A reading course in contemporary non-fiction prose
Advanced English: Reading and Vocabulary
Fifty original passages of approximately one thousand words, each followed by a glossary of the advanced vocabulary it contains. Written for readers at CEFR C1–C2 who are already comfortable in English and now want to read it well: to handle the density, irony, hedging and register-shifting of real professional prose. Nothing here has been simplified.
Lessons50
Words per passagec. 1,000
Glossed items1,400
Distinct registers50
Begin at Lesson 01 Method and use Complete text (PDF, 263 pp.)
On the order of the lessons
There are no units and no grouping by subject. Lesson 01 is a policy explainer on digital currency; Lesson 02 is scene-driven reportage on de-extinction; Lesson 03 is a contrarian essay on why machines play chess well and fold laundry badly. Two constraints were imposed on the sequence: no two consecutive lessons are drawn from the same field, and no two open in the same register.
Material grouped by subject is more comfortable to study and measurably worse to learn from, since grouping permits the reader to settle into one vocabulary field and one register and coast. Interleaving obliges the reader to determine, on each occasion, what kind of text is at hand. Lesson 23 sets out the evidence, and is worth reading early.
Contents
| No. | Title | Subject | Register |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Money as Software | Central bank digital currency and the architecture of payment systems | Formal policy explainer — neutral, definitional, scrupulously balanced |
| 02 | Bringing Back the Thunder Beast | De-extinction, rewilding and ecological restoration | Narrative non-fiction — scene-driven reportage, present tense, observed detail |
| 03 | Easy Is Hard | Humanoid robots and Moravec's paradox | Analytical essay — contrarian, paradox-driven, rhetorical questions |
| 04 | The Ethics of Repair | Conservation, restoration and what authenticity means | Reflective formal essay — philosophical, balanced, first-person plural |
| 05 | The Organ You Were Not Born With | The gut microbiome and the gut–brain axis | Popular-science feature — semi-formal, second person, conversational authority |
| 06 | A Thousand Small Stupidities | Swarm robotics, stigmergy and emergent behaviour | Comparative science writing — playful, structurally patterned, analogical |
| 07 | Everything, All at Once | The transformer architecture and attention mechanisms | Mechanism explainer — precise, step-by-step, diagrammatic |
| 08 | The Shape of the Problem | Protein folding, structure prediction and AlphaFold | Analogy-led explainer — patient, sequential, one extended figure |
| 09 | Thirty Years Away, Forever | Fusion energy and the gap between demonstration and power | Feature journalism — scene, history, technical exposition, earned scepticism |
| 10 | Marginal Gains | Sports science and the engineering of performance | Interview-based profile — quoted speech, informal, interruptive |
| 11 | Nine Hours in the Killifish Room | The biology of ageing and cellular senescence | Long-form laboratory profile — observational, quoted speech, humane |
| 12 | The Century That Forgot Itself | Digital preservation, format obsolescence and data decay | Reflective essay — elegiac, long cadences, first-person plural |
| 13 | The Microbes in Your Kitchen | Fermentation chemistry and controlled spoilage | Enthusiast's informal essay — chatty, contractions, direct address, jokes |
| 14 | The Architecture of Choice | Behavioural economics, defaults and the limits of nudging | Experimental research report — cautious, self-correcting |
| 15 | The Forest Was a City | Lidar archaeology and the rewriting of tropical prehistory | Discovery reportage — revelatory structure, withheld conclusion |
| 16 | The Thirsty Cathedral | Data centres, electricity and water | Investigative journalism — adversarial, document-driven, sceptical of official statements |
| 17 | Machines Without Bones | Soft robotics and compliant actuation | Academic survey paper — abstract-led, passive-dominant |
| 18 | Reasonable Degree of Certainty | Forensic science and the limits of expert comparison evidence | Investigative-critical — measured, forensic cadence, precise about language |
| 19 | Who Owns the Commons? | Open-source software, maintenance and governance | Opinion essay — argumentative, concessive, professionally polemical |
| 20 | A Letter to a Founder Who Just Raised | Venture capital, portfolio mathematics and incentive alignment | Epistolary — direct address, candid, semi-formal, contractions permitted |
| 21 | Farming Upwards | Vertical farming and controlled-environment agriculture | Investor-facing analysis — hard-headed, thesis-driven, willing to conclude |
| 22 | The Ghost in the Ledger | Stablecoins and the settlement layer of digital asset markets | Investigative financial analysis — forensic, sceptical, question-driven |
| 23 | The Difficulty That Helps You | Learning science — spacing, retrieval and desirable difficulty | Instructional semi-formal — direct address, evidence-led, immediately applicable |
| 24 | Four Kilometres Down | Deep-sea mining of polymetallic nodules | Balanced argumentative essay — steel-manning both positions, explicit about uncertainty |
| 25 | The Farm That Watches Itself | Drones, sensing and precision agriculture | Rural reportage — plain, sensory, quoted speech, semi-formal |
| 26 | Microseconds | Algorithmic trading and market microstructure | Technical journalism — fast, concrete, short sentences, scene and number |
| 27 | Letters from Seventy-Five South | Overwintering at an Antarctic research station | Epistolary / diary — intimate, seasonal, unguarded |
| 28 | The Letter and the Pencil | Gene editing, from CRISPR cuts to base editing | Academic review article — heavily hedged, impersonal, section-numbered |
| 29 | Intelligence the Size of a Grain of Rice | Edge computing and machine learning on microcontrollers | Technical white paper — clipped, heavily headed, impersonal, bulleted |
| 30 | The Invisible Craft | Typography and the engineering of the printed page | Design-history essay — precise, aesthetic, quietly opinionated |
| 31 | The Cost of Agreeing | Blockchain consensus mechanisms — proof of work and proof of stake | Comparative technical analysis — problem-first, rigorous |
| 32 | The Door That Argues With You | Human–computer interaction and the design of everyday systems | Design critique — evaluative, ironic, second person, short punchy sentences |
| 33 | Inventing Noon | Railways, the telegraph and the standardisation of time | Historical narrative — anecdotal, causal, wry |
| 34 | Eleven Seconds per Tote | Warehouse automation and fulfilment logistics | Operations report — numerate, declarative, unsentimental, metric-driven |
| 35 | Subtracting Carbon | Carbon capture, removal and the arithmetic of offsetting | Sceptical analytical essay — numerate, definition-driven, unsparing |
| 36 | Notes from the Nursery Line | Coral bleaching and reef restoration | Informal field notes — first person, dated entries, fragmentary syntax |
| 37 | The Machine That Wrote the Machine | Compilers and the history of abstraction | Historical essay — long periodic sentences, dry wit, understatement |
| 38 | The Butterfly and the Supercomputer | Weather forecasting, chaos and the limits of prediction | Explanatory narrative — historical, elegant, quietly dramatic |
| 39 | The Tyranny of the Clock You Cannot See | Circadian biology, sleep and biological timing | Semi-formal advisory essay — persuasive, warm, second person |
| 40 | Walking a City That Was Drawn | Urban design and the behaviour of streets | Walking essay / travelogue — lyrical, first person, sensory, digressive |
| 41 | The Crowded Sky | Orbital debris and space traffic coordination | Institutional briefing — sober, numbered, procedural, obligation-focused |
| 42 | Growing the Factory | Synthetic biology, precision fermentation and engineered materials | Commercial due-diligence note — numerate, headed, unsentimental |
| 43 | Materials That Break the Rules | Graphene, metamaterials and structure-derived properties | Academic taxonomy — definitional, classificatory, carefully qualified |
| 44 | Steady Hands | Robot-assisted surgery | Clinical narrative case study — restrained, procedural, present tense |
| 45 | Renting the Future | Subscription economics and the market for attention | Analytical business essay — cool, systemic, argument by mechanism |
| 46 | The Words We Have to Borrow | Translation, lexical gaps and what languages oblige you to say | Linguistics essay — erudite, example-dense, gently corrective |
| 47 | Secrets with an Expiry Date | Cryptography, from mechanical ciphers to post-quantum standards | Narrative history — suspense structure, short paragraphs, delayed revelation |
| 48 | What a Battery Actually Is | Lithium-ion chemistry and the battery supply chain | Industrial-technical essay — concrete, material, process-focused |
| 49 | Just in Case | Supply chain design, inventory strategy and resilience | Strategy case study — situation, complication, recommendation |
| 50 | The Long Attention | Concentration, expertise and the making of a skilled person | Closing essay — cumulative, rhetorical, direct address, deliberately unhurried |
No lesson matches that term.