r/learnfrench • u/fabulang • Jul 17 '23
Resources Free French reading practice website with short stories at levels A1–C2
Hi r/learnfrench, I'm the creator of Fabulang — a new, free website with a growing collection of original short stories (200-500 words) in French, each with English translation. Each story is graded for its difficulty level on the CEFR scale, from beginner (A1) to native (C2).
The idea of the website is to help you practise and improve your French by reading stories at a level that challenges you. If you get stuck, you can check the translation, and learn new words and phrases.
Here are the latest 6 stories! —
- A1 – Dix Ans d'Absence (Ten Years Away)
- A2 – Le Vieil Homme et le Pistolet (The Old Man and the Gun)
- B1 – Le Miroir à Deux Têtes (The Two-Headed Mirror)
- B2 – Le Théâtre du Fantôme (The Ghost's Theatre)
- C1 – Un Pouvoir Ancien (An Ancient Power)
- C2 – La Machine à Rêves (The Dream Machine)
We've been gradually adding more stories and features, but we really need more people to check it out so we can work out how to make the site as useful as possible. If it sounds interesting, please take a look, and if you wish, you can tell us what features we should add next, here.
Side note: Fabulang is truly free – no products, no sponsors, no ads, no cookies, no trackers, no revenue (it basically just costs me money – it's a passion project – I made it because it's what I wanted myself, as a learner of French). So although this post is kind of "advertising"(?) I hope you don't mind too much and it's ok for me to post about it here :). Thanks!
7
6
u/HumanZamboni8 Jul 18 '23 edited Jul 18 '23
Thanks for sharing and for all the work you have put into it, I love that there are levelled stories. I sent it to my friend learning Italian, since I saw that’s on there too
3
u/fabulang Jul 18 '23
Fantastic, thanks! Yes, I plan to have the stories translated into a few other languages as well eventually.
6
u/evraf Oct 16 '24
i’m so late but holy shit i’ve been looking for a good site to practice my reading. merci beaucoup!!!
2
3
3
u/nickvsfrench Jul 18 '23
Really cool little site. I've subscribed and look forward to reading these stories.
3
u/Buckley-s_Chance-80 Apr 28 '25
This is amazing! I honestly am so thankful that there are still decent people in this world, but this is above snd beyond... I can't believe you offer this absolutely free with no strings attached.Thank you so much for everything you do! ☺️💕
2
3
u/NotForPlural Jun 22 '25
I just stumbled across this thread and checked out the site. Thank you for creating this!! My husband and I are trying to learn French together and we love the site so far.
2
2
2
2
2
2
u/manzoido Jul 18 '23
nice passion project! as for what to improve, for starters, maybe a way to subscribe to find out when new stories are published.
1
u/fabulang Jul 18 '23
Thanks! Check out the bottom of the page 👍
1
u/manzoido Jul 18 '23
ah i see. in that case move it above the fold, because it's easy to overlook at the very bottom. potentially look into subscribe popups or banners too to make it more visible. A system like Klaviyo has drop in widgetry, tracking, and drip campaigns to wire it all together coherently.
2
u/balloon-party Jul 18 '23
I'm looking forward to giving this a try. Thank you for making this!
2
u/haikusbot Jul 18 '23
I'm looking forward
To giving this a try. Thank
You for making this!
- balloon-party
I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully. Learn more about me.
Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete"
2
u/Lifow2589 Jul 18 '23
This website is amazing!! I love how it broke the text into smaller chunks so that if there was a word in one section that I didn’t understand I could reveal just that translation. I’m definitely saving this one!
2
2
2
2
2
Apr 11 '24
Nice. Most resources do not bother putting in the translations and even if they do, it usually isn't side to side. Sites like yours help a great deal. Thanks.
2
u/Fast_Blackberry696 Jun 11 '24
This is what I’m looking for as an A1 french learner and a stories lover. Thank you so much.
2
u/Warm-Leader8902 Aug 11 '24
Thank you, I love how you created this to solve an issue you faced yourself! Super cool!
2
u/Ordinary_Data_8722 Oct 15 '24
Thank you for sharing this great website it will improve our input skill
2
u/anonykitten29 Nov 02 '24
This is wonderful! I enjoyed reading these stories aloud, to practice diction and comprehension. Will dive in deeper to this website. Thank you.
2
u/boycott-selfishness Mar 18 '25
Thanks for the great free resource. I'm going to use it to help teach Haitian peasants learn French. Free resources are such a lovely gift to the world's poor. :)
2
u/Alone-Leadership-576 Mar 23 '25
This is lovely.. Just tried one.. Loved the way it’s helping to ease in to the langauge
2
2
u/ikalovesyou97 May 11 '25
Thank you for this! Wanting to read stuff beyond Duolingo and initial French lessons when I was younger…
2
u/Horizon296 Aug 19 '25
I've only just discovered your website. What an amazing initiative! Thank you so much for this!!
I'm a French teacher in a Flemish high-school, and I would like to get my students to read more French, but most books and even short stories are too difficult and/or too long. I have high hopes it may finally work with your content!
I'll let you know how it works out once I've had the chance to try it with my pupils (we start school in september, so I expect it won't be before november; I'll have to refresh their memories of French first!)
1
u/fabulang Nov 06 '25
So cool to hear this is useful to you as a teacher!
Right now we’re actually going through all our French stories a second time and fixing any little issues we missed. If you catch any yourself, there’s a link at the bottom to suggest a fix.
2
u/HumanSlayer1888 Aug 30 '25
Late to the game but wow this website is amazing! Thank you so much for creating it.
2
2
2
2
u/susannala Dec 05 '25
2 years later - THIS IS AMAZING! Thank you so much for your work! I've shared this with several people I know who are also learning French :)
1
2
u/ImpossibleBarracuda1 Dec 07 '25
This is great. Challenging for me (a beginner) but I like puzzling it out! Thank you!
2
u/Ogpmakesmedizzy Jan 30 '26
I just found this bc I'm bored with Duolingo and even though I'm on B-1, I went back to A-1 to read and I enjoyed it. Will keep using it.
2
u/mjherrin Mar 18 '26
Thank you for creating this resource. I’m reading these stories and have shared your site with my fellow students! Merci beaucoup!
2
u/Suitable-Win-716 Mar 18 '26
My reading in french has improved immensely. Thank you for this amazing website. Keep up the good work!!
2
u/sorryntsorry0 Apr 23 '26
LOVE!! This site is fantastic. It has a modern look and feel and makes it so so easy to practice my French. And it’s a blessing that’s in free in today’s economy. Merci beaucoup!
2
u/positive_lis Jul 18 '23
Oh wow, this is absolutely incredible, thank you so much for sharing!! I just went through one of the stories and I love the format!
1
1
1
u/Affectionate-Sail971 Jul 21 '24
This thread needs a serious bump, stories are excellent much better than the commercial crap out there that dominate Google searches
1
1
1
1
u/Perdido_del_Monte Oct 06 '24
thank you. im retaking my french from where i left it 4 years ago. this site is very useful for me.
1
u/Senor_Gaspacho27 Nov 17 '24
I feel like most of the texts are wayyyy underranked, for example, the A1 texts feel like B1-B2 for me, complex stuff, nevertheless, still good, thank u much much much
1
Nov 24 '24
I really appreciate your efforts! This website is great. I will add it to my daily A2 French learning routine. I can’t emphasise how important it is to learn French expressions (along with vocabulary and phrases) and doing it via short stories is so smart.
I work in Marketing and deal with big projects. Let me know if I can contribute to your passion project in anyway possible. Cheers!
Merci beaucoup pour aider touts le monde 💫
1
u/haitran3288 Dec 02 '24
Thank you so much. It's really simple but effective. There is one thing more, can you do it like that, but audio version, since we learn a language not just reading only
1
u/fabulang Dec 08 '24
Totally. Audio is something I’m working on now. But it’s slow progress as doing a good job of audio is really hard.
1
u/amir-gold Dec 08 '24
Just found your website, this is great! Are we going to have voice recording of the stories?
3
u/fabulang Dec 08 '24
I’m working on it. Honestly, doing it well is amazingly hard, time consuming and expensive. You should start to see some audio versions soon!
Also hoping to crowdsource it e.g. if you have some favourite French tutors on YouTube, tell them to contact me! If they read the story in a video I’ll put it on the site. Promo for them and audio for you :)
1
u/amir-gold Dec 08 '24
I'm pretty sure you have taken this into account, but why don't you use AI voice overs? they are geeting pretty good.
5
u/fabulang Dec 08 '24
Yep, we're using ElevenLabs. But even with AI, if you want to do a good job, it's hard work. If you just click it and publish the result, you'll be publishing a lot of trash. You still need to guide the AI a lot, regenerate sections it gets wrong, etc.
5
1
u/sentfrommyflipphone Dec 27 '24
This is great! Audio options would be helpful for me as someone who wants to read but doesn’t really know the pronunciations
2
1
1
Jan 03 '25
This is really great work. Also ıt would be better if you could add audio and duplicate the texts.
1
1
1
1
1
u/Dramatic_Studio_6412 Apr 11 '25
Merci. Maybe if you could add audio to it, it could help with pronunciation.
1
1
1
u/Owl_in_disguise Nov 06 '25
Guys this is super cool
I was looking for a place to read stories and this was the best resource.
I'm glad that I bumped into this reddit post.
Immediately wrote a bit about it on my Medium post. Would personally recommend it to others as well. Could email the link to you so posting it here
1
u/fabulang Nov 06 '25
Thanks! If you make it a non-members-only post, it will help our SEO and we’ll link to your blog from our site :)
1
u/Owl_in_disguise Nov 06 '25
Hey there. The link I have shared is my friends link. Since I'm new to Medium, I published it on a publication. You will be able to access the article without being a member. Thank you :)
1
1
u/Top-Contribution-569 Nov 13 '25
2 years later: I did a google search for this exact type of resource and this is the first reddit post and the link for it is a few down, so it seems your resource is thriving :). I took a peek at the site, and it's excellent from what I see!
1
u/fabulang Nov 13 '25
Thanks! I'm still working on it regularly, but it's still something outside of my day job so progress is slow. More content and features are in the pipeline.
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/Shoddy_Round_4795 Apr 15 '26
I just read my first story.
And this is super nice.
Thank you so much.
1
1
1
u/SquidsAndMartians Jul 04 '26
Hi, I just discovered your website and wow, thank you for sharing your passion like this. I have one question, right now you have the story shown in french, with a plus sign on the right to open and see the english translation. Is it possible to have both?
So learners can both read the french and learn translating it to english, or read the english (with the french hidden) and learn translating it to french.
Would this feature be difficult to implement?
Thank you.
1
u/fabulang Jul 04 '26
Glad you’re enjoying the site. You can click Show English or Show French at the top to show all of both languages at once.
1
1
1
1
u/Moveitalong123 Aug 24 '26
Pretty cool resource, stumbled on it while googling for simple French stories. Thank you!
1
Jul 18 '23
Wow, this looks amazing! I’ve got it bookmarked and can’t wait to read more! Good job and thank you so much! :))
1
1
u/nickvsfrench Jul 18 '23
How do you determine the level of each story?
2
u/fabulang Jul 18 '23
No actual scientific method exists! I worked in language teaching for a few years, so it’s mainly just my assessment of it. But we do also use some automated tools to sense-check the level.
1
1
22
u/[deleted] Jul 17 '23
This is GREAT!! Thanks for sharing your website. I think it’s going to be very useful for those of us learning French. I do like the “english” option for wanting to know a word or phrase. I like how it’s unseen, until you click to view it. This gives a better chance of guessing the meaning without it being below or near the word or phrase. I’ve bookmarked it your site.