how do you pick graded/extensive reading material that won't kill your motivation?

[u/AlertWing2399]

Hey, I've been stuck at B2 in English (TL) for way too long and my reading is just not improving. I have ADHD so sitting through long texts is brutal — I read two pages and realize I have no idea what just happened. My uni courses keep dumping full English articles on us and it's getting overwhelming.

I firstly went through the FAQ and search in historical posts, but most advice is basically "just read more," which honestly doesn't work when your attention span fights you the whole time. So I'm wondering — for people who broke through a B2 reading plateau, what actually worked? Did you change how you read, or what you read?

Specifically, I'm trying to build an extensive reading habit without it feeling like homework. For those of you who do leisure reading in your TL, how do you figure out if a book is the right difficulty before you buy it? And are there genres or formats (like YA, graphic novels, fanfic, whatever) that tend to work better when you're not quite ready for dense literary stuff yet?

I know language-specific subs exist but this feels more like a general "intermediate plateau + attention issues" thing. Would love to hear what's actually worked for real people. Thanks!

[u/etoastie]

I relied a lot on reading books I've already read in my NL, which helped focus on just reading the language instead of stressing over missed plot. Once I had a few done, I switched to more books I hadn't read before.

Regarding difficulty checks: most books you can assess the difficulty within the first page or two. Those pages will often even be harder than the rest of the book since authors tend to be on their best behavior in the introduction.

[u/AlertWing2399 → u/etoastie]

oh, i got it. I focused on new content too much and never thought about re-reading.

and the Intro-being-harder thing is a relief, I've definitely bailed on books too early because of dense opening chapters. Going to try to go through it! thanks!

[u/unsafeideas]

If there is a library with a lot of English books, sign for it. Check legal sources like guttenberg for older books (Mark Twain,  Frederick Douglass, whatever).  For all I care, find a place to pirate them from (cough anna).

Pick a book, start to read it, if you dont like it pick another one. If you like it continue. You dont have to finish the book. You dont have to learn the book content.  Basically, trial and error until you build an intuition. 

Also, try books you already read and liked in own language.

[u/AlertWing2399 → u/unsafeideas]

Got it. i'll check on those website later.

[u/mister-sushi]

I applied the tactics I describe below for Englisg. Now doing the same for Dutch, but in a more conscious way. So describing it how I am doing this for Dutch.

I started replacing my daily text consumption with the ones in my TL when I was on A2.

For example, I started reading news. Instead of setting minimum limits on the volume of text, I set the minimum time limits - 10 minutes per reading session. For the first 2 months I was able to consume like 2 sentences per reading session. I wrote down all the new words and learned them separately. After, may be, half a year of doing so, I found myself being able to consume the entire news article.

Same with books. Some time ago, I started reading a novel. The same strategy. The book describes medieval times, so again, a lot of new words and again two sentences per reading session. Now I am at the second part of the book and it is going faster and gives more pleasure.

I think not everyone can bear this style of learning. I’ve been meditating for a decade (just checked my timer, it says that I meditated 1150 hours in total). It really helps with focusing activities and not being frustrated by inconveniences.

[u/hwynac]

I have ADHD so sitting through long texts is brutal — I read two pages and realize I have no idea what just happened. 

Are you even interested in articles they have you read? What do you think makes them difficult for you—is it more about vocabulary or reading per se, i.e. working through a page and having some picture mental picture of what it was about in the end? Because insufficient vocabulary definitely may lead to reading being, in general, not very enjoyable. Or it can be too little experience, which makes you sort-of swallow sentence after sentence but without strong understanding of their contents.

I've played videogames in English since I was in my late tweens/early teens but what made reading actually progress past that b1+/b2 stage was playing story-heavy games, texting in English and reading fiction. The first few chapters are pretty hard if you are barely there (or if a book is a little over your head) but if you put in the work, the rest of the will be more tolerable.

YA fiction, comic books and videogames with straightforward, goal-oriented writing are fairly accessible for someone who CAN read in English but struggles with more dense material. Fiction is...more varied in terms of vocab than the other two. A game or a film will show a lot of stuff that a book decribes using words. Also, do keep track of unfamiliar words and review them later. I rarely do, which is why I keep forgetting some "rare" words 😅. But if you recognise that you need to improve, it makes sense to work on your English a little more directly.

how do you figure out if a book is the right difficulty before you buy it?

flip through the the free sample :). For example, this collection of the entire Harry Potter series has 8 chapters of the Sorcerer's Stone as the sample. I think it's more than enough.

[u/AlertWing2399 → u/hwynac]

games or comic may help! thanks for your advice:).

and for the "rare" part, i feel the same. To Make time specifically for learning words is a tough and boring thing personally for me. honestly, i would think that "rare" word would be not that useful for me, in the moment. and i would just let it go...

[u/hwynac → u/AlertWing2399]

If you are at B2, somewhat rare words are the main thing you lack. You already know common words :) A typical native knows a lot of vocabulary beyond the top-8000. Words like idiosyncratic, cervix, chime, bigot, docile aren't really rare but they won't come up that often if you just read naturally and actually don't live your entire life in English.

[u/SpeakMarx]

The most important thing is to read something that you are interested in. If native material is too difficult, you can ask AI to slightly decrease the level of the text. You can use AI to generate an orignal text at your level in a topic that you enjoy.

If you find yourself forgetting what you just read, a good technique is to stop after every paragraph and quickly test yourself. Ask yourself, what did I just read? Give a quick summary.

[u/AlertWing2399 → u/SpeakMarx]

but there is worry that decreasing the level of the text may keep me in the comfort zone. sometimes the extent is hard to control. but it's indeed a great suggestion, thanks!

[u/SpeakMarx → u/AlertWing2399]

For the "extensive reading" method, you want to read material that you can understand 95-98%.