Penguin Readers Level 6: Brick Lane (ELT Graded Reader)

Monica Ali

Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reader series for learners of English as a foreign language. With carefully adapted text, new illustrations and language learning exercises, the print edition also includes instructions to access supporting material online.

Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction, introducing language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content.

The eight levels of Penguin Readers follow the Common European Framework of Reference for language learning (CEFR). Exercises at the back of each Reader help language learners to practise grammar, vocabulary, and key exam skills. Before, during and after-reading questions test readers' story comprehension and develop vocabulary.

Brick Lane, a Level 6 Reader, is B1+ in the CEFR framework. The longer text is made up of sentences with up to four clauses, introducing future continuous, reported questions, third conditional, was going to and ellipsis. A small number of illustrations support the text.

When Nazneen is 18, she marries a much older man and moves from Bangladesh to England to be with her husband. But Brick Lane in London is very different from Nazneen's village, and she speaks no English. Nazneen must try to look after her family and get used to a new, and very strange, country.