A2 reading: My grandmother's smartphone

My grandmother, Rose, is seventy-six. For years she had an old phone with big buttons. She could only make calls and send short messages with it. Last Christmas my family gave her a smartphone.

At first she didn't like it. "It's too difficult," she said. "There are no buttons, and everything is so small." She put it in a drawer and used her old phone again.

So every Sunday afternoon I went to her house and gave her a lesson. First, I made the letters bigger, so she could read them easily. Then I showed her how to make video calls. This was the most important thing for her, because my uncle and his children live in Canada and she doesn't see them very often.

The first video call was very funny. She held the phone too close to her face, and my cousins could only see her nose! But after a few calls she was an expert.

Now my grandmother uses her phone every day. She takes photos of her garden and sends them to the family. She reads the news, and she listens to the radio on it. Last month she started to buy her food online, and a man brings it to her door. "It's wonderful," she says. "I don't have to carry heavy bags any more."

There is one thing she still doesn't like: some apps send messages all day. "My phone makes a noise every five minutes," she says. "It's like having a small child in the house!"

Last week she phoned me. I thought she had a problem with the phone, but no. She wanted to teach me something: how to make a video of her cat.