How to learn German by reading

Why does reading work for German?

You pick up words every time you understand a sentence that contains one you only half know. That is incidental learning, the idea behind comprehensible input and extensive reading. The vocabulary researcher Paul Nation adds a warning: what you gain from one meeting with a word is fragile and fades unless you meet the word again soon. His answer is a lot of reading at the right level plus some direct study of vocabulary, which in practice means stories plus flashcards.

German rewards reading more than most languages, because so much of its grammar is visible on the page and easy to miss in speech:

• Nouns wear capitals. Tür, Brief, Küche: you can see the things in a sentence before you know what they are.
• Articles tell you who does what. Der Brief is the letter doing something; den Brief is the letter something is done to. In conversation that one letter is gone in a flash; on the page it waits for you.
• Verbs come in two parts. The second half (a prefix, an infinitive, a past participle) often sits at the end of the clause. Reading lets you look ahead to it; listening doesn't.

What should you read at each stage?

Difficulty matters more than topic. A page with too many unknown words turns reading into decoding, and you stop learning from context. Graded readers, books written for a level, exist to keep the unknown words few. Here is a route through the Contos German library:

Newspapers and literary novels can wait. They aren't off limits, but at A1 or A2 you will spend more time on the dictionary than on the story, and the long subordinate clauses of written German are hard work until the basics are automatic.

How do you read a German sentence you don't understand?

Don't translate word by word from the left. German puts information in a different order, so work out the frame first:

1. Find the verb in second place. In a main clause the conjugated verb comes second, even when the sentence starts with a time or a place.
2. Check the end of the clause. A small word there (an, auf, aus, zu) usually belongs to the verb: sieht … aus means "looks", not "sees … out".
3. Use the article to find the subject. Der, die or das with a noun often marks the subject; den or dem marks someone or something on the receiving end.
4. Split long nouns. Wohnzimmertür is Wohnzimmer (living room) plus Tür (door). Tap the parts if the whole isn't clear.
5. Save the phrase, not just the word. German expresses many feelings and states with set phrases.

Chapter 2 of the A1 crime story The Wallet has a good example:

Word for word, hat Angst is "has fear". Save it as one card, Angst haben (to be afraid), and you have learned how German builds a feeling, not just a noun. The same A1 chapters use Was ist los? (What's going on?) and es klopft (someone knocks) the same way: as chunks you understand whole. When guessing gets you stuck, our guide to guessing words from context has more techniques.

Why should you stick with one series?

A series keeps the same people, places and problems, so the same words come round without any planning. We measured it in the free chapters of the Contos German library. Across the 12 A1 series, about 57% of the running words in chapter 2 had already appeared in chapter 1 of the same series. Measured against chapter 1 of a different A1 series, the figure was about 40%. At A2 it was 54% against 41%.

That difference is the repetition Nation says new words need, delivered by the plot. It is also why a series gets easier as it goes on: by the later chapters you know the cast, the building and the running jokes.

Then climb with a story you already know. The flagship series, The Flatshare on Bergmannstraße, is written separately at A1, A2, B1 and B2: the same Berlin flatmates, the same landlord, richer German at each level. Our 30-day German reading plan uses exactly that step.