C2 English reading
C2 texts give the context and the caveats in the style of a magazine, without simplifying. They are for readers at the top level.
In the app: the whole story at your level, listening, the quiz and the word cards.
Latest stories at C2
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A Prehistoric Boulder Stands Again in Dorset's Valley of Stones
The Bride Stone came to light while bushes and plants were being cleared to maintain the Valley of Stones National Nature Reserve in Dorset, England.
History -
From Fireballs to a Light-Day Milestone: November's Skywatching Highlights
Far beyond the naked-eye spectacles featured in NASA's skywatching guide for November 2026—a supermoon, a near alignment of Jupiter and Mars, and three separate meteor showers—a colder milestone is in the making.
Science -
After Thirty-Seven Years, Rare Fairy Terns Eye a Restored Ruakākā Nesting Ground
For 37 years, no breeding by the rare tara iti, the New Zealand fairy tern, has been confirmed at Ruakākā, where the last recorded nesting took place in 1989.
Science -
From Thirteen Acres to Nearly Seven Hundred and Fifty: The Quiet Return of Morro Bay's Eelgrass
Ten years is all it took for the underwater meadows of California's Morro Bay to all but vanish.
Science -
A Noisy First on the Albatross Livestream at Pukekura/Taiaroa Head
When an adult female Toroa, or northern royal albatross, known as L returned to the breeding colony at Pukekura/Taiaroa Head on 13 October 2026, she dispensed with the business of building a nest from scratch.
Science -
Tailoring Concrete: How a Sewn Fabric Mold Cuts Cement and Steel
Around 8 percent of anthropogenic carbon emissions stem from making cement, so trimming the concrete in a structure lowers construction's climate toll.
Technology -
The Georgian Face of a Medieval Warrior: UK Blocks Export of Black Prince Bust
Nearly three centuries ago, the Flemish sculptor Michael Rysbrack (1694–1770) carved in marble a portrait of a medieval warrior who had already been dead for almost four hundred years.
Art -
The Changing Face of Antarctica's Skull-Shaped Vega Island
East of the Antarctic Peninsula, in the Weddell Sea, Vega Island stares out toward Devil Island.
Science -
New Zealand's Smallest Penguins Face a Rising Tide of Reported Dog Attacks
Tipping the scales at 1 kg, the kororā is the smallest penguin in the world.
Science -
How Pacific Storms Open the Door to Invasive Species
When a major storm sweeps across the Pacific region, the damage left in its wake is not confined to toppled vegetation and flooded land.
Science -
A Long-Standing Division in Yellowstone's Volcanic Record Comes Unstuck
For more than half a century, the geological map of the Lava Creek Tuff has rested on a tidy boundary.
Science -
Four Decades of U.S. Wind Power Estimated to Have Claimed 18.7 Million Bats
Since the 1980s, wind power has expanded rapidly across North America, yet this growth has brought a major hazard for animals that play a key role in ecosystems by controlling pests and pollinating plants.
Science -
Satellite Tags Follow Recovered Green Sea Turtles Around New Zealand
Green sea turtles do not breed in New Zealand, yet young and sub-adult turtles—those past the early juvenile stage but not yet old enough to breed—often visit the warmer waters around the North Island before returning to nesting…
Science -
NASA Weighs Commercial Lifeline as Hubble's Orbit Slowly Decays
For more than 35 years, the Hubble Space Telescope has circled our planet in low Earth orbit, the region of space relatively close to Earth, shaping scientific understanding of the universe.
Science -
Why Southern Florida's Burmese Pythons Take to the Trees
Across the diverse habitats of southern Florida, invasive Burmese pythons are notoriously hard for wildlife managers to find and remove from the Greater Everglades ecosystem.
Science -
Seven New Bridges Await Summer Visitors as the Mangapurua Track Reopens
Following its seasonal winter closure to cyclists, the Mangapurua Track in Whanganui National Park has reopened to summer visitors, who are greeted by seven new, wider bridges along the route.
Science -
A Double Ring of Planetary Wreckage Around a Dead Star
When a Sun-like star exhausts its fuel, the end is anything but quiet.
Science -
Social.Wiki Hands the Keys of Social Media Back to Users
Conventional social media platforms rely on rigid, one-size-fits-all designs that give ordinary users almost no power to alter unwanted features.
Technology -
A Digital Boarding Pass for a Voyage to Titan
NASA is offering members of the public the chance to send their names to Titan, Saturn's largest moon, aboard a rotorcraft called Dragonfly.
Science -
Reading the Lumps and Lasers at Mars's Nazca Block
Having wrapped up its Basque Lakes drill campaign, the Curiosity rover rolled a few meters from a rock block called Chiu Chiu during Sols 5043 to 5049.
Science -
Two Telescopes Trace a Feline Pillar in the Carina Nebula
Roughly 7,500 light-years from Earth—a light-year being the distance light travels through space in a single year—sits a star-forming region inside the Carina Nebula with a feline silhouette.
Science -
A Snake-Inspired Robot Built for the Small Intestine
Deep inside the body lies the small intestine, a narrow tract an inch wide and between 20 and 25 feet long.
Technology -
Twenty-Five Years of Wings on the Water at Bitter Lake
Where the Chihuahuan Desert meets the southern plains near Roswell, New Mexico, water appears in unexpected variety.
Science -
Checking the Cays for Rats and Iguanas in Virgin Islands National Park
The small offshore islands of Virgin Islands National Park once hosted large nesting colonies of seabirds, with Laughing Gulls, Roseate Terns, and Red-billed Tropicbirds gathering there to breed.
Science -
From Ancient Ash to America's Newest National Park: The Standing-Up Rocks of Chiricahua
Long before the United States designated the area a national monument in 1924 to protect its unusual rock formations, the Apache had a name for this corner of southeastern Arizona.
Science -
Mapping the Uneven Pace of Warming Across the United States
Compared with the preindustrial baseline of 1850 to 1900, Earth's average surface temperature has risen by about 1.63 degrees Celsius.
Technology -
A 90-Sol Lifespan and Fifteen Years in the Dust: The Long Run of Opportunity
Designed for a lifespan of 90 sols—each Martian day stretching slightly beyond Earth's 24 hours—the NASA rover Opportunity, nicknamed Oppy, ended up operating on Mars from 2004 to 2019.
Science -
Tiny Magnets Track Muscle Movement to Guide Future Prosthetics
Controlling a prosthetic limb like a natural one demands accurate measurements of muscle movement at the amputation site.
Technology -
Forty-Nine Years On, Voyager 1 Nears One Light-Day from the Sun
Forty-nine years after leaving Earth in 1977, the Voyager 1 spacecraft is expected on 18 November 2026 to reach a distance of one light-day—16.1 billion miles—from the Sun.
Science -
Dual-Filament Software Brings Multi-Axis Sensing to 3D-Printed Objects
Earlier attempts to 3D print objects with built-in sensing ran into a stubborn physical problem: their internal parts talked over one another.
Technology