Dutch reading practice A1: your first texts, with audio

How to read these texts

Read the text once without stopping, even if you miss words: at A1 you can follow the story from what you do know. Then play the audio and read along. Tap every underlined word you are not sure about: the meaning appears in the text, and the word list at the bottom has all of them. Finish with the questions.

Read the same text again tomorrow, and once more at the end of the week. An A1 text takes five minutes, and the third reading is the one where the words stay. Reading one text three times does more than reading three texts once.

What A1 means in a text

Sentences of five to eight words, almost all in the present tense, with a few past forms you meet early (was, had, kon, wilde). No sub-clauses, except a short one after zeggen, denken or weten. At least 90 percent of the words are among the 1,000 most common Dutch words or the everyday basics a beginner course teaches (numbers, food, the days of the week), and every harder word is underlined and explained. Texts are 250 to 450 words, about one page.

The stories are about adult life in the Netherlands: a locked door, the clock that goes back in October, a bank card at the till, a village on a Sunday. Simple Dutch, but not a textbook dialogue.

From here

When these texts feel easy, go to the A2 texts: longer stories, the past tense and one sub-clause per sentence. Not sure where you are? The level test takes ten minutes. The words these texts use are the 1,000 most common Dutch words, with a list you can download, and the guide for beginners says what to learn in which order. For a whole book at this level, Fairy Tales (eight tales retold at A1) is coming to the collection.