Foreign Language Graded Reader

Reading by non-native speakers and with phonetic errors! Really?! Is it hard to attract professional native speakers for audio books? At the same time, I really liked the books. The app requires to download an audio to listen, it eats a lot of space on the phone.

I love the book but the app is crashing too much in a point that I can’t read anymore.

This app would be better if you were allowed to listen to the audiobook while looking at the ebook. Don’t get me wrong I have a physical copy of the book but I thought that it would be more convenient to also have an ebook version of my book so I can read and listen on the go. Sadly that wasn’t possible so I wasted $10 on getting the ebook for nothing. So it’s either I listen to the audiobook and carry my physical copy around or read the ebook on its own.

I love the books and audio - the material itself - but the app doesn’t seem to be well made. I often play the audio and lock my phone, but if I pause the audio and then start playing it again, the audio will restart at the time stamp that it was at when I initially locked my phone. Recently the app has also started crashing CONSTANTLY. Any time I try to open the app, it immediately crashes. What’s also strange about this is that it only happens in fits: I can listen for 10 or 15 minutes just fine, but then it starts crashing and won’t stop until I just stop trying. Then I’ll pick it back up a couple hours later, start listening and then it starts crashing again. It makes the app completely unusable, so, in a sense, it doesn’t even matter how good the material is because I can’t even access it.

The concept is really simple and done well. I am a beginner Spanish learner and can follow along the stories and just read for fun. I then read again to pick up knew vocab and grammar. The summaries are great and just enough comprehension questions so it doesn’t feel like work.

I already had a copy of Olly Richards’ Spanish short stories and I wanted the audiobook. In the short stories book, there’s a coupon to get the audiobook through the website and this app. I bought audiobook with researching the reviews...and at first i could see the mp3 recordings. I downloaded the app and it said i didn’t have any books in my library... so i went back to the website and it was there. However, when I click on the audio book, the pdf of the book downloads and it has the summaries of the stories as well as the questions. There’s no audio. So i feel scammed...i have emailed once and sent a message through the app around 2:30-3 this afternoon. I have received no response as of yet. I’m disappointed and I will just stick to Kindle and Audible. Lesson learned!

Just upgraded to iOS 13.1x and this app no longer works. How could that be?? I paid extra to the book seller to get the audio version that works with this app and it seems like this app developer is not up to snuff keeping up.

The graded reader is perfect for me—an advanced beginner to low intermediate. I read the chapter twice then read along with the audio. Although the audio is not fast paced, it’s nevertheless too fast for me to understand the reading material if I hadn’t read it first. The combination of the two media increases reading comprehension and listening skills.

The reading material is fine and the audio is understandable BUT it would be nice to listen to the audio as you read. I bought both French audio and story but I can only access one at the time. It’s hard enough to know how French is spoken compared to how it’s written but to switch from the ebook to the audio isn’t helping at all. Overall the product is fine and well put. The narrator is clear and understandable while the choice of vocabulary is perfect for my level.