A 30-day reading plan for the language you're learning

Thirty days won’t make you fluent in a language, and no honest plan can promise that. What thirty days can do is turn reading into a habit, take you through a whole book at your level, and show you, in a way no test score can, that you can read in another language.

This plan is built on what research suggests about learning from reading: read a lot, read text you mostly understand, and come back to it every day. It asks for 15 to 20 minutes a day, one book and a little patience in the first week.

Before day 1

You need four things.

A book at your level. The single biggest mistake is choosing something too hard. On a typical page you should know almost every word. If you’re unsure, read how to choose your reading level first. A familiar story helps; so does a short one.

Audio. For most learners, reading along with a recording is the easiest way into a new book, especially in the first week. Here’s why reading while listening works.

A fixed time and place. Decide exactly when you’ll read: “On the train to work, I read until my stop.” “After dinner, before I open my laptop.” Psychologists call plans like this, tying an action to a specific situation, implementation intentions, and research has found that they help people follow through on what they intend (Gollwitzer 1999, “Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans”).

A simple log. A note on your phone is enough: the date, the minutes, and where you stopped. Crossing off days is satisfying, and the log will show you your progress when it doesn’t feel like progress.

The ground rules

1. Same time, every day. A habit forms around a routine.
2. Ten minutes is the minimum, twenty the target. On bad days, do ten.
3. Don’t make up missed days. Just carry on.
4. Look up only what blocks you. If a sentence makes sense without a word, keep going. (More in dictionary or context.)
5. Adjust the level, not the plan. If every page is a struggle, drop a level. If it all feels easy, that’s good: easy reading builds speed.

Week 1: get into the story (days 1–7)

Goal: finish the first chapter or two, and make reading automatic.

Time: 15 minutes a day.

• Day 1. Play the audio and follow the text for the first few pages, without stopping. Don’t worry about what you miss. Then go back and read the same pages again on your own, tapping or looking up only the words that stop you understanding a sentence.
• Days 2–6. Spend 5 minutes rereading yesterday’s pages on your own, then 10 minutes on new pages with the audio.
• Day 7. Reread the first chapter without audio. Notice how much easier it is than on day 1. That feeling is the point of the week.

The first week feels slow because everything is new: the characters, the narrator’s voice, the words the story leans on. Many of those words will come back again and again. In Treasure Island, for example, you’ll soon know ship, map, island, treasure and captain without thinking.

Week 2: read first, then listen (days 8–14)

Goal: read on your own, and use audio as a check rather than a guide.

Time: 15 to 20 minutes.

• Each day: read a new section silently first, then listen to the same section while following the text. You’ll hear where you misread a word or a sentence.
• Once a day: pick the hardest paragraph and go through it one sentence at a time, checking each sentence’s meaning before moving on.
• Save a few words. No more than five a day, and only words you’ve met more than once. They’re the ones the book, and probably the language, uses most.
• Day 14. Retell the story so far in five sentences, aloud or in writing. It’s harder than it sounds, and the gaps you find, a verb you can’t recall or an ending you aren’t sure of, are worth noticing.

Week 3: build stamina (days 15–21)

Goal: read for longer without stopping.

Time: 20 to 25 minutes, plus one longer session.

• Read in longer stretches. Try a full page, then a full section, without tapping anything. Check afterwards.
• One long session. On a free day, read for 40 minutes. Many readers find the second half goes faster than the first, once the language has warmed up.
• Listen again. Replay a chapter you’ve already read while you walk or cook, with no text. Because you know the story, you’ll follow more than you expect.
• Day 21. Time yourself reading one page. Compare it with a page from day 3 or 4, if you noted the time then. The difference is often larger than it feels.

Week 4: finish and choose what’s next (days 22–30)

Goal: reach the end of the book, or a major milestone in a long one.

Time: 20 to 25 minutes.

• Days 22–27. Let the story carry you. By now you’ll probably read faster and stop less. If you’re close to the end, it’s fine to read longer.
• Day 28. Reread the first chapter. This is the clearest measure of your month: sentences that took real effort four weeks ago should now read far more easily.
• Day 29. Look back over the words you saved. Many will probably be familiar by now. The ones that aren’t are worth another look.
• Day 30. Decide what’s next: another book at the same level, the same book at the next level up, or a step up with a new story.

The month at a glance

Days	Daily time	Main activity	Checkpoint
1–7	15 min	Read along with audio; reread yesterday’s pages	Reread chapter 1 on day 7
8–14	15–20 min	Read first, then listen; one hard paragraph sentence by sentence	Retell the story so far on day 14
15–21	20–25 min	Longer stretches; listen again to a chapter you’ve read	Time one page on day 21
22–30	20–25 min	Read toward the end; reread chapter 1; choose what’s next	Before-and-after reread on day 28

How much will you actually read?

More than you might think. Suppose you average 20 minutes a day at 80 words a minute, a gentle pace for a learner. That’s 1,600 words a day, and close to 50,000 words over the month: the length of a short novel, every word of it in your new language.

That volume matters. Words are rarely learned from a single meeting; they take repeated encounters in different sentences. Reading tens of thousands of words of easy text is one of the few ways to give yourself those encounters without studying lists. (For the research, see extensive reading.)

When it goes wrong

You missed a day, or three. Carry on. In a well-known study of how habits form, Lally, van Jaarsveld, Potts and Wardle (2010, “How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world”) followed 96 volunteers as they tried to build a new daily habit over twelve weeks. Missing a single day did not seriously disrupt the process. What hurts is turning one missed day into a reason to stop.

You’re bored. Change books. Choosing what you read, and stopping a book you don’t enjoy, are central to extensive reading. A month with a book you love beats a month of willpower.

It’s too hard. Drop a level, even partway through the book. You’re likely to learn more from 20 easy pages than from 4 hard ones.

It’s too easy. Enjoy it for now. Easy reading builds speed and makes common words automatic. Move up next month.

Adapting the plan

For a new script. If you’re learning to read Arabic, Russian, Japanese or another script, add five minutes of letter practice to each day of week 1, and stay with read-along audio longer. See how to learn a new alphabet by reading.

For busy weeks. Ten minutes on the bus counts. Audio-led reading works well in short, interrupted sessions.

For your language. Each language has its quirks, from Spanish verb endings to Japanese kanji. Find yours on learn a language by reading.

For upper-intermediate readers. At B2 and above, read each section without audio first and use the recording for the chapters that give you trouble. Choose a longer book, and let the sessions grow if you want them to.

After the 30 days

In Lally and colleagues’ study, the time it took a new daily behavior to become automatic varied widely, from 18 to 254 days, and the median was 66 days. So treat this month as a strong start, not a finish line. Run the same plan again with a new book.

Remember, too, that reading is one part of learning a language. The linguist Paul Nation suggests that a balanced program gives roughly equal time to four strands: learning from input, learning from speaking and writing, deliberate study of language, and fluency practice (Nation 2007, “The four strands”). Daily reading covers input and fluency well. Talking, writing and some focused study will make the rest of your language catch up with your reading.

How Lexo helps

Lexo is an iPhone and iPad app designed around exactly this kind of daily reading:

• Your level, your book. About 100 classic novels, each available at CEFR levels A2 to C2 in the language you’re learning. You pick the level for each book.
• Read along. Every book is narrated, with different voices for different characters, and the words highlight as they’re read.
• Sentence by sentence. A focused mode shows one sentence at a time with its audio and translation, for the hard paragraphs in week 2.
• Tap any word to see its meaning in that sentence, hear it pronounced, and save it to your Words list.
• Offline. Books download to your device, so the train, the plane and the dead zone all count as reading time.

At planned launch pricing, a book is $4.99, and Lexo Plus ($4.99 a month) gives you two book credits every month, enough for one new book and a higher level of it, or two books. Unused credits roll over, up to eight. Lexo is in beta and launching on the App Store soon. Get notified at launch.