Checkpoint English
Reading passages
Read a real 0861 passage and answer — no sign-up. The AI marks 3 answers a day; a free account marks 30 a day.
Upriver at Dawn
Read the non-fiction travel text, then answer the questions. In this extract the writer travels by canoe with a local guide, Awa, up a remote rainforest river in Borneo, hoping to reach a waterfall that few outsiders have ever seen.
The floating islands of Lake Titicaca
Read the non-fiction article, then answer all the questions. The text is about the floating reed islands of the Uros people on Lake Titicaca in South America.
The quiet genius of the clothes peg
Read the non-fiction text about design, then answer all the questions. It is a reflective piece about the design of an everyday object — the wooden clothes peg.
The Glasshouse After Hours
Read this fiction extract, then answer the questions. On the closing night of a grand flower fair, a mysterious visitor comes to see the prize-winning gardener Marisol Vane — and discovers that the real wonder in the glasshouse is someone else entirely.
Sea-Sparkle
A first-person fiction extract. A grandmother has brought her ten-year-old granddaughter, Mira, to an old boathouse on the estuary, hoping that the glowing 'sea-sparkle' plankton will bloom in the bay.
The Regent Theatre
Read this piece of modern fiction, then answer the questions. A young narrator secretly slips into a boarded-up theatre at the top of her town, drawn back again and again by its grand piano — until, one stormy Friday, she is no longer alone.
When the whole country tuned in
Read the non-fiction text, then answer all the questions. It is a lively piece of popular history about how quickly the radio spread through American homes in the 1920s.
The Hospital Upstairs
Read this piece of modern fiction, then answer the questions. Twelve-year-old Kiri was born on a tiny Pacific island and came to England with her mum when she was two. They now live with Mum's partner, Gordon, in the old mill town of Brackwell.