maayot | Read Chinese & Learn 4+

Maayot has one main goal: to offer new readings to its many students. I have only used the beginning level, so I know the readings are simple for a reason. So far after a few weeks, the readings are varied and offer gradual exposure to new vocabulary and some review of previous vocabulary. There is a built in dictionary function, but it is very simple, so additional help might be needed to understand some words/phrases in context. There is also a quiz with each reading that requires a close reading of the text. I wish there could be more than one question, but when a new text is offered every day, I understand why it is short. The final section is a written response to a prompt based on the reading. It’s fun to see how other users have responded.

The writing response has now been resolved.
All the best in your learning.

The app offers new Chinese reading everyday. I love the readings and the ability to click and see pinyin if needed. The level feels very good, my only issue is for the quiz that sometimes I don’t know the characters and the quiz question feels more difficult than the actual story. So having the same access to the click on character feature for pinyin in the question would help a lot. Also for the writing response it never works for me.

The writing response has now been resolved.
All the best in your learning.

Have been doing the free stories as a trial and while I like the concept the first issue is that there is no audio in the app. I am using an updated I phone but in order to hear the audio I need to open the story on the web. Second problem is although there is a translation for each word often times two characters together mean something completely different, this app seems to miss a few of those compound words and I get confused. Lastly this reading is too hard for a beginner. I thought maybe it was me but I have failed the (one question) quiz every week and can see from the posted stats that over half of the readers got it wrong along with me. Try the free version before you pay for it.

It seems you have the silent mode turned on your iOS device. Turn it off and you should hear the audio. We also have improved the difficulty for beginner level as the feedback from some learners.