‘Easy readers’? The term may evoke memories of the simple books you learnt to read with as a child.
But besides helping five-year-olds, ‘Easy readers’ are a valuable, yet often neglected or ignored, tool for language learners.
At EasyReaders.org we like them so much we named our ebooks store after them, and they’re by far our biggest product category, with around a hundred and thirty titles published, across twelve ‘half-levels’.
We have sixty-five ‘general’ Italian easy readers, plus twenty-nine ‘History/Historical’ readers, ten ‘A Day in the Life of…’ stories (which are also historical), six classics of ‘Italian Literature’, five of ‘World Literature’, eighteen ebooks based on classic Italian movies, and nine telling the stories of operas.
None of them were written for children.
All our ‘easy readers’ for language learners have text and online audio, and all have free sample chapters to download, so you can verify that the level of the material is right for you.
Our ‘easy readers’ are best browsed on the store’s Catalog page, where you’ll find them organised by genre and in level order, from easiest to hardest: Catalog
But wait! There’s a promotion on right now. Scroll down to the P.S. to find out how to save 25% on ‘easy readers’ and other ebooks!
Not convinced ‘easy readers’ will help you progress with your Italian?
Take a look at these Frequently Asked Questions.
How will ‘easy readers’ improve my foreign language skills?
Assuming your goal is to speak and interact in the language you’re learning, listening practice is essential from day one, as whenever you speak you’ll also be listening. And if you don’t understand what others say to you…
Unfortunately, few learners get enough listening practice, which is a problem. After all, there’s not a lot of point studying grammar, vocabulary, and so on if you can’t then understand it when you hear it, right?
And if you can’t read confidently in the language you’re learning, everything will be that much harder to assimilate.
‘Easy readers’ offer the reading and listening skills practice that your language course or app may not otherwise be providing. Better still, they come at all levels, from beginner to advanced, so you can select material that’s right for your current learning stage.
How do I listen to the audio at the same time as reading the .pdf?
(Try this by downloading a free sample from our Catalog page…)
You need to juggle two applications on your device (computer, tablet, etc.), the .pdf reader (which opens the .pdf ebook) and the web browser (which will play the online audio when you click on the audio link in the ebook text).
First, download the .pdf ebook. Save it some place safe, where you’ll know to find it again. Then click on it. Your device’s usual .pdf reader will open it. On Apple devices, try using the Books app to open the .pdf download link.
‘Easy readers’ have a link to the online audio at the top of Chapter 1. The audio files for the entire text, not just Chapter 1, are available to listen to, absolutely free of charge, at Soundcloud.com. Click the audio link in the free sample chapters (get them from the Catalog page) to locate the FREE online audio files.
When you click the online audio link, a new browser window will open on your device showing the Soundcloud.com interface. Press the play button (white triangle in an orange circle). The audio will begin. Make sure you have the audio on your device turned on, and up enough so you can hear it.
You can see from the Soundcloud.com page whether the track is playing or not. If you still don’t hear anything, the problem is at your end (on your tablet, smart phone or computer.) Verify that by visiting another site with audio and seeing if THAT works. If not, you’ll need to figure out how to play audio on your device, or use a different device.
Audio playing OK? Now minimise the internet browser showing the audio player (leaving it playing.) Go back to your .pdf viewer and view the ebook as you did before. To listen and read at the same time, all you have to do is juggle the two windows (leaving both applications on and working.)
Switch to the browser to pause, stop, replay, etc. And back to the .pdf viewer to follow along with the text.
How to use your ‘easy reader’ to improve your reading/listening skills
(Try this by downloading a free sample from our Catalog page…)
1.) First read/listen at the same time. Aim to complete a chapter per study session. Don’t worry about stuff you don’t understand, don’t stop to look things up, just try to finish the chapter, reading as best you can at the speed of the audio. You should get a sense of achievement just by ‘finishing’ the audio + text, even if your understanding of it is very limited. At this first stage, that’s fine.
2.) Now (maybe another day) read again at your own pace, without the audio. Best to guess the difficult words from context if you can. Use a dictionary only if you really must, as it will make the whole thing more arduous and reduce the benefit you’ll get from actual reading… [optionally, repeat stage 1 at this point]
3.) The next stage is to listen again but this time without the text. This phase is to work on listening comprehension and only that. You should by now have a reasonable idea of what’s going on in the text, so the challenge is to see how much you can pick out when just hearing it. You can repeat this as often as you want. It’ll be hard at first, but will get easier with practice. And come back to it again in the future! As with a song, the more times you hear it, the more you might get out of it.
4.) When you’ve done all the chapters, find another ‘easy reader’ and repeat the process. Stay at approximately the same level of difficulty until you can do the steps above with confidence. Then move up to something harder, knowing though that you’ll feel less confident at first. Gradually push up through the levels until you feel confident moving on to authentic materials like novels, films, etc.
Help! I can’t figure out how to play your audio recordings multiple times.
The audio tracks for our ‘easy readers’ are hosted on Soundcloud.com, so as not to overload our store’s server. When you click on the ‘Listen online’ link (which you’ll find in the ebook text, if you look), a browser window will open showing the page at Soundcloud.com for this particular audio book. You’ll see ‘Play’ and ‘Pause’ buttons.
The problem comes when your track finishes. Where the ‘play’ and ‘pause’ controls were, you see a message ‘Explore more tracks like this on Soundcloud.com…’, when what you really want to see is the ‘Play’ command, so you can hear the track again.
Look for the little X in the right-hand corner of the Soundcloud ad. Click on that, and the grey part will disappear. You’ll then be back where you were before and will see the ‘Play’ command you need to hear the track again as many times as you wish.
How do I add the ebook to my Kindle or other ebook reader?
When you buy an ebook from our store, you’ll automatically be sent a link to download the .pdf version of the text. Other versions of the ebook text (used for Kindle/other ebook readers) can’t be downloaded that way, but will be emailed manually to buyers who request them. Do that by adding a note to your order form, or emailing us separately (just reply to any of the automated emails the online store sends you.)
When we manually email you the .mobi and/or .epub versions you asked for, save them to a location on your computer or tablet where you’ll easily be able to find them again when you need them i.e. on the desktop, or in the ‘downloads’ folder.
Switch on your Kindle/ebook reader and connect it to a computer’s USB port using the cable that came with the device when you bought it. It will appear as an external storage drive on the computer’s desktop (in Windows navigate to ‘My computer’ to find it).
Click on the device icon on your computer and look for a folder named “documents” or similar (the one in which other ebook files are stored). Now drag or copy/paste the .mobi/.epub ebook version from the location you previously saved it on your computer to the folder on your Kindle or other ebook reader.
When it has finished copying, unplug your Kindle/other ebook reader. Your ebook should then be readable on it.
Kindle users can also add .epub files to their devices by emailing them to the special ‘Kindle’ email. Locate your Kindle’s “Send-to-Kindle email address” by switching on your Kindle, selecting “Settings” from the home screen menu, then choosing “Device Options” followed by “Personalise Your Kindle”. There’s a note of your “Send-to-Kindle E-mail” under that heading.
P.S. The 2025 Spring Sale ends Sunday!
Don’t forget to save 25% on the ebooks you need to give your foreign language skills a boost in the 2025 Spring Sale!
Until Sunday March 30th 2025 everything in our online store, EasyReaders.org, is 25% cheaper IF you remember to use this coupon code:
2025-Spring-Sale-25%-Off
To get your discount, just copy and paste coupon code 2025-Spring-Sale-25%-Off into your shopping cart, then scroll down to check the cart total has been reduced by 25%.
Make your selection from our range of ebooks, which have been especially written to keep you interested and making progress:
Catalog
Or browse Italian ebooks by level: A1 | A1/A2 | A2 | A2/B1 | B1 | B1/B2 | B2 | B2/C1 | C1 | C1/C2 | C2
Coupon code 2025-Spring-Sale-25%-Off also works on graded material for learning Spanish, French or German.
Apply coupon code 2025-Spring-Sale-25%-Off in your shopping cart to reduce the cart total by 25%!
Stock up on online easy readers, parallel texts and grammar workbooks – at an unbeatable price!
Italian | French | Spanish | German
Here’s that coupon code again:
2025-Spring-Sale-25%-Off
Don’t forget to use it when you order to save 25% on the price of everything in your cart!
No longer interested?
All bulk emails we send (including this one) contain an unsubscribe link, usually at the bottom. Scroll down to find it, click the link and select ‘unsubscribe’. That will permanently remove your email address from our ebooks mailing list.
