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CHAPTER 3:
LEARNER PHASE - 0-3,000 Words
The vast majority of English learning material belongs to the 0-3,000 known word range.
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And just like a children's paddling pool, once you have mastered the basics here you are ready to progress to deeper waters.
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But that doesn't mean this stage is easy to navigate.
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(In fact, most learners get lost here)
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In this chapter I'll provide you with a huge list of resources that produce proven results.
And they all provide optimal input - you just have to find your level and choose what interests you most.
Reading Materials
Graded Readers
Graded readers are an excellent resource for learners at this stage of their learning journey.
There is a lot of data showing the effectiveness of graded readers. In fact, it’s possible for very low-level beginners, knowing only 50 words or so, to progress to upper-intermediate books of 3,000 words in less than a year.
All reading material produced for learners is in some way graded.
Graded readers focus on longer texts to develop learners’ reading ability. They contain little to no grammar instruction, instead relying on large quantities of input to develop a more intrinsic feel for grammar and vocabulary over time.
Graded readers use simplified vocabulary and grammar structures which allow learners to consolidate their knowledge before moving on to more challenging language. The books are organised into levels according to the number of words learners typically know at each stage, known as headwords.
Publishers tend to use their own naming systems for each of their levels. For this reason it's best to focus on the number of headwords each book uses.
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This image shows the number of headwords for a Penguin graded reader at
'level 5'.
In this screenshot of a publisher comparison chart from The Extensive Reading Foundation you can begin to see the differences between publishers' level systems.
etbookservice.com does a brilliant job of interpreting the levels of most of the main graded reader publishers.
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Here is a screenshot from their page for the Oxford Bookworms series.
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Only customers living in Japan can buy directly from the site, but my suggestion is to use it to identify specific titles you want to buy or access elsewhere.
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It can be difficult to buy books directly from some publishers, so often the easiest option, if you don't have a specific title in mind, is to do a general search for "English graded readers" on Amazon.
Or try including the name of the publisher.
Here are some other suggestions for finding graded readers:
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Readable - This app is one of the best free resources I've seen.
If you haven't seen it already, it's a 'must download'! -
LingQ - Available as a free and paid service. If you have a bit of a budget and are willing to pay for convenience, LingQ has everything you need in one place in the paid version. The link provided is a referral link from my personal account, so if you create a free or paid account we both get free credits :-)
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Visit your local library (remember to check their online service too if they have one)
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Search for “graded reader” on Youtube
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ETBookService.com - use it to identify books you want to read
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ELTBooks.com (similar to etbookservice.com)
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Freegradedreaders.com (click on the links at the top of the page to find the books)
News In English
News In Levels is a free site which offers news articles at the 1,000, 2,000, and 3,000 word levels. Audio is also available for every article in American English.
Here are some suggestions on combining reading with listening:
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Read the article.
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Listen and read at the same time.
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Listen to the audio without the text.
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Pronunciation practice - listen sentence by sentence and repeat after the speaker.
Listening Materials
Most graded reader publishers offer the option of an audiobook version of their titles.
I recommend graded readers for improving listening skills for the same reasons I recommend them for reading. In roughly half the time that grammar-based methods reach the 3,000 word level, you can develop your listening comprehension in the most efficient and natural way with correctly graded material.
Native Speaker Accents
Most native accents you hear in graded materials will be either North American or a particular British accent called Received Pronunciation (RP). RP is used by around 3% of people in the UK, but it is very similar to other accents from the south of England and is understood throughout the English speaking world.
Did you know?
Hollywood movies often cast British actors that use RP to play baddies.
(You might never look at your English English teacher the same way again!)
I recommend trying to listen to both accents, as this will give you some practice with the large differences in pronunciation between native accents, particularly between vowel sounds.
If you’re not sure what accent a speaker has feel free to ask me in this forum post on accents.
You can find graded listening materials in the same list as the reading materials above.
When Stories Are Too Difficult
Listening to stories, even when you can read them quite comfortably is often surprisingly difficult.
You can control your own reading speed, but you can’t control the speed of someone else’s speech as easily.
Beniko Mason, an English teacher and leading language learning researcher has developed a method that makes stories much more comprehensible and extremely effective for listening development.
By utilising techniques that make the story not only easier to understand, but that also keep you inside the story you can simply listen without distractions.
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These comprehension aiding techniques include:
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Adding context with background information, explanations, or definitions in L1 or L2
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Providing synonyms and antonyms
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Drawing pictures
Her students enjoy great success with this method in combination with self-selected reading of graded readers. I encourage you to check out her Story Listening method which you can find on her Youtube channel.
I share more about Mason's methods and her students' success stories here.
Podcasts
Podcasts are probably one of the most convenient forms of input to add to your daily routine. In the 5 seconds it takes to pick up your phone and start playing a podcast you can be listening to English as you cook, commute to work, clean the house, etc.
And there’s no need to listen to hours and hours at a time. Just 5 minutes when you have time throughout the day quickly adds up to a lot of input.
Here are some useful podcasts for learners. As usual, try a few, make sure they’re comprehensible, and stick with the ones you like the most.
Podcast Name | Speaker Accents | Comments |
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British Council: Learn English Podcast | UK | Good content but the speakers sound like actors. I.e. not the most natural sounding. |
Culips ESL Podcast | USA | Natural conversation between the speakers. |
ESLPod | USA | A paid service, but very comprehensive and co-produced by Jeff McQuillan, a leading educational researcher. |
Easy Stories in English | UK | Slow stories. |
English Class 101 | USA | Natural speech. |
Podcasts in English | UK | Natural conversation between the speakers. |
Radiolab: Pickle | USA | Suitable for kids. |
Voice of America: Learning English | USA | Scripted news articles. |
Some podcast and radio apps make it easy to find graded English material. Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Ivoox are particularly good at guiding you towards English learning content.
YouTube Videos
There are literally tens of thousands of channels on YouTube that are dedicated to learners of English. The vast majority however focus on conscious learning of vocabulary, grammar, learning tips, etc.
If you enjoy this kind of content feel free to continue (remember principle 2 of optimal input), but my recommendations are going to focus on channels that provide a large volume of comprehensible listening material.
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Each of these recommendations let you enjoy the flow of the story or the message without asking you to focus on the form of the language.
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Here are a few channels to get you started:
Create Your Own Audio Books
With online and app-based text-to-speech tools it has never been easier to create your own audio materials.
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The AI voices might not always be perfect, but they are getting more and more realistic all the time.
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If you have access to an electronic version of the text you can simply copy and paste it into one of the following text-to-speech tools:
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For me, the perfect time to use these tools is when you want to really focus on pronunciation with short texts.
Here's how I did it with a language I'm very unfamiliar with: German.
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I had an old Assimil textbook on PDF (so no way to copy and paste) for which I didn't have the accompanying audio.
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To teach myself German pronunciation I wrote the dialogue from lesson 1 into Google Translate (the Natural Readers app allows you to take a photo with your phone and get an instant transcript).
As I listened to each line I repeated out loud until my pronunciation was as close to the German speaker's as possible.
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I wanted to have the English translation alongside the original text, so on this occasion I used Google Translate.
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Assuming you have access to simple and accurate texts you could build yourself a mini language course this way.
Story Listening + Making Your Own Reading Material
​This idea is riskier, but after watching a German teacher use Story-Listening to teach on Youtube I had this idea:
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Listen to the story in L2 (language 2, the target language).
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Write a summary of the story in L1 on Google Translate and translate it to L2.
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Carefully check the L2 translation for accuracy to the best of your ability.
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Copy and paste the story into a document and use it to review the story in the future.