Language through Literature

How it works

Language through Literature is a reading room for learning a language from its own literature — the stories themselves, unabridged, with help standing beside every word. Touch a word and it tells you what it means, with its whole sentence in English; press Listen and the page is read aloud. Around the reading stand a course that begins at the very beginning, practice that brings back the words you chose to keep, and a record of how far you have come.

It is for anybody who wants to read real books in the language: the beginner who has not yet read a line of it, for whom the course starts with the first phrases (and in Russian with the alphabet), and the reader who wants Chekhov or Perrault in the original and needs a hand with the words. Teachers send classes to it too — the books that are open to everyone need no account at all.

The four rooms

Each language has a room of its own, with its own shelf, its own course and its own record. One membership opens all four.

Inside a room, the tabs along the top are Desk (where you begin: your next step, and a door to each of the others), Read, Learn, Practice and Words. Your Account is at the top right.

The routine

Read, touch the words you do not know, keep the ones worth keeping, and let the room bring them back. In order:

1. Read. Open a book from Read.
2. Touch a word. Its card tells you what it means, and gives you the whole sentence in English.
3. Keep it. A word worth keeping: press Save to practice (saving needs a free account). A word you already know: press Known, and the page stops marking it.
4. Practice brings it back on a spaced schedule — just as it would begin to fade — in the sentence you saved it from.
5. Learn fills the gaps. When a page asks for more than you have, the lessons teach it: the first phrases (and in the Russian room the alphabet), the grammar, and lessons made from the scenes of the books themselves.

Learn, Practice and Words are three different things

Learn — where things are taught

Short lessons. Learn opens on your next lesson, and Browse all lessons holds the rest: Courses (useful sentences and grammar, level by level from the very beginning, and in the Russian room the alphabet), Book lessons (made from the scenes of the books on the shelf) and the Grammar guide (one pattern at a time, shown in real sentences from those books).

Practice — where things come back

Mixed practice is a short round drawn from the lessons you have finished and the words you have saved; past the beginner level it also tries them in a short passage. Saved words takes your own collection on its own, each word returning on its spaced schedule. Hints are always there, and you may stop whenever you like.

Words — your collection itself

Every word you have marked, in four drawers — Learning, Known, Reading only and Skipped — with a search. Each word can be heard, practised on its own, or followed back to the book it came from.

The reading screen

The word card

Touch any word. The card shows the word (in Russian with its stress marked), what it means, its dictionary form when the page shows another, and the whole sentence in English. Its two speakers read you the word and the line.

Save to practice

Keeps the word in your collection and brings it back in Practice. A word that appears only once on the whole shelf has no such button: it is rare, and not worth a flashcard.

Known

You have this one; the page stops marking it.

more ▸

Opens the rest: Reading only (you want to understand it when you meet it, with no flashcards), Skip (a name or a small function word), Pin the line (keep the English under the sentence while you read on), how often you have met the word and where first, a § link to the grammar that explains its form where there is one, its other forms, and in the Russian room the other words built on the same root. Once a word is saved, Mnemonic lets you write a note of your own to hang it on.

On a keyboard, while a card is open: k known, l learning, Esc close.

The sentence

Every word’s card already carries its sentence in English. To set that English under the line itself, press Pin the line on the card, or touch the space or the stop between two words; touch it again to put it away. Beneath it, Keep this line sets the sentence on your Desk. If you would rather have the English under every line from the start, say so in Settings (below).

The bar at the foot of the page

Contents

The book’s instalments, to move to any you may read.

Listen

Reads the instalment aloud, sentence by sentence. The voice is a synthetic narrator, not a human reader. Touch a word while it reads and it pauses for you; close the card and it carries on from the same line.

Stop here

Keeps your place, and closes the day’s reading with a short account of it.

Speed

The slider under the word: how fast Listen reads.

Hints

Each press changes what is underlined: every unfamiliar word, new words only, or a clean page.

Lamp

A warm page in a dim room, for reading at night.

A− and A+

Smaller and larger text.

On a phone the speed, Hints, Lamp and text size wait behind the ··· button, so the page keeps the room.

What is free

Every word answers a touch in any book you can open. What changes is how much you can open, whether you can save words for practice, and where your record is kept.

Read whole by anyone, with nothing to sign up for: in Russian, «Смерть чиновника», «Толстый и тонкий», «Студент», «Ванька», «Медведь»; in German, «Der süße Brei»; in Spanish, «Las medias de los flamencos»; in French, «Le petit Chaperon rouge».

Apart from the room, the seven free Chekhov stories can also be read whole on plain pages of this site — the Russian with its English under every sentence, no account needed: see where to start.

Membership renews until you cancel, and you may cancel at any time. The plans, VAT and the right of withdrawal are set out on free reading and membership.

Progress

XP and the rank of «14»

Reading, lessons and practice all earn XP, and XP raises your rank. There are fourteen ranks, and a new reader starts at the bottom — which is why the room first greets you as 14. The ladder counts down, as the Russian Table of Ranks did: its fourteenth class, the Collegiate Registrar, was the lowest, and its first, the Chancellor, the highest. So 14 is not a score but your class, and the number falls as you rise. Each room climbs a ladder of its own: the German room from foundling to king, the Spanish from a little fly to the giant tortoise, the French from a mouse to the king.

A rank once reached is never taken away, and XP is only a game: it never changes which words the room counts as yours. Your class and the XP still to go are on the Account page, under Your reader’s ticket; the whole ladder, rung by rung, stands on the Desk under Your collection & progress from your first XP.

Seals

Seals are the house’s badges. Each presses itself the day you do what it stands for — marking your first word, keeping ten words in practice, hearing a hundred sentences read aloud, finishing five books, writing a note of your own on a word. The ones you have earned are kept on the Account page, under Your reading record. The course keeps seals of its own for lessons completed and recalled later, in Learn under Your reader passport.

The lamp

The lamp is the room’s name for coming back. A day on which you read, finish a lesson or practise lights it, and the room counts the evenings in a row. A single quiet evening between lit ones is bridged rather than broken, though never more than twice in one run. The count is in Your reading record on the Account page.

Today’s goals

The Account page also keeps a weekly aim, under A little, often — three, five or seven days a week, as you choose — and, under Choose your next small win, three for today: One new discovery (a lesson), Your practice, and Five lines of literature. In Settings, The day’s page sets how many sentences make a day’s reading; read that many and the room says it is a good place to stop, and the browser tab’s title wears a ✓.

Rather have none of it? Calm mode in Settings puts away the ranks, the seals and these goals.

Where the settings are

Open Account (top right), then Settings. The ones readers ask about most:

Meanings written in

The language of the meanings, the translations and the room’s own buttons — English, German, Spanish or Russian, whichever the room offers (never the language it teaches). The books stay in their own language; anything not yet translated shows its English.

The lamp: daylight, lamplight, candlelight

Candlelight is the night mode. The same three are on the Account page itself, under The light. This lamp lights the whole room; the Lamp on the reading bar warms only the page.

How much do you already read?

Just starting is the beginner mode: the translation stands under every line. I read on my own keeps it one touch away.

Answer practice cards by

Typing, or letter tiles. And in Practice, under Saved words, Practice style chooses between answering with choices, a balanced mix, or more from memory.

Calm mode

Hides ranks and seals.

Some sections of the room keep a short tour of their own (❦ show me round this section); none of them starts by itself.

Your data

Your words, your place in every book and your progress are kept in this browser, on this device. Two things follow: clearing the browser’s site data clears the record with it, and another device or browser starts with a blank one. There are two remedies, and you may use both:

• Back up. Account → Settings → Back up saves the whole record as one file for you to keep; Restore reads it back in.
• Sign in. With a free account the record is kept with your account as well, and follows you to any device you sign in on.

If a membership lapses nothing is deleted, and the record stays yours to back up. What is recorded about you, and why, is on the privacy page.

And how it was made

Where the texts come from, how the help beside them is prepared and corrected, and what the room’s measurements can and cannot tell you: how the reader is made. If something here looks wrong, or a question is not answered, write to [email protected].

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