Grove: Learn English

Grove teaches English, from the alphabet to the C2 level, and is a reader in which every word can be tapped. A COURSE BESIDE YOUR TEACHER The Learn tab is a whole course in seven stages: First steps, Beginner, Elementary, Intermediate, Upper-intermediate, Advanced and Mastery. It starts from first words heard and pictured, the 26 letters and their sounds, over 400 everyday words and stories read aloud, and goes on to 10,000 words and the grammar, reading, writing, listening and speaking of the C2 level. 142 lessons, 51 first-step units, five pronunciation units and 212 sets of words, with poems, plays and stories along the way. Every lesson has the same seven parts: Remember, Look, Learn, Try, Use, Check and Keep. Every answer is marked the moment it is given, and every wrong answer is told why. Writing and speaking are done against a model answer and a checklist, with a rough guide made by rules on the device; a teacher's mark is the real one. Review brings back each word you keep and each point you miss, at widening gaps, until it stays. PRACTICE QUESTIONS AND TIMED TESTS From Stage 3, every stage has its own practice at its level: 4,211 questions in the forms many tests of English use, on reading, grammar, gaps, words and idioms, reasoning, listening, writing and speaking. Each kind of question shows how to work it, a worked example and the lessons that teach it, then gives practice. 52 timed tests and 31 timed writing papers are each walked through afterwards. Marking is plain: one mark a question, nothing taken off. Writing and speaking come with feedback by rule, a marking guide, samples and a model. Every question is written for Grove. THE SAME FOR EVERY LEARNER Everyone gets the same Grove: no profile, no age to give, and every stage, its practice and its timed tests open to all. The dictionary hides rude and offensive words until someone turns that off in Settings. SAY IT RIGHT The 44 sounds of English with pairs to hear, word stress, weak forms and rhythm, and the points that most mark an Indian speaker. Read a passage aloud and Grove shows which words did not come through clearly. GAMES THAT TEACH Memory pairs, word ladders, anagrams, a sentence race, odd one out, crosswords, catch the error, a word duel and a precis sprint, each at your own stage. TAP ANY WORD Open a book, or an article from Safari, and tap a word you do not know. Grove says what it means, how it sounds, where it came from, and what it is doing in that sentence, then gets out of the way. Six thousand of the words serious readers meet open with a short, plain definition written for Grove. EVERY SENTENCE, TAKEN APART Tap a sentence and Grove shows its clauses, subject, verb group, tense and voice, and what each word is doing. A REFERENCE THAT ANSWERS BACK 161 grammar topics, 796 rules and 1,249 tables; more than five hundred Greek and Latin word parts and their families; confusable pairs, idioms, natural pairings, and one word in place of a phrase. Every part of it is taught in a lesson first. 155 PIECES TO READ Editorials, explainers, short stories, issues argued both ways, poems and plays, and pieces for younger readers, written for Grove, each placed beside the lesson it serves. EVERYTHING IS IN THE APP Every lesson, question and story ships inside Grove. No account, no subscription, nothing to download. It works on a plane and in a classroom with no wifi. Grove goes online only when you send it a link, switch on iCloud sync between your own devices, or, where a device cannot recognise speech itself, say yes to Apple's speech service. KIND TO LEARNERS Scores only on checks and timed tests. Clocks only in timed tests, speaking tasks, three games and practice you ask to time, and Settings turns them off. No streaks, no leaderboards, no reminders. MAC, IPHONE AND IPAD The same app on all three, with your books, notes, kept words and progress carried between your own devices through iCloud when you turn it on.