Reading is the perfect way to pick up new vocabulary and grammar at your own speed. Using a variety of reading sources for input will dramatically increase your vocabulary and comprehension. You should focus on reading material that is at or just above your German level. If what you’re reading is at or just above your level, you should be able to answer the 5 Ws. Who or what is the main topic? What are they doing, or what is its purpose? When is it happening? Where is it happening? And, why is it happening? You don’t need to understand every detail, but you should understand the overall story or purpose. If you don’t understand the story or purpose, read something easier. It’s ok if you have to look up a lot of words, especially in the beginning. Using reading aids to look up new words will allow you to stretch above your reading level and pick up new vocabulary, and over time you’ll have to look up fewer and fewer new words as reading gets easier.
If you are looking for tools to assist you with your reading, check out the article below. There are a lot of tools that make reading German much easier and more fun.
How to Organize Your Reading Sources
I usually read on my phone, so I have a folder where I keep bookmarks for all the German news websites I like to read. If you prefer reading on a PC, you can create a bookmark folder to store all the websites on your bookmark bar, or you can store the links in your Notion planner.
I use the Brave browser for reading because it removes a lot of clutter and makes nice-looking thumbnails when I add a website to my home screen. However, you can use any browser to add links to your home screen, just go to settings, then click “add to home screen.”
Beginner
Before you start reading German articles, you should have a basic understanding of grammar and vocabulary and be at about an A2 level. If you have already completed an A1 course through either Learn German with Anya or the vhs-Lernportal you are more than ready.
Deutsch-To-Go
Deutsch-To-Go is the best website for learning to read German. It has hundreds of articles for learners of all levels. The website focuses on listening and reading, so they provide a short audio recording for each text and a PDF so you can follow along. If you want to focus on learning to read, you can read the PDF before listening to the audio recording, or if you are focusing on listening you can listen to the audio recording before reading the text. There are also quizzes for each text to test your comprehension. There are no translations provided, but with proper use of reading tools, you should have no issue understanding texts at your level.
The German Project
While the German Project doesn’t have many free texts available, the ones it does have are high quality with English translations and German audio. I highly recommend reading through their available stories!
Lingua
Lingua has 40 simple texts available for German learners to practice reading. The texts are a little boring but they are great for beginners who can’t read much yet. There are also quizzes with each article to test your comprehension.
German.net
German.net is very similar to Lingua with simple texts for beginners. The level of each text is clearly marked, and there are quizzes to test your reading ability.
Intermediate
At the intermediate level, it’s time to start reading more complicated German articles about more varied topics. These websites are still intended for learners, but they are written with more advanced grammar and vocabulary.
Slowly Spoken News
Slowly Spoken News is exactly what it sounds like. The articles are written in simple German and have clearly spoken easy-to-follow audio to go along with them. These articles are perfect for picking up new German vocabulary and keeping up with current events.
Deutsch Perfekt
Deutsch Perfekt is a website with texts, audio recordings, and quizzes all designed to help you practice your German. All articles are marked by their difficulty, and the topics are varied and interesting, so it’s a great website for any German learner.
Todaii German
Todaii German is available as both a website and an app. Todaii provides a pop-up dictionary that allows you to translate words by clicking on them. It is a fantastic tool for beginners who are not yet comfortable looking up words and phrases on their own.
Nachrichten Leicht
Nachrichten Lieicht or Easy News is another website with news articles written in simple German for German learners.
DW Top-Thema
DW Top-Thema provides articles with audio and text then gives you a quiz to practice your comprehension. There is a huge backlog of articles to practice your German listening and reading skills.
Advanced
At the advanced level, you should now focus on reading books and articles intended for native German speakers. Below are several websites for reading books, but I also recommend finding websites that write about topics you are interested in, such as sports, science, pop culture, or history. You can find new websites by Googling your interests in German and bookmarking the ones that look interesting.
Onleihe
Onleihe is a free digital library with thousands of German ebooks available through the Goethe Institut. Like any traditional library, you can only check out books for a set amount of time, and you must place a hold on books that you want to read but are not currently available, however, it is easy to sign up and highly accessible, so it is a fantastic resource for German learners.
Webtoons
Webtoons has many free webcomics translated into German that are easy to read and understand making it a great resource for learners. Comics are some of the best reading material for learners because they are interesting and there is lots of context provided through images.
Z-Library
To access Z-library, you must create a free account. Also, make sure you use the correct website linked below because there are fake ones. This library has a wide variety of popular novels available to download and read.
Tappytoon – Freemium
Tappytoons is similar to Webtoons but with fewer free options. However, if you like reading comics, many comics in German are not very expensive and great for practicing.
Amazon Kindle DE – Premium
Amazon Kindle has pretty much any book you could want. However, you need to create a new Amazon account for German Amazon. Unfortunately, you also can’t merge your German Kindle account with your normal Kindle account, so if you already use Kindle you need to sign in and out to switch between the accounts. If you are using the app and it won’t show you the German bookstore, you may need to use a VPN. However, if you buy a book in the browser version of Kindle, it will show up in your app without issue.
