maayot | Read Chinese & Learn

i canceled my subscription in january and am still being charged with no response from the ‘company’. stay away.

Nice app for relaxation.

I will try to learn Chinese from this application

I’m using this app as part of my daily language learning and appreciate the simplicity of use. It’s just a nice extra tool and exercise to work on daily.

I know that language textbooks start with inviting, massive text at the beginning levels and then get increasingly smaller as learners progress, but the text on this app is nearly illegibly small. I don’t even read text this small in my native language because it hurts my eyes to try. It has nothing to do with my Chinese reading ability. The fact that I can’t adjust the text size or copy it into Pleco (where I can adjust the text size and make vocab lists for free) makes this app nearly useless to me. For ten bucks a month, i would expect there to be a vocabulary list feature and text size adjustment ability. The audio also cuts out if you leave the app or hit the lock button on the phone. This means that if you’re working with a text the way most research indicates you should, which would be to only listen to it a few times before listening and following along with the words, you have to have your phone unlocked while listening, which makes doing anything else while listening really difficult. It’s a good idea in theory to only have one text available per day. I was looking forward to trying it out and not facing decision fatigue. But apps like Chairman’s Bao are cheaper and have far more features, even if it’s easy to get overwhelmed or bounce around with a seemingly limitless supply of choices of texts. The premium membership idea just freaks me out. Who would want to record their voice to send to China for “feedback”? Do you know what China uses that kind of information for? If you’re learning Chinese, you should be aware of the dystopian crazy stuff that the CCP is doing with tech. You should assume your voice recording is being used for nefarious purposes. But maayot wants you to pay them fifty bucks a month for that?

It a beautiful app

Found this app really helpful in beginning the steps to learning Chinese. Really like the layout on how they let you learn at your pace.

Whether you have just begun learning Chinese or you’ve been working on it for longer, Maayot will accommodate. The font of characters on the site is also very helpful and makes writing/reading more clear.

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 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.