 2,500 most common words, plus up to 12 topic words |
| Grammar | Present simple and continuous, simple past, can, going to | Adds the past continuous, present perfect, will, first and second conditionals, the simple passive and common phrasal verbs |
| Not yet | The passive, perfect tenses, conditionals | The third conditional, reported speech, idioms |
The CEFR, the Council of Europe’s six-level scale, calls A1 and A2 “basic user” and B1 “independent user,” and you can feel the line in these stories. Kenji’s, at A1, never leaves the present tense. Ruby’s, at A2, is told in the past. By B1, a character can talk about her whole life so far and bargain about what might happen tonight, and that takes two new pieces of grammar. Our guide to the CEFR levels has the rest of the scale.
A1, London: The Wrong Bus
The first episode of a series. Kenji is nineteen, from Osaka, on his way to an English school in Camden. An ESL student, in other words, and on his first morning he has to do what every learner dreads: ask a stranger for help.
On his first morning in London, Kenji is on a big red bus. It is the wrong bus, but he doesn’t know it yet.
Kenji is nineteen, and he is from Osaka, in Japan. Today he is going to his new English school in Camden.
He sits upstairs, at the front. Next to him, there is a woman with a grey parrot in a cage.
“Hello, darling!” says the parrot.
Kenji laughs and looks out of the window. He can see a river, but it is not on his map.
“Excuse me,” Kenji says to the woman. “Is this bus going to Camden?”
“Oh dear, no,” she says. “It’s the right number, but it’s going the wrong way.”
“Oh no!” says Kenji. “My class starts at nine o’clock!”
“Don’t worry, dear,” says the woman. “Get off at the next stop. Then take the number 24 on the other side of the road.”
She writes the bus number in Kenji’s little blue notebook. The notebook is full of new English words.
“Are you a student?” she asks.
“Yes,” says Kenji. “I’m in a hotel now, but I need a room.”
The woman smiles and writes something else in the notebook. “Read this later,” she says.
At the next stop, Kenji says thank you three times. Then he gets off the bus.
“Bye-bye, darling!” says the parrot.
Kenji crosses the road and gets on another number 24. This time, it is going the right way. He arrives at school at one minute to nine.
In class, Kenji finds a message in his notebook. “I have a room for rent in Camden,” it says. There is a name, Mrs Bell, and a phone number.
Kenji smiles. He needs a room, and he really likes that parrot.
Everything happens in the present, and the story uses both presents. The simple present moves it forward: Kenji sits, laughs, crosses, arrives. The present continuous is for what is going on at a given moment: “Is this bus going to Camden?” “It’s going the wrong way.” One line looks like a mistake and isn’t. “My class starts at nine o’clock!” is about the future, but English puts timetables in the simple present. The class starts at nine; the train leaves at six.
Then come directions, in the imperative, the bare verb with no subject: “Get off at the next stop. Then take the number 24 on the other side of the road.” That is how English gives instructions, and it isn’t rude. Get off, and later gets on, are the first phrasal verbs most learners need. A bus is a good place to learn them.
The details are real. The 24 is a London bus route that runs from Pimlico, beside the Thames, through Westminster and the West End to Camden Town, so a 24 heading south, away from Camden, is heading for the river. The English is London’s too: a grey parrot, not a gray one, and Mrs Bell with no period after Mrs, the way British writers usually leave it. And notice what the story never says: that the woman on the bus is Mrs Bell. You work it out, and that small inference is reading, not decoding.
A2, Melbourne: The Last Train
Ruby, a nurse, has worked twelve hours and missed the last train home. Every place in the story is real: Flinders Street station in central Melbourne; Frankston, a little over an hour away at the end of its train line; St Kilda Beach.
Ruby ran into Flinders Street Station at five past twelve. She was too late. The last train to Frankston was gone.
Ruby was a nurse at a hospital in the city. That day, she worked twelve hours, and her feet hurt. Frankston was an hour away, and a taxi was very expensive.
She walked slowly back to the hospital. The nurses on the night shift were in the staff room.
“Ruby, why are you still here?” asked Mele.
“I missed the last train,” said Ruby.
Everybody on the night shift wanted to help. Jack had a car, but he worked until seven in the morning. Dr Lee had a bike, but it only had one seat.
Then Mele picked up her phone and smiled.
“My husband, Sione, is awake,” she said. “He’s watching the cricket on TV. He can drive you home in his van.”
“What kind of van is it?” asked Ruby.
Mele only laughed. Forty minutes later, there was music outside the hospital. The song was happy and very loud. A big pink ice-cream van stopped at the door.
“Your taxi is here!” said Mele.
Sione had a big, friendly smile. In summer, he sold ice creams at St Kilda Beach.
“Sorry,” he said. “The music doesn’t turn off.”
So Ruby went home in an ice-cream van, with music all the way. People looked out of their windows. A man at a bus stop waved at them.
At two o’clock, the van stopped outside Ruby’s flat. Her flatmate, Tash, ran out in her pyjamas.
“Can I have a chocolate ice cream, please?” she asked.
The next night, Ruby finished work early. But she didn’t run to the station. She walked to the staff room.
“Mele,” she said with a big smile, “is Sione awake?”
| English | Meaning |
|---|---|
| nurse | a person who looks after sick people in a hospital (noun) |
| night shift | the hours when people work at night (noun) |
| staff room | a room at work where workers can rest (noun) |
| expensive | costing a lot of money (adjective) |
| cricket | a sport with a bat and a ball, very popular in Australia (noun) |
| ice-cream van | a van that sells ice cream and plays music (noun) |
| wave | to move your hand to say hello or goodbye (verb) |
| flatmate | a person who shares a flat with you (noun) |
| pyjamas | soft clothes that you wear in bed (noun) |
The narration is all simple past, and its irregular verbs are some of the most common in English: ran, was, hurt, had, said, sold, went. Hurt is the sly one. It’s the same in the past as in the present, so “her feet hurt” is past only because the sentences around it are. The negative takes did and the base form: “she didn’t run to the station,” never “didn’t ran.”
The dialogue slips back into the present, because people speak in the present even in a story told in the past: “Ruby, why are you still here?” “He’s watching the cricket on TV.” And in “He can drive you home in his van,” can is an offer, not a remark about how well Sione drives.
We spell our Australian stories the British way, so it’s pyjamas, not pajamas, and the words lean British too. Ruby lives in a flat with a flatmate, where an American would have an apartment and a roommate. Her ride home is an ice-cream van; in the United States it would be an ice cream truck. Dr Lee, like Mrs Bell, has no period.
B1, Arizona: the opening of The Long Road
Two retired teachers from Tucson, best friends for sixty-five years, are driving to the Grand Canyon when their car gives up in the desert. Here are the first fourteen paragraphs, a little more than half the story.
The old yellow car made a loud bang, then a sad little cough, and then it stopped. Marisol Delgado and Bernie Walsh looked at each other. Around them, there was nothing but red rocks, cactus and desert.
“Well,” said Bernie, “this is new.”
The two women met in first grade, and sixty-five years later they were still best friends. They were both retired teachers from Tucson. Marisol taught history for forty years, and Bernie taught science.
This trip was Bernie’s idea. “I’ve lived in Arizona all my life, and I’ve never seen the Grand Canyon,” she said in January. “This year, we’re going.”
Now they were standing beside a broken car on a long, empty road. Marisol’s phone had no signal. Then Bernie pointed at a small building about a mile away. On the roof, a big sign said, “Prickly Pear Diner.” Under it, smaller letters said, “Open, probably.”
They walked to the diner under the hot evening sun. When they opened the door, they both stopped in surprise. It was only a Tuesday evening, but the little diner was completely full.
A tall woman with a pencil behind her ear hurried over. Her name tag said, “Dolores, Owner and Mayor.”
“You’re just in time,” said Dolores. “It’s quiz night, and the whole town is here.”
“Our car broke down,” said Marisol. “Is there a mechanic in town?”
Dolores pointed at a big man with a gray beard, who was eating pie at the corner table. “That’s Hank,” she said. “He’s the only mechanic for fifty miles, but he never works on quiz night. He’s won the quiz nine years in a row.”
Hank looked up from his pie and shook his head. “Sorry, ladies,” he said. “Cars break down out here every day, and they can wait until morning.”
Bernie looked at Marisol, and Marisol looked at the quiz papers on the tables. Then they both smiled. They were teachers, after all, and teachers love a test.
“If we win the quiz, will you fix our car tonight?” asked Marisol.
The whole diner laughed, and Hank laughed loudest. “Sure,” he said. “If you win, I’ll fix it tonight for free.”
The third and fourth paragraphs put side by side a B1 grammar point that many learners of English find hard. “Marisol taught history for forty years”: simple past, though it lasted forty years, because it’s over. She’s retired. “I’ve lived in Arizona all my life, and I’ve never seen the Grand Canyon”: present perfect, because Bernie’s life in Arizona, and her chance to see the canyon, aren’t over. How long something lasted doesn’t decide the tense. Whether its time is finished does. The same rule explains Hank’s record, “He’s won the quiz nine years in a row”: the run isn’t over.
Then Marisol makes a bet in the first conditional, and Hank answers in it. “If we win the quiz, will you fix our car tonight?” “If you win, I’ll fix it tonight for free.” The present goes after if; will goes in the other half. “If we will win” is the mistake to listen for.
The American English is quieter than Kenji’s British, but it’s there: a gray beard, spelled with an a; first grade, a year of American elementary school; a diner. Who wins the quiz is in the app, where the whole story is free.
British, American, Australian: which English to read
Learners often ask which English to learn, as if they had to choose before reading anything. They don’t. Cambridge English, which sets the A2 Key, B1 Preliminary and B2 First exams, says either British or American spelling can be used in its Writing tests, as long as each word is spelled the same way all the way through, and that its Listening tests use a variety of accents. Its advice to parents is blunt: “There’s no right or wrong type of English.”
So our stories are spelled the way their setting spells: American for American stories, British for British, Irish and Australian ones, Canadian for Canadian ones. The free ones alone make a small collection of pairs.
| British, Irish, Australian | American | Where they turn up |
|---|---|---|
| grey | gray | Kenji’s grey parrot in London; Hank’s gray beard in Arizona |
| neighbours | neighbors | My Grandmother’s Garden, in Cork; Dev’s Dogs, in San Francisco |
| mum | mom | The Garage Band, in Liverpool; Dev’s Dogs |
| Mrs Bell, Dr Lee | Mr. Lowe | London and Melbourne; San Francisco |
| theatre, centre | theater, center | A theatre in The Interview, in London; a senior center in The Letter in the Wall, in Boston |
| practice (the noun), practise (the verb) | practice for both | The Garage Band has both: the band “practised on a timetable,” and its “first practice” went badly |
Canadian English sits in between, and the stories show it. In The Lost Property Office, set in Toronto, a cardigan is the colour of porridge and a moustache is grey, but a boy’s homework is math, not maths, and Mr. Leung keeps his period.
Our advice is Cambridge’s, made practical. Pick one spelling for your own writing and keep to it. Then read stories from everywhere and collect the differences one pair at a time. They are a handful of patterns and some everyday words, not two languages.
Facing Pages · bilingual stories
English stories with your own language on the facing page
228 original stories in Spanish, French and English, with your own language on the facing page, matched sentence by sentence. The first episode of every series is free, and there’s no account to make.
Reading this on a computer?
Scan the code with your phone’s camera. It opens the App Store or Google Play, whichever your phone uses. No account needed.
Or text yourself the linkYour own language on the facing page
Facing Pages has 83 English stories, beginner to advanced, set from Bath to Singapore; a selection at every level is free, and so is the first episode of every series. Facing the English is your own language, matched sentence by sentence and translated on your phone itself (Apple’s translation on iPhone and iPad, Google’s ML Kit on Android), in about 20 languages, privately, and offline once your language is downloaded.
That makes the facing page a machine translation. Treat it as one: good for checking a sentence, not a model to copy. Read the English sentence first and look across only when it won’t come clear, the habit our guide to parallel text sets out.
Tap a sentence and its partner lights up. Tap a word to see it in your language, and save it with the sentence you found it in. Every sentence can be read aloud by the phone’s own voices, highlighted as it’s spoken, and a Reading speed setting slows the voice down. The app’s menus come in eight languages and follow your phone’s, so a beginner isn’t also finding their way around in English. On an iPhone or a closed iPhone Duo, the English fills the page and your language appears only for the sentence you tap.
In the classroom
For a teacher, the useful thing about a 300-word story is that it fits a lesson with time to spare. Here is how we’d spend twenty-five minutes on The Wrong Bus.
- Before reading: write the title on the board and ask what can go wrong on a bus. Teach stop and get off; leave the rest to the story.
- First read, silently, with one question to answer: who is Mrs Bell?
- Second read, aloud, by you or by the app’s voice, with everyone following the text.
- A grammar hunt: underline every verb ending in -ing, then find the one sentence about the future that uses the simple present.
- Speaking, in pairs: one student is lost; the other gives directions, in imperatives, to a place near the school.
- Writing, for homework: the text message Kenji sends Mrs Bell.
Comprehension questions, from facts to inference: Why is Kenji on the wrong bus when the number is right? What does the woman write in his notebook, and when? What time does he get to school? Why does he smile at the end?
Then remember Fiji. One story studied closely is a lesson, but the children in Elley and Mangubhai’s study weren’t given one story to study. Each class was given 250. Set three more for the week, to read for pleasure, with no questions. And in a class that speaks five languages, each student can read on their own phone with their own language on the facing page.
On page one, Kenji’s notebook is full of new English words. By the last line, the most useful thing in it is a phone number. That’s what a story gives you and a word list can’t: somewhere for the words to go.
Questions
What are good short stories for ESL students?
Stories written at the student’s level, short enough to finish in one sitting, about people doing things that matter to them, in real places. This page has two complete ones, The Wrong Bus (A1, London) and The Last Train (A2, Melbourne), and the opening of The Long Road (B1, Arizona).
Where can I read short stories in English for free?
On this page: two complete stories and the opening of a third. In the Facing Pages app, a selection of English stories at every level is free, as is the first episode of every series, with your own language on the facing page.
Does reading books improve English?
Yes, if they’re easy enough to read without stopping constantly. In Elley and Mangubhai’s 1983 study in Fiji, children learning English who were given many storybooks progressed in reading and listening comprehension at twice the rate of children on the usual course. Pair reading with listening for speed and pronunciation.
What is A1 level English?
The first level of the Council of Europe’s CEFR scale: a beginner who can understand and use familiar everyday expressions and very basic phrases. A1 stories in our library stay within about the 1,000 most common words, mostly in the present tense, and run 150 to 300 words.
Is A2 beginner or intermediate?
Beginner. The CEFR groups A1 and A2 together as “basic user”; B1 is the first “independent user” level, the one usually called intermediate. A2 readers can manage short, simple stories in everyday language, often told in the simple past.
What is B1 level English?
The first independent level of the CEFR, where you can follow the main points of clear writing and speech on familiar subjects. Cambridge’s B1 Preliminary exam tests it. In our stories, B1 brings the present perfect, the first and second conditionals and everyday phrasal verbs.
What is the difference between British and American spelling?
Mostly a handful of patterns, such as neighbour and neighbor or theatre and theater, plus single words like grey and gray, and Mr and Mrs usually written without a period in Britain. Cambridge English accepts either spelling in its Writing tests, as long as you keep to one.
Facing Pages · bilingual stories
English stories with your own language on the facing page
228 original stories in Spanish, French and English, with your own language on the facing page, matched sentence by sentence. The first episode of every series is free, and there’s no account to make.
Reading this on a computer?
Scan the code with your phone’s camera. It opens the App Store or Google Play, whichever your phone uses. No account needed.
Or text yourself the link