About Dutch Readers: a learner at A2 who could not find anything to read
Dutch Readers is made by one person: Andrew Demianenko, a marketer in Amsterdam who is learning Dutch himself. The site gives learners free texts at their level, with audio and a glossary, and a series of Dutch classics rewritten at A2 and B1.
The gap
Andrew moved from Ukraine to Amsterdam and started learning Dutch the way most people do: a course, an app, a textbook. After eleven months at about five hours a week he reached A2. Then he hit the gap every learner knows. The course book was finished. The real books, the ones in the bookshop, used ten times the words he had. Websites with short texts existed, but without audio, without a glossary and without a next step.
So he started making the thing he needed: texts at a known level, with audio, with every hard word explained where it stands, and a book at the same level to read next. That became Dutch Readers.
How the texts are made
Every free text starts as a draft written to the A2 or B1 rules: short sentences, present tense, the words of the NT2Lex list for that level. A second, independent pass then criticises the draft the way a strict NT2 teacher would: grammar, naturalness, every word above the level, every pronoun without a clear referent. Everything flagged gets fixed. The glossary and the questions are written, the words are counted, and the text goes to the site in review.
Before a text is published, Andrew runs it through the NT2Lex check (at least 90 percent of the words at A1 and A2 for an A2 text) and reads it with a native speaker. Then it is recorded at learner speed and published.
The books follow the same path, chapter by chapter, starting from the original classic: Multatuli, Dik Trom, Kees de jongen. The story and the order of events stay; the sentences and the words are rewritten for the level. One page of the original is printed at the back, so you can see where the ladder leads.
About the use of AI
The drafts and the critique passes are written with the help of AI language models, under rules written by Andrew. No text is published without the word-list check and a human read. If you find a mistake, it is Andrew’s, and he will fix it.
Contact
Questions, corrections or a text you would like to see: reply to any email from the newsletter, and you reach Andrew directly. The newsletter sends one short Dutch text a week, with audio, and nothing else.