70 Proficiency and CPE (C2) English Reading Exercises: Student Edition eBook

Improve your level and knowledge of English vocabulary on challenging diverse topics (e.g. art, work, science, psychology etc...) for the Cambridge Proficiency C2 exam by reading our specially designed PDF eBook.

Just going to classes or doing an online course isn't enough if you want to improve your English. Although both are important, it's what you do outside of them that makes the difference in how quickly you improve your level of the language.

If you really want to improve your English further, you need to regularly read in English.

If you are an English teacher, click here to learn about the teacher version of this eBook.

Looking for other levels? Explore our B2 Level Reading eBook and C1 Level Reading eBook.

To help my own Cambridge Proficiency C2 exam students, I decided to make my own material for them to read outside of class. Articles and pieces of writing which were not only challenging enough that they would continue improving their already very good level of English whilst reading them, but were also intellectually stimulating too.

In addition, the articles were on a wide variety of different topic areas to help them broaden their knowledge of English vocabulary and prepare them for the exercises which they would encounter in the actual exam.

It took me over a year to create all of this reading material and to get it just right. And the result of all this hard work is this eBook.

What's in the eBook

To start with, this edition of the eBook has been specifically designed to be used by students by themselves. There are 70 reading exercises in it and each exercise includes:

A long text (none less than 1000 words)

A vocabulary exercise where you'll learn 7 essential words and phrases from the text

A page to create your own sentences with the vocabulary you've learnt

Click here to see a list of the titles of the text of the 70 reading exercises

The 70 texts in the eBook

The intelligence of plants
Superstitions and their strange origins
Jordan: A spectacular country with unfortunately too few tourists
The myth of meritocracy in education
The comparative failure of online grocery shopping
Can fashion be considered to be art?
Ten inventions that radically changed our world
What makes solo endurance athletes keep going?
Is human habitation on Mars possible?
The questionable validity and morality of using IQ tests
Is wind power the answer for our future energy needs?
The history of astrology
Our changing spending habits at Christmas
The importance of stories for us
Is lab-grown meat a good thing for us?
Is there any difference between men's and women's brains?
ASMR: Making money through making very soft sounds
Why many of us don't really work when at work
The worrying disappearance of the right to free speech at British universities
Changing the image of classical music
The discovery which is reshaping the theory of our origins
Sleep and its importance
Wealth and happiness: Are the two connected?
Punishing the parents for their kids underage drinking
Reintroducing wolves and other lost species back into the wild in Britain
Everest and death: Why people are still willing to climb mountain of the dead
The debate on whether being overweight is unhealthy
The importance of Conrad's 'The Heart of Darkness'
The resistance to moving from steam power to electricity in manufacturing
The significance of colour
The work of artist Jackson Pollock
Food imagery and manipulation
The urgency of acting now to stop climate change
Trying to reverse the declining demand for humanities majors in America
How the tulip caused the world's first economic crash
A review of the film "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri"
Our personality traits appear to be mostly inherited
Is it right for people to go to Africa to hunt?
The new palaces of the 21st century
Understanding contemporary dance
America's six best hiking trails
Why the disappearance of livestock farming is good for us all
Can we trust our memories?
Why Mary Shelly's Frankenstein is still relevant today
Customer complaints are good for business
How the discovery of plate tectonics revolutionised are understanding of our planet
Is there a conflict between saving the planet and reducing poverty?
No more rock stars anymore
Are the rich better than the rest of us?
Globalisation and how societies have always evolved
The reasons for the decline in wine consumption in France
The merits of being a fair-weather sports fan
The reason why homeopathic treatment does work with patients
Is the gentrification of parts of cities a really bad thing?
The origins of the metric system
Do prisons work?
All you need to know about depression
The future of work
The difficulties for us to colonise the galaxy
The shredding of Banksy's "Girl With Balloon" at auction: Stunt or statement?
Why a decline in the planet's biodiversity is a threat to us all
Should we profile people in society to predict behaviour?
A review of Vincent LoBrutto's biography of Stanley Kubrick
Is free trade between countries a good thing?
Is freshwater the biggest challenge we will face this century?
The problems of relying on metrics to gauge performance
Should you use the carrot or the stick with your children?
Stefan Zweig: The life of a citizen of the world
The evolution of science and thought throughout the ages part 1
The evolution of science and thought throughout the ages part 2

Close the exercise list

In addition to this, you'll also find in the eBook a tried and tested method for using these reading exercises to improve your English quicker.

The material in the eBook will last you for over 6 months of regular reading.

How the eBook will help you

The material in this eBook will help you quickly improve your English in a number of different areas:

Improve your reading

Each reading exercise has a text that has been specifically written and adapted for people whose level of English is proficiency (or high advanced) or are studying for the Cambridge CPE exam. The texts cover a wide range of different topics (from science to art and everything in between) and this will broaden your knowledge of English vocabulary.

Improve your vocabulary

In addition to the text, each reading exercise contains a vocabulary exercise. In this, you will learn the meaning of 7 carefully selected phrases and words from the text. These are words and phrases which I have noticed over that students at your level commonly don't know, don't use or use incorrectly.

Improve your performance in the Cambridge C2 exam

For students who are preparing for the Cambridge Proficiency C2 exam, having a good knowledge of diverse topics and the English vocabulary used in them will make doing an exercise on a topic a lot easier to do if they encounter it in the exam. And this eBook has articles on all the main topic areas which you'll find used in the Cambridge Proficiency C2 exam.

Make you remember the vocabulary

It would be pointless for you to learn the meaning of these words and phrases and then forget what they mean. To ensure you remember them, each reading exercise comes with a page for you to write a sentence in your own words for each of the 7 words and phrases you learnt in the vocabulary exercise.

Get your copy now

The cost for all of this material is €12 (around $14). When you take into consideration how long it will take you to read all the material (over 6 months) and how much it will help you improve your English, it is cheap for the price.

I've been giving my own students these reading exercises for over five years now and I'm very happy with the results I've seen. Not only with seeing how it has improved their level of English (and consequently how well they do in the exam), but also seeing how much they enjoy the topics of the reading exercises that they always want to talk about what they've read in class.

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