B2 — Upper Intermediate

B2 European Portuguese stories (upper intermediate)

60 stories

B2 stories read like short fiction for adults. The language is the Portuguese of work, news and argument: a negotiation with a German company, a journalist investigating a town hall in the Alentejo, an interpreter asked to translate statements she knows are false, an architect defending a plan for a historic neighbourhood.

Expect the imperfect subjunctive (se eu soubesse, se tivesse tempo), the passive and long sentences with several clauses. The glossary matters more here than at the earlier levels.

Every genre in the library has stories at B2, and many of the most ambitious plots are here: six thrillers, romance told through letters, Lisbon in the year 2100 fighting the rising Tejo, a memory architect in a future Porto, and fantasy drawn from Portuguese myth, such as the legend of King Sebastião and the enchanted Moorish women of folklore. Nine of the Clássicas folk tales are at this level too. Start with O Projeto de Miguel, about a programmer in Braga building an education start-up.

Each story page shows the opening in Portuguese with the English under every paragraph, and a glossary of key words. The whole story is in the reader, with audio for every sentence and tap-to-translate on every word.

Thinking about C1? The C1 readiness test covers the future subjunctive, the pluperfect and the conditional. C1 readiness test →

All 60 B2 stories, in learning order