Above all, students should read texts about subjects they are interested in.

Ideally, students should select readings with:

• Audio examples to hear the pronunciation of the words, and to hear how a native speaker reads the text aloud to impart meaning.
• Only a couple of new vocabulary words for each sentence.

To reduce frustration as much as possible, students should starting reading at lower grade levels and then move up. When their knowledge of vocabulary and command of the language increases, they can try reading higher grade levels.

Sometimes it is suggested that young readers should read Grimms' Fairy Tales, or other traditional children's stories; however, much of the vocabulary is outdated and archaic. Of course, Grimms' Märchen are famous and culturally important and influential, and people should read them, but even native speaker can find the original texts are quite challenging. The vocabulary of Franz Kafka is much more contemporary.

Franz Kafka some collections of short works that may be read out of sequence. Through linguistic analysis, we can determine an optimal progression, where the student gets to read a lot of text, with only a gradual slope of new vocabulary to be acquired.

Here is the optimal reading progression using all of Kafka's shorter works:

These statistics may help guide a reader in making reading selections. Often just knowing just how many words are necessary to read a passage can help break down the difficult first step of approaching the text. A reader's intense interest in a subject can help overcome some of the difficulties imposed by the text. Students and confident beginning readers should celebrate their accomplishments and keep track of their progress.

If a reader wishes to tackle the short story collections separately, here are their recommended progressions.

Here is the recommended reading progression for Franz Kafka's Ein Landarzt:

Betrachtung is a collection of poetic prose pieces, and although some of them could be viewed as stories, their intentions and effects may be more difficult to interpret. Although Betrachtung contains very short pieces, readers unaccustomed to poetry or avant garde writings may find them difficult and puzzling, and so some of them are recommended with hesitation.

Learning progression for Franz Kafka's Betrachtung: