Read95
Real books and articles, adapted so you know 95% of the words.
Coming soon to the App Store and Google Play. Early testers get Reader+ free.
THE IDEA
Read95 takes books and articles worth reading and presents each one so that you already know about 95% of the words, fitted to your own vocabulary. The remaining 5% is what you learn.
Reading puts each word in context, again and again, inside sentences that show how it is used. Studies of extensive reading find that learners gain vocabulary this way, and come to read faster and with better comprehension.
Long works are read in parts, in order. The first passage is a taster from inside the book; if you want more, you start it properly, and the app picks up where you left off.
Press and hold a word you don't know to see what it means in that sentence, in English. The words you look up come back for review at widening intervals, until you know them.
Fiction, essays, history, travel writing, from a curated library. Each passage is rewritten to your vocabulary, then checked for accuracy to the source and for how naturally it reads.
WHY 95%
Reading research has measured how many of a text's words a reader needs to know to follow it. Laufer (1989) put the threshold for reasonable comprehension at about 95% of the words. Hu and Nation (2000) found that reading fiction comfortably, without help, takes about 98%.
Read95 works in that range. Each text is fitted to the words you already know, and any word you don't know can be looked up in place.
THE 95%
Words you have already shown you know: in your calibration, in the texts you have read, and among the words you have looked up.
THE 5%
Words that are new to you. Press and hold any of them for its meaning.
IN PRACTICE
A text is only served when you know at least 80% of its words. Rate a text too hard or too easy and the next ones adjust.
Laufer, B. (1989). What percentage of text lexis is essential for comprehension? In C. Laurén and M. Nordman (Eds.), Special language: From humans thinking to thinking machines, 316–323. Multilingual Matters.
Hu, M., and Nation, P. (2000). Unknown vocabulary density and reading comprehension. Reading in a Foreign Language 13(1), 403–430.
YOUR LEVEL
A short calibration at the start, selecting the words you know, gives Read95 a first estimate of your vocabulary. Every text you read and every word you look up refines it, in both directions. Each new text is chosen by your interests and written to that estimate.
WHAT YOU CAN READ
The library is curated. Works are chosen for their quality, sorted by subject, and anything not worth your time is held back.
Your texts are chosen from it by what interests you, and each book is presented at your level, a passage at a time, so you can read it through to the end.
PRICING
Enough to know whether reading at 95% feels like reading, and no card needed. Reader+ is one subscription for one language at a time, and you can cancel it whenever you like.
$9 a month
READER+