Soon after I moved to Prague, the Czech Republic, in 2015, I went to a used book store and bought a book of children’s fairy tales in Czech. I love reading fairy tales, so I wanted to use this love to motivate me to read in Czech.
I had to translate nearly every word. As it was a second-hand book, I felt okay with writing the translations in pencil next to the word itself (such as the word miska, which is Czech for bowl — rather important to Goldilocks).
I’ll be honest, I didn’t read consistently from this book, but I did continue my Czech lessons. However, I found the book a few years later and began to read — and I was astonished (extremely surprised) that I could understand so much!