How to learn Dutch by reading: a method from A1 to B1

Why you can learn Dutch by reading: comprehensible input

In the early 1980s the linguist Stephen Krashen argued that people acquire a language by understanding messages in it: input that is mostly clear, with a little that is new. He called it comprehensible input. His further claim, that input is all you need, is still argued over; speaking, writing and some grammar teaching help too. This method needs only the first part: you learn Dutch from a great deal of Dutch that you understand.

How much is “mostly clear”? One small, much-cited study gives a number. Hu and Nation (2000) gave 66 learners of English a short story in versions where 80, 90, 95 or 100 percent of the words were known to them; at 80 percent nobody understood it well enough, and the authors estimated that reading fiction for pleasure, without help, takes about 98 percent: one unknown word in fifty. A 2023 replication could not fully confirm the result, and Laufer and Ravenhorst-Kalovski (2010) put the minimum, for reading with some help, at 95 percent. Either way, a learner needs texts written for their level. The texts on this site are built that way: at least 90 percent of their words are among the most common Dutch words for the level (1,000 at A1, 2,000 at A2, 4,000 at B1) or the everyday basics every course teaches, and the rest are underlined with their meaning, so every word is either common at your level or explained on the spot. How many Dutch words do you need to read a book? goes further into the coverage research and what it means for Dutch.

Learn Dutch with stories, not word lists

A story does two things a word list cannot. It makes you want to know what happens, so you turn the page. And it repeats the same people, places and words, so you meet each word again in a new sentence, which is what makes a word stay. In a study by Waring and Takaki (2003), learners read one graded reader in English; three months later they could give the meaning of about one in 25 new words from it, and of none of the words they had met fewer than eight times. One book read once teaches little. That is why the method is many texts, and the same text read twice.

Good texts for learners use this on purpose. In the A1 story Een uur te vroeg, a neighbor tells Kateryna something she does not understand, and the words come up four times in the story. The third time, she understands:

Kateryna denkt aan de buurman. Hij heeft gezegd: ‘Zondag gaat de klok een uur terug.’ Terug! Nu begrijpt ze het. Kateryna thinks of the neighbor. He said: “On Sunday the clock goes back an hour.” Back! Now she understands.

What to read at each level

The rule is the same at every level: you know most of the words and the story is easy to follow. What changes is the length of the texts and where you find them.

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A1: very short texts, read three times

At A1 almost everything written for Dutch adults is too hard, so read what is written for you: the dialogues in your course book, and short texts for learners such as the free A1 texts on this site, about 350 to 450 words each, mostly in the present tense and within the 1,000 most common words. Those words are on one page, with their meanings, in the Dutch vocabulary list.

Of the books for Dutch children, Nijntje (Dick Bruna) is the series that is really A1: four lines a page, and a picture that tells you the word. Most others are harder than they look (Dutch books for beginners explains why). For a whole book at this level, Fairy Tales retells eight tales you already know in A1 Dutch, about 3,500 words in all, with a glossary and questions after every tale.

A2: short stories and longer books

The CEFR, the European scale behind the levels, describes an A2 reader as someone who can follow “short, simple stories” in “high frequency everyday language”. That is the level of the free A2 texts and the short stories on this site, and of the first graded readers in shops and libraries: Leeslicht at A2, from Eenvoudig Communiceren, and Short Stories in Dutch for Beginners (Teach Yourself), which runs from A2 to B1. The easy readers page compares every series, and Graded readers in Dutch explains what they are, which exist and how to use them.

At A2 the books get longer. Dracula tells Bram Stoker's novel in eight short chapters of A2 Dutch, about 7,000 words, with a glossary and questions after every chapter, and Alice in Wonderland is out at the same level. Newspapers and novels written for Dutch adults can wait. For news at this level there is the Start!-krant from Eenvoudig Communiceren, a newspaper in easy Dutch.

B1: longer stories, easy news, simple novels

At B1 the CEFR expects you to follow “the plot of stories, simple novels and comics with a clear linear storyline”, “given regular use of a dictionary”. So read longer texts and whole books: the B1 texts on this site (about 450 to 700 words), Leeslicht titles at B1, a first children's novel such as Minoes by Annie M.G. Schmidt, and Jip en Janneke at last. Dutch books for B1 and B2 lists more.

This is also where the news opens up. The Jeugdjournaal, the daily NOS news for children of about 9 to 12, is the bridge: real news in short items. Most of the NOS news site follows at B1. For listening, the NOS Journaal in Makkelijke Taal has been a short news bulletin in easy Dutch since 2024.

Intensive and extensive reading

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Extensive reading only works if the text is easy. In their much-cited principles of extensive reading, Day and Bamford (2002) put “the reading material is easy” first, and warn that for beginners more than one or two unknown words a page can make a text too hard. At A1 nearly all reading is intensive, because so little is easy enough. At A2 it is a mix: new texts on weekdays, and a book one level below yours, or one you have read before, on the weekend. By B1 much of your reading can be extensive: the A2 books and texts, read for the story, while B1 books and the news are your intensive reading.

When to look a word up, and when to read on

Look up every word and the story becomes a translation exercise; look up nothing and it fills with gaps. Four rules sit in between.

• Finish the sentence, then read the next one. Texts for learners often explain a word right after it. In Op de markt (A2): ‘Een pond jonge kaas, graag,’ zegt Kasia. Een pond is 500 gram. “A pound of young cheese, please,” says Kasia. A pound is 500 grams.
• Read on if you can still say what happens. In Koningsdag in Amsterdam (A2): Kinderen verkopen hun oude speelgoed: poppen, boeken, spelletjes. Children sell their old toys: dolls, books, games. If poppen is new to you, the list says it is a toy, and that is enough for the story.
• Look it up when it comes back. A word you meet for the third time is a word the text needs, and one you will meet again.
• Look it up when the story stops making sense without it. A word in the title, or in the sentence where something happens, is worth the two seconds.

Reread: the second reading is where words stay

Rereading feels like cheating and works better than a new text. The second time you already know the story, so your attention goes to the words and the sentences, and the word you tapped yesterday is now a word you recognize. Read a new text one day and again the next, with the audio; at A1, read it a third time at the end of the week. A book reread a month later is the easiest extensive reading there is.

Reading with or without audio

Both, at different moments. Audio gives you what the page cannot: how the words sound, where the stress falls, and a steady pace that keeps you from stopping at every word. Nearly every text on this site has audio, and the player can slow it down. Read silently too: most printed readers have no audio, and reading at your own speed is the skill you are building.

Chang and Millett (2015) found that beginner learners of English who read graded readers with audio improved their reading speed and comprehension more than a group who read silently. A review of 30 studies by Clinton-Lisell (2023) found the gain in comprehension small on average, and reliable only when the recording set the pace. Reading while listening has the research and the method in depth: speeds, rereading, shadowing.

How much to read, and how often

Every day beats one long session a week, because the words you met yesterday are the ones that come back today. Fifteen to twenty minutes a day is enough: one new text, and yesterday's text again. At A2, with texts of 300 to 750 words, that is 600 to 1,500 words of Dutch a day. Add a chapter of a book on Saturday and one on Sunday, and an eight-chapter book takes a month next to the texts.

Reading is the biggest part of the week, not all of it: How to learn Dutch has the full plan at five hours a week, with speaking and lessons, and How long does it take to learn Dutch? says what that adds up to (about a year to A2, two to B1).

The research on this page

• Krashen, S. (1982). Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. The input hypothesis.
• Hu, M. and Nation, P. (2000). Unknown vocabulary density and reading comprehension. Reading in a Foreign Language 13(1).
• Laufer, B. and Ravenhorst-Kalovski, G. C. (2010). Lexical threshold revisited. Reading in a Foreign Language 22(1), 15 to 30.
• Waring, R. and Takaki, M. (2003). At what rate do learners learn and retain new vocabulary from reading a graded reader? Reading in a Foreign Language 15(2).
• Day, R. and Bamford, J. (2002). Top ten principles for teaching extensive reading. Reading in a Foreign Language 14(2).
• Chang, A. C.-S. and Millett, S. (2015). Improving reading rates and comprehension through audio-assisted extensive reading for beginner learners. System 52, 91 to 102.
• Clinton-Lisell, V. (2023). Does reading while listening to text improve comprehension compared to reading only? A systematic review and meta-analysis. Educational Research: Theory and Practice 34(3), 133 to 155.

Read next

Start with one text at your level today, and read it again tomorrow.

• A1: Een uur te vroeg, a cold Monday morning in Tilburg and a clock nobody changed, with audio and a glossary. The book at this level is Fairy Tales, out now in paperback.
• A2: Op de markt, a Saturday at the market in Rotterdam. The book at this level is Dracula, out now in paperback and for Kindle.
• B1: Het briefje in het bibliotheekboek, a note in a library book and the search for who wrote it. The B1 books of the series are coming soon.

Not sure of your level? The Dutch levels explained says what each level can read, and the free level test takes about ten minutes.