In a previous post, I talked about how we know we’ve mastered a language: by mastering the four basic skills — reading, listening, speaking, and writing. Today, we’ll focus on reading.
Reading is a receptive skill, one we use to accumulate language. Along with listening, it’s how we take in vocabulary, grammar patterns, and the cultural nuances of a language. But how do we actually start reading? Do we pick up a 100, 200, or 300-page book? Is that even doable? When we ask people around us how to learn, more often than not they say things like “read a book” or “read a short story.”
Why quotes
Reading short stories, books, magazines, and so on is a great thing to do — but not for someone who’s just starting out. Starting out takes baby steps, and we need to go shorter than a short story, even one that’s just a page long. Quotes are the most manageable reading material for a beginner: they’re short, they take little time to finish, and that matters, because one of the most common excuses I hear from my students when I ask if they read is that they don’t have time. That excuse doesn’t fly here.
Quotes run about one, two, maybe three sentences. Compared to long-form material, they win on every count that matters early on: they’re not discouraging, they’re time-efficient, and they pack in a lot of substance — which makes the language stick, unlike the dry sentences you find in grammar and vocabulary textbooks.
Quotes are everywhere, too. They show up on almost every social media platform I know, so anyone who wants to read doesn’t have to look far. But what does the actual process look like? As we scroll through our feeds, we run into quotes about all sorts of things. Pick one, read it, and try to work out the meaning. If you’re already taking a language course and have a small foundation, only a few words will stand between you and full comprehension. How do you close that gap? Look the words up in your dictionary app. Once the meaning clicks, the new words stick. Keep going, and those same words start showing up in the next quote, or the one after that. Repetition is the key here — the words stick even harder, until they become part of your accumulated vocabulary, ready to help you with the next quote or text you come across.
Where quotes lead
Do we stop at quotes? No — quotes are just the beginning. Every quote you read and understand gives you a small dopamine hit, and that builds confidence in your language learning ability. Once quotes start feeling easy, you’ll feel the pull to challenge yourself. That’s when you voluntarily move on to paragraphs, then from paragraphs to a one-page piece, from one page to two, and so on. Before you know it, you’ll want to try a book. Congratulations — you’ve reached the stage where you, yourself, want to read one. The whole process has a domino effect: one step pushes you toward the next, without anyone forcing anything on you.
What this looks like for me
What I’m sharing in this post is something I’ve used for a very long time. I have folders on my phone with thousands of quotes saved from Facebook and Instagram. I keep them so I can revisit them whenever I have a spare moment — waiting my turn at the barber, at the doctor’s office, or on the bus. I feel proud every time I open one of those folders, because reading through them feels so easy. Quotes are baby steps, but those baby steps are exactly what make you want to take the big ones — like finally picking up that book.
So next time you’re staring down a stack of books wondering where to even begin, don’t. Open your phone, find a quote, and start there. That’s the whole trick.