Book Flood - Graded Reader Series

Graded Reader Series

A "graded reader series" of books that increases in difficulty from shorter texts using the most common words in the first volumes, to longer texts with less common vocabulary in later volumes. Cobb (2008) cite Oxford's Bookworm series, which includes the 2,500 most frequent words, The Longman Bridge Series (1945), with a systematic grading up to 8,000 words, now out of print, and the new Penguin/Longman Active Reading series with its 3,000 word-family target.

Many series of graded readers exist in English, and series exist in French, German, Italian, and Spanish. As of 2008, readers are notably absent or scarce in Russian, Arabic, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese, though since 2006, an extensive reader series is available in Japanese. English readers have primarily been produced by British publishers, rather than American or other Anglophone nations. As of 1997, only one small series (15 volumes) was published in the United States, and a few in Europe outside the UK, with the majority in the UK.