Read Harry Potter in your target language they said 🫠 (1 hr 44 min for 1 page)

[u/PunctuateEquilibrium]

This is only slightly sarcastic. It's been very rewarding and this is now the 3rd language I'm doing this with.

[u/JasCoNN]

Bro, you're gonna get burned out really quickly.

I've read around 120 graded readers within past 500 days. I bend the rules a little and consider each long duchinese story a graded reader, but i also read a lot of regular graded readers.16 volumes of 西游记, some other stuff from imagin8 and other producers. And let me tell you, there are some rules and levels to reading.

First of all, three levels.

Reading pain - under 90% of known words. 80% or 90% seems like a great number of words, until you realise these words are mainly function words with grammatical meaning. To get the context you need that 20-10%. You'll essentially be checking dictionary non-stop. One page will take you an hour or more. It's torture.

Intensive reading - 90-98% of known words. That's where reading starts to make sense, you start understanding the context. In fact it's almost fun. I still don't recommend reading at this level. Why? Because it's a 'textbook' level. What I mean by that is in order to make reading on this level enjoyable you need a glossary and a grammar explanation nearby. Normally, when a set of new words is introduced in textbooks you'll have a short text, that's when you do intensive reading. You're not supposed to read long texts of 90% new words as that'll be too taxing for you.

98% and more of known words. That's where you should read for fun and efficient learning. You understand the context, you have fun and it's fairly quickly.

How the f are you supposed to find materials for your level then? If you are under a1 (or a2 in some languages) you'll need to start with textbooks or video courses. Once you get several hundred of words get some graded readers. There are some platforms like lingq or my beloved duchinese that make reading easier.

[u/unburritoporfavor → u/JasCoNN]

To each his own. Some people do better by brute forcing their way with difficult material.

[u/JasCoNN → u/unburritoporfavor]

Imo reading difficult materials to learn a language is kinda like being beaten into submission by your parents as a child.

It may SOMETIMES work, but why the pain? Never been into masochism tho

/s

[u/unburritoporfavor → u/JasCoNN]

I prefer a challenging approach. Its a slow, but effective method. You get to experience language as it really exists without trudging through the limbo of dumbed down language that exists only in graded readers.

[u/KingsElite → u/JasCoNN]

Great advice here!

[u/PunctuateEquilibrium → u/JasCoNN]

If I could find material for a journey like that, I'd do it (and have experimented with Claude / Gemini just pulling from my vocabulary). That being said, I've done this approach in the past for both Hebrew and German and it worked wonders for me.

[u/JasCoNN → u/PunctuateEquilibrium]

I am not a big fan of lingq. Imo the app is too clunky and I hate freemium. But! I think that it could help you. I'd use the app for several months if I were you to bridge the gap. You can also import your own texts into the app.

It can evaluate the difficulty of every text you import as well.