ABSTRACT
Graded readers are written in a series with several to dozens of books at each of several levels of difficulty. This chapter highlights the stages in producing a graded reader series and an individual graded reader and provided some input for aspiring authors who wish to write graded readers. From a vocabulary perspective, the best graded reading scheme would cover all of the high frequency words of both spoken and written English, and would use a series of steps that allows learners to move to the next level without meeting too many unknown words. At all times, the author should be focused on writing a ‘good read’ and one they can engage in rather than just have the story told to them. Thus care must be taken when writing the graded reader to ensure that importance of background knowledge is made explicit in the text in ways that highlight the differences.
