Guide
How to choose a book at your level in a new language
A book is at your level when you understand about 98% of the words on a page, roughly one unknown word every two or three lines. Test it before you commit: read one random page, count the words you'd need to look up, and pick something easier if there are more than five or six.
Picking the wrong first book is the most common way a reading habit dies. The book looks short, the story sounds good, and by page four you're looking up every third word. This guide gives you a quick test to avoid that, and a list of books to try at each level.
The 98% rule
In 2000, the researchers Marcella Hu and Paul Nation tested how well learners understood a short story when they knew different shares of its words. Their results suggest readers need to know about 98% of the running words to understand fiction comfortably on their own. At 95%, some readers managed and many didn't. At 90% and 80%, very few did.
98% sounds high, but think about what it means on the page. In a typical paragraph of 100 words, two are new to you. That's one or two words to guess or look up, and the rest carries the meaning.
A later paper by Nation (2006) estimated that reaching 98% coverage in novels takes a vocabulary of around 8,000 to 9,000 word families. So most learners can't open just any novel yet. The books to look for are ones whose vocabulary sits closer to where you are now.
The two-minute page test
- Open the book somewhere in the middle. First pages are often harder or easier than the rest.
- Read one full page without stopping to look anything up.
- Count the words you'd need to check to follow what happens. Ignore names and words you can guess.
- Ask yourself one question: could I tell a friend what happened on this page?
| Unknown words on a page (about 250 words) | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 2 | Easy reading. Great for fluency and speed. | Read it, and enjoy it. |
| 3 to 5 | Around 98%. The sweet spot for learning. | This is your book. |
| 6 to 12 | Around 95%. Hard work, but possible with help. | Read with a tool that explains whole sentences, or pick something a step easier. |
| More than 12 | Below 95%. Most of your effort goes into decoding. | Save it for later. |
What else makes a book hard
Vocabulary is the main thing, but not the only one. Two books with similar words can feel very different.
Sentence length
Long sentences with several clauses are hard to hold in your head. Compare the opening of Manzoni's I promessi sposi (1827), which begins “Quel ramo del lago di Como, che volge a mezzogiorno, tra due catene non interrotte di monti…” and keeps going for a long paragraph, with the start of Cuore (1886), five words long: “Oggi primo giorno di scuola.”
Old or regional language
A book from 1554 or 1605 uses forms you won't find in a textbook. Don Quijote is full of them. Nineteenth-century novels are usually close enough to modern usage, with a few old spellings (Dutch books from before the 1940s, for example, write menschen for mensen).
Dialogue and narration
Dialogue is often easier than description: short lines, common verbs, everyday phrases. A book with lots of conversation, such as a detective story, can be easier than a shorter book of landscape and reflection.
How much you already know
A story you know from a film or from childhood is easier, because you can predict what comes next. Reading Les Trois Mousquetaires or Pinocchio after seeing an adaptation counts as a fair shortcut.
Try it on a real bookPassage is free to start on iPhone, iPad and Mac. Pick a classic at your level and tap any sentence you don't get.
Download on theApp StoreWhat to read at each level
These are public-domain books in the Passage library, with the level Passage gives them. Treat the levels as a starting point and use the page test.
Late beginner (A2)
- Spanish: Cuentos de la selva, Horacio Quiroga (1918)
- French: Contes de Perrault, Charles Perrault (1697), the original Cinderella and Puss in Boots
- Italian: Le avventure di Pinocchio, Carlo Collodi
- Dutch: Uit het leven van Dik Trom, C. Joh. Kieviet (1891)
- English: Peter Pan, J. M. Barrie
Intermediate (B1)
- Spanish: Lazarillo de Tormes (1554), short and funny, or El sombrero de tres picos, Pedro Antonio de Alarcón (1874)
- French: Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours, Jules Verne
- Italian: Il fu Mattia Pascal, Luigi Pirandello (1904)
- Dutch: Kees de jongen, Theo Thijssen (1923)
- English: A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, or the Sherlock Holmes stories
Upper intermediate and advanced (B2 and up)
- Spanish: La Regenta, Clarín (1885), or Don Quijote
- French: Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert, or Germinal, Émile Zola
- Italian: I Malavoglia, Giovanni Verga (1881)
- Dutch: Max Havelaar, Multatuli (1860)
- Turkish: Pembe İncili Kaftan ve Diğer Tarihî Hikâyeler, Ömer Seyfettin (1917)
- English: Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Reading a bit above your level
You don't always have to stay in the 98% zone. Reading slightly harder books (around 95%) works if you have quick help for the sentences that lose you. What makes it tiring is the dictionary: looking up five words in a sentence still doesn't tell you how they fit together.
This is where an explanation of the whole sentence helps. Take the first line of Madame Bovary:
Nous étions à l'Étude, quand le Proviseur entra, suivi d'un nouveau habillé en bourgeois et d'un garçon de classe qui portait un grand pupitre.
“We were in study hall when the headmaster came in, followed by a new boy dressed in ordinary clothes and a school servant carrying a large desk.”
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, 1857
Every word is in the dictionary, but three of them carry school meanings: l'Étude is study hall, un nouveau is a new pupil, and en bourgeois means out of school uniform. A word-by-word dictionary gets all three wrong.
In Passage
Every book is marked beginner, intermediate or advanced, and you can browse by level in each language. When a sentence is above your level, tap it for a translation, a grammar note and the key words.
When to move up a level
Move up when the page test on your current level gives you zero to two unknown words, and you're reading for the story instead of for the language. For most people that's after two or three books at a level. The page test is a better signal than feeling ready.
Browse books by level: Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Turkish, English.
Questions
What is the 98% rule in reading?
It's the finding, from Hu and Nation (2000), that readers of fiction in a second language need to know about 98% of the running words to understand the text comfortably without help. At 98% you meet one unknown word in fifty.
Is it bad to read a book that's too hard?
It isn't harmful, just slow and tiring, and most people quit. If you love the book, keep it for later and read something easier now. You'll get back to it sooner than you'd think.
How do I know my CEFR level?
The quickest way is a free placement test from a course provider or a language school. A rough guide: A2 means you can handle everyday topics in simple sentences, B1 means you can follow the main points of clear texts on familiar subjects, and B2 means you can read most articles and modern fiction with some effort.
Are children's books a good choice for adult learners?
Sometimes. Fairy tales and older children's classics are often a good fit, because they tell a story in plain language. Modern picture books can be surprisingly hard, full of wordplay, slang and sounds. Use the page test either way.
What do Passage's beginner, intermediate and advanced labels mean?
They're a guide to the language in each book, not the reader's age. Beginner books use short sentences and everyday words, intermediate books are standard adult prose, and advanced books have long sentences, older vocabulary or a demanding style. Start one level below where you think you are.