About this app

Learn French just by reading.

Stories have manually added word for word translation so the meaning of the text is always and immediately available. This teaches you the more common words fast and easy. The App includes integrated practice for more difficult words.

The following stories are included:

Guy de Maupassant, Walter Schnaffs I, Level BC, 1052 words
Guy de Maupassant, Walter Schnaffs II, Level BC, 1565 words
Honoré de Balzac, Drame Au Bord De La Mer I, Level BC, 2338 words
Honoré de Balzac, Drame Au Bord De La Mer II, Level BC, 2108 words
Honoré de Balzac, Drame Au Bord De La Mer III, Level BC, 2863 words
Guy de Maupassant, Le Bonheur I, Level BC, 843 words
Guy de Maupassant, Le Bonheur II, Level BC, 1160 words
Guy de Maupassant, La Confession, Level BC, 1636 words
Émile Zola, Le Carnet De Danse, Level BC, 2007 words
Guy de Maupassant_Souvenir, Level BC, 2139 words
Émile Zola, Un Bain, Level BC, 3194 words
Honoré de Balzac_L'Inconnue_Level BC, 1732 words
Honoré de Balzac_Trois Semaines_Level BC, 943 words
Honoré de Balzac_Les Conditions_Level BC, 1101 words
Honoré de Balzac_La Lettre Finale_Level BC, 1339 words
Honoré de Balzac_Triste Exil_Level BC, 1291 words
Honoré de Balzac_Une Fille_Level BC, 1652 words
Honoré de Balzac_Une Affaire Meurtrière, Level BC, 1170 words
Honoré de Balzac, Confidence, Level BC, 1316 words
Honoré de Balzac, Le Malade, Level BC, 1365 words
Honoré de Balzac, La Passion, Level BC, 1256 words
Honoré de Balzac, Nouvelle Rencontre, Level BC, 1248 words
Honoré de Balzac, Bonheur, Level BC, 553 words

Who Are We:

A terrific and enthousiastic team, dedicated to bringing you as much word for word literal plus idiomatically translated text, in as many languages as possible, in the coming years. Look out for updates on this piece of software with more functionality and more stories.

Translating word for word literally, and including idiomatically where necessary, is hard, painstaking work. However, to us, this project and the method we advocate mean that we can turn a language that is opaque to a beginner or even an advanced student into clear and easy learning material.

Method:

Our App is based on three elements to expand your mastery of the language fast and easy. Association by story, immediate availability of meaning and memorizing efficiency. Use the following method to attain new vocabulary fast:

1. Read the stories and re-read them until you know most of the words:

This is a fast process because there's no lookup time with the unique word-for-word literal plus idiomatic translations, and most words or their root forms occur more than once, so you'll start recognizing them already after the first read.

If looking at (yes, not up) our word-for-word translation costs one second, and looking up a word in a dictionary costs a minute, it means our method is 60 times faster.

2. Then focus on the remaining words that you still don't know by adding them to your wordlist:

The spaced repetition practice in the My Words section, and the direct links to the words on the pages support memorization of the more difficult words.

Where a google or dictionary translation might be 50% off track where it concerns the correct meaning in context and conjugation of low frequency words, the manually added literal word-for-word translation is 100% correct.

This means that on top of being much faster, you're memorizing two times more efficiently than with any other method.