Treasure Island for English learners: level, words and how to read it

What the book is about

Jim Hawkins helps his mother run the Admiral Benbow inn on the English coast. When an old sea captain who has been staying there dies of a stroke after his former shipmates track him down, Jim finds a treasure map in his sea chest.

The local squire and Doctor Livesey buy a ship, the Hispaniola, and sail to find the treasure, with Jim as cabin boy. But many of the crew are pirates, led by the friendly one-legged cook Long John Silver, and on the island it becomes a fight for survival.

Themes

• Adventure. Maps, pirates, a mutiny and buried gold: the model for almost every pirate story since.
• Growing up. A boy acts bravely, makes reckless choices and learns who to trust.
• Good and evil. Long John Silver is charming, clever and treacherous at once, one of literature’s great villains.
• Greed. Everyone wants the gold; very few of them deserve it.

How hard is Treasure Island to read in English?

How many unknown words will you meet? With a vocabulary of about 2,000 words, roughly 15 in every hundred, since those words cover 85.1% of the text. With 5,000 words it is about 9 in a hundred, with 10,000 about 5. Character names are not counted.

Measured by vocabulary alone, the book is C1: that is the level at which almost every word is already familiar (why 98% matters). Tap-to-translate covers the rest, so you can start at B2. On our list it sits between Anne of Green Gables, which is a little easier, and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, which is a little harder.

What is hard: a lot of sailing vocabulary (schooner, coxswain, bulwarks, forecastle), pirates’ speech written as it sounds (cap’n, shipmate, ’em) and some 18th-century words. What helps: Jim tells the story simply and quickly, the chapters are short and the action never stops for long.

Our take: C1 because of the sailing words, but the story carries you. From B2 it is very enjoyable with tap-to-translate.

Words to know before you start

The book’s own vocabulary: frequent in this text, much less common elsewhere. Ten minutes with this list makes the opening chapters smoother.

How to read it in the original

1. Do not learn every part of the ship. Tap to translate it, picture the scene and move on; only a few words come back often.
2. Say the pirates’ lines aloud. Cap’n is “captain”, ain’t is “is not”: speech written down as it sounds.
3. Notice who is telling the story. Three chapters are told by the doctor instead of Jim; the chapter titles tell you.
4. Read two chapters a day. At about 2,000 words each, you will finish in two and a half weeks.

The first line

Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island…

Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

Squirecountry landowner, gentleman

noun

Tap a highlighted word

Jim starts by telling us the story is real and the treasure is still there, and refuses to give the location. A great hook, and a long sentence typical of the period.

Frequently asked questions