Level A2-B1

A2–B1 is the bridge between basic and independent reading. At A2 you can handle short everyday texts; at B1 you read longer texts on familiar subjects, follow the main line of an argument and understand descriptions of events, feelings and plans. Most learners spend the longest time at this stage, and reading is one of the fastest ways through it.

Articles at this level are longer and the sentences more varied: around sixteen words on average, with past tenses, linking words like “however” and “although”, and some subordinate clauses. The topics include travel, sport, food and the history of science. Each paragraph has a few unfamiliar words, enough to learn something without losing the thread.

Research on reading suggests that you need to know about 98% of the words in a text to read it comfortably, roughly one unknown word in fifty. If you stop much more often than that, go back to A1–A2 for a while. And save the words that keep coming back from one article to the next: they are the ones worth learning first.