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Easy short fairy tales


Once Upon a Time: 7 Easy English Fairy Tales for Learners

By Camille Turner Last updated:

Once upon a time, there was a dedicated English learner looking for a fun way to practice his language skills.

“But how will I improve my English?” he asked.

The answer came to him through this blog post: English fairy tales!

Easy English fairy tales can be a great way to improve your language skills while entertaining yourself at the same time.

Contents

  • How Can Easy English Fairy Tales Help You Learn the Language?
  • 7 Magical English Fairy Tales for Beginner-Level Learners
    • “The Princess and the Pea”
    • “Little Red Riding Hood”
    • “The Frog Prince”
    • “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”
    • “The Tale of Peter Rabbit”
    • “The Cat Who Could Eat So Much”
    • “The Beetle Who Went on His Travels”
  • Where Can You Find Easy English Fairy Tales Online?

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

How Can Easy English Fairy Tales Help You Learn the Language?

Not only are fairy tales entertaining and fun to read, but there are many factors that make them a great choice for English learners.

For starters, they’re short, so you can usually read them in one sitting. Shorter works are also easier to start out with so that you don’t feel overwhelmed by too much English at one time.

Additionally, learners are probably already familiar with fairy tales since they’re translated into many different languages and taught all over the world to children. Already knowing what the story is about will help you follow along in English.

Since fairy tales are typically meant for children, they tend to use lower-level English vocabulary and sentence structure, meaning that they’re the appropriate level for beginner English learners.

Fairy tales also often include easy dialogue or repetition to tell the story, which means that, in addition to improving your English reading skill, you’re able to easily learn English through these stories.

7 Magical English Fairy Tales for Beginner-Level Learners

“The Princess and the Pea”

“The Princess and the Pea” is a classic story written by Hans Christian Andersen. It tells the tale of a queen who devises (creates) a clever way to test whether or not a girl who claims to be a princess really is a true princess.

The story itself uses a lot of verbs in the simple past tense (the most basic form of the past tense in English) such as was, wanted, traveled and thought. This can provide great practice for English learners.

Words to know beforehand (before reading the story):

  • Plight — a dangerous or difficult situation
  • Scarcely — almost not at all
  • Defect — an imperfection or problem
  • Genuine — sincere
  • Dreadful — awful

“Little Red Riding Hood”

The story of “Little Red Riding Hood” is another famous fairy tale that was written by Charles Perrault. It tells the story of a little girl who wanders (walks in a relaxed way) into the woods and is tricked by a wolf who impersonates (pretends to be) her grandmother.

This story has especially easy verbs that’ll help you expand your list of English action vocabulary and follow along with the story better.

Words to know beforehand:

  • Dawdle — to go slowly
  • Shadow — a dark shape or area
  • Hood — a head covering, usually attached to a coat or cape
  • Gobbled — ate quickly
  • Cottage — a small country house

“The Frog Prince”

“The Frog Prince” is a fun fairy tale written by the famous Brothers Grimm. In the original story, a princess drops her golden ball down a spring (a place where water comes up from the ground). In order to get it back, she must befriend a frog.

The story is full of useful adjectives that provide great English practice and offer an opportunity to add some basic vocabulary to your knowledge.

Words to know beforehand:

  • Jewels — precious stones
  • Unwilling — not wanting to do something
  • Cruel — mean; causing suffering on purpose
  • Misfortunes — bad situations or bad luck
  • Merriment — fun; happiness

“Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”

This fairy tale comes from a larger collection of stories entitled “1001 Arabian Nights.” The story follows Ali Baba as he has to outsmart a group of robbers.

English learners can benefit from paying attention to the common transition words and phrases used throughout the story. Transition words and phrases provide a way to get from one part of a story to the next. Some examples from this fairy tale include one day, then, at last and before. These are great phrases to incorporate (include; add) into your everyday English.

Words to know beforehand:

  • Merchant — someone whose job usually involves trading
  • Conceal — hide
  • Heap — a large pile
  • Envy — jealousy
  • Prosperity — being wealthy or successful

“The Tale of Peter Rabbit”

One of the many beautiful little stories by Beatrix Potter, this tale shows what happens when a young rabbit named Peter gets into trouble for stealing food from Mr. McGregor’s garden.

There are plenty of wonderful vocabulary words related to nature and food in this story for English learners to discover.

Words to know beforehand:

  • Mischief — misbehavior
  • Loaf — a quantity of bread or another baked good
  • Rake — a gardening tool used to collect leaves
  • Wriggled — squirmed; moved around wildly
  • Puzzled — confused

“The Cat Who Could Eat So Much”

“The Cat Who Could Eat So Much” is a great little tale by writers Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Engebretsen Moe. The story is about a cat who meets a host of (several different) characters as he eats everything he can find.

The story uses a lot of repetition, which makes it slightly easier for English learners to read, and it includes a lot of animal names and vocabulary to learn.

Words to know beforehand:

  • Mush — a type of soft, wet food
  • Stable — the structure in a barn where a horse lives
  • Seized — grabbed
  • Hardly — not very much at all
  • Orchard — a large field of fruit trees

“The Beetle Who Went on His Travels”

This fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen follows the story of a conceited (proud or vain) beetle who believes that he should get golden shoes like the Emperor’s horse.

There are many instances of the English comparative and superlative (when you compare two or more things) throughout this story that can help learners get an idea of how to form these important structures. Some examples from the story include more valuable, as good as and better. 

Words to know beforehand:

  • Shod — to put shoes on a horse
  • Yonder — over there
  • Delicate — fragile
  • Fatigued — tired
  • Grander — more impressive, beautiful or rich

Where Can You Find Easy English Fairy Tales Online?

This list only has a few English fairy tales, but there are so many more out there. That means many more stories to learn from!

You can find a large variety of easy English fairy tales online. Here are a few resources:

  • Storynory: Storynory is a fabulous site that uses both written texts and audio recordings to provide tons of fairy tales and other stories. The site divides fairy tales by author or theme, so they’re easy to sort through.
  • Stories to Grow by: This is another site that pairs audio recordings with written texts. Their classic fairy tales are easy to understand and sometimes accompanied by beautiful illustrations.
  • Storyberries: Another great option, Storyberries features a blend of popular and lesser-known fairy tales. You’re sure to discover a new story you’ve never heard of before if you look through the many options here.
  • Hellokids: Hellokids is another wonderful site with tons of fairy tales divided by author. The stories are presented in the format of a small book with pages you turn as you go.
  • FluentU: A language learning program, FluentU teaches English using a library of short English videos, which includes fairy tales and other beginner-level content. Each clip has interactive subtitles so that you can look up words as you watch.

 

With these seven magical fairy tales to get you started and a variety of places to find other stories online, you’re ready to live happily ever after with your English studies!

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

Camille Turner

Camille is a writer, editor, and English teacher who has lived and worked all over the world in places like Italy, France, and Colombia. She continues to travel while managing a writing company and restaurant and is currently working on learning her fourth language.

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