# Zi Yue English — Read English books with notes > Read English books with notes (iPhone/iPad app by 安清 邵.) - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/zi-yue-english/id6449222861 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`) - Developer: [安清 邵](https://appshunter.io/developer/1505737115) - Category: Education, Utilities - Price: Free (on sale, was $0.99) - Rating: 5.00/5 from 1 App Store ratings - Age rating: 4+ - Requires: iOS 17.0 · 19 MB - Languages: Chinese (Simplified, China) - Released: 2023-07-08 - Data updated: 2026-10-30 ## What is Zi Yue English? You have memorised thirty thousand words and still stall on page one of a real English novel. Zi Yue English does not count the words you have studied: it tells you how much of a real English book you can read right now, and then opens it at the page you can already read. NOTE: THE APP'S INTERFACE IS IN SIMPLIFIED CHINESE. It is built for Chinese speakers reading English books, so the report, the notes and the stories are Chinese, and the only English is the book itself and the words it teaches. This description is in English so you can tell what you are buying; if you do not read Chinese, it is not for you. Measure first, then read 50 words, about 3 minutes, once. One word per screen, answer known or unknown. Six do not exist; claim those and the score is corrected (Meara & Buxton, 1987). Next launch returns to your report, dated. The report: one number, one interval, one walkable distance - How much you can read, computed word by word against the real vocabulary of 15 English novels - A confidence interval, so the number is not dressed up as precision it does not have - How far to go: how many words stand between you and 95%, and between you and 98% (Hu & Nation 2000; Nation 2006), with the most cost-effective words listed in order The main line: Chinese prose with English words inside A story written in Chinese, with exactly the words your report prescribed swapped into English. - The Chinese carries the sentence; the one English word is the only place you have to think - You guess from context; tapping confirms rather than looks up - Which words are swapped in is decided by your report, never by the author - Three levels cut from your own ranking; every swapped word appears at least three times - Open a word and it joins the review list - no quiz, and it comes back on its own The other direction: read the English original The report names the book you can read best; the button under it opens that book at chapter one. - The text is the original English, unchanged; the Chinese notes under each paragraph gloss the words in it you do not know yet, in order, so nothing is tapped while reading - How much is glossed follows your own measurement: three positions at the top, the middle one being your measured level - Swipe to turn a page: the pages run on through the whole novel, past chapter ends, and the page you stopped on is remembered One book, five ways to read it Nine of the fifteen works also ship as a full Chinese translation, with the words you do not know yet swapped back into English, and as a condensation whose length is about one tenth of the book's English word count (measured across the nine: 1/8 to 1/11). One book therefore sits on the shelf at three lengths, and six original stories in Chinese carry the same prescribed words. Translations and condensations are model-generated, not human translation; the English original is never edited. Why not "tap a word to look it up" Because you have already done that, and it is why you stopped at page 3. Looking a word up interrupts reading, and reading is the only thing that makes vocabulary stay. Read aloud, and offline The app picks a sentence from the top words in your report and you read it out; recognition runs on this device, the recording is never written to disk or uploaded. No network, no account, no data collected, no in-app purchases; six screens ask for no permission, and refusing the microphone costs them nothing. Nine screens. No streaks, no leaderboards, no notification prompts. Corpus 15 works first published 1813-1925, all public domain in China, the UK and the US at once: Pride and Prejudice, Frankenstein, Dracula, Moby-Dick, Walden and ten more. Chinese glosses and IPA from ECDICT (MIT licence). Names of people and places are not counted as words to learn. The corpus is classic literature, not contemporary speech: the number measures reading books like these, not an exam score. ## Is Zi Yue English safe? Not enough ratings yet to assess Zi Yue English. ## Is Zi Yue English legit? Zi Yue English appears to be a legitimate app. The AppsHunter Legitimacy Score for Zi Yue English is 85 out of 100 points across 7 verification signals from App Store and developer data. ## Version history (last 5 releases) ### 1.7.4 — 2026-10-29 Readers who picked CET6 found four of the six stories opening as a purely Chinese page. Each story now carries one English word above your boundary, used three times in its own sentences. TOEFL and GRE are still empty, and the page says why rather than showing a blank sheet. ### 1.7.3 — 2026-10-29 If you picked a level instead of taking the 50-word test, a story's English words now follow the level you picked. They used to come from a fixed curve that ignored your choice: at CET6 the story 冰裂纹 (Kiln Fire) showed no English at all, and now shows 33 of your boundary's words. When every word in a story sits inside what you already know, the page says so and sends you to the original. ### 1.7.2 — 2026-10-28 This release completes the store listing's search terms so more readers looking for English originals can find it. Nothing inside the app changed — the reading screens, contents, word lists and report are identical to the last version. The app is now free. ### 1.7.1 — 2026-10-27 The shelf now lists all fifteen works — the six without a Chinese translation open too. Both reading screens turn pages like a book: swipe left for the next page, right for the previous one, and nothing scrolls. The footer is a page number for the whole work (page 812 of 1,502), and turning past a chapter's last page goes straight on into the next chapter — no button to press. The contents list jumps by chapter, the same in a book and in a story. Two words are left on screen: a work is divided into chapters, and the stretch of a word list you pick is a range. Eight things a first-time reader tripped on are fixed — the button that pointed at a book you had never opened, the rating prompt arriving too early, a settings row that mixed a state with an action. ### 1.7.0 — 2026-10-27 Contents lists, in both readers: jump to any chapter of a book, or any scene of a story. A 600,000-character novel is now one tap from the chapter you want. - Full translations and condensations go from 3 works to 9: every book on the shelf now carries a complete Chinese translation and a condensed edition - Six stories instead of four, reaching two more difficulty bands; one story no reader could actually read has been withdrawn - The row marked as currently being read is marked with colour and with words, never colour alone - The fifty-word measurement, the level picker and the three annotation densities are unchanged ## Apps similar to Zi Yue English | App | Rating | Price | Category | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | [LyricVerse AI](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/lyricverse-ai/id6499182809) | — | Free | Education | | [教习星教师端](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/id1512634094) | — | Free | Education | | [BrainBay - Brain Training](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/brainbay-brain-training/id6743699439) | 5.0 (2) | Free | Education | | [石榴口语](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/id6463709725) | — | Free | Education | | [趣味英语萌宠团](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/id6450923138) | — | Free | Education | | [德医医学](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/id6470362999) | — | Free | Education | ## More apps by 安清 邵 - [rumi](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/rumi/id1616376322) - [阳光伴侣](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/id6452013497) All apps by 安清 邵: https://appshunter.io/developer/1505737115 --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-10-30.*