Understanding a reading report

What the score means, how to read the colours, and what to do about a wrong mark.

The reading report is the page you will spend the most time on. Reach it from a portfolio, from Family activity, or from a notification — and, after a whole-book take, from See the full report on the Reading screen. (A single page read shows its result on the Reading screen itself; the report is where you go back to it.)

The score

The score is the share of the page's words your child read correctly. Each word is put in one of four buckets:

• Correct — said as written.
• Substituted — a different word was said instead. For Mandarin, the right character with the wrong tone counts here too.
• Omitted — skipped.
• Inserted — said, but not on the page.

For Chinese the unit is the character; for English and the other Latin-script languages it is the word. The ⓘ Key button explains the faces and the colours: 90% or more is great, 70% or more is good, below that means keep practising.

"What happened, in words"

If you do not read the script, this is the part to read. Every mistake is written out as a sentence — "Skipped 谢谢 (Xiè Xiè)", "Said 大 (Dà) instead of 天 (Tiān)" — with the word's meaning where we know it.

It is worked out from the same corrected alignment as the score, so it always agrees with the number at the top. No AI is involved, so it cannot invent a mistake that did not happen.

The recording boxes

The marked text is divided into boxes, one per piece of the recording, and tapping a box plays that piece. This is the fastest way to settle whether a mark is fair: find the word, tap its box, hear what was actually said. A stretch with no audio behind it says so rather than staying silent for no reason.

Tapping the book's text plays it read correctly, so you can hear the two against each other. During playback the text highlights in time with the recording.

The three ways to see the detail

The Show picker chooses the layout, and your choice is remembered:

• Inline — book text + what was said puts the two together, line by line.
• Book text separate shows the book's text as a block, with the marked words beneath it.
• Characters — no recording boxes is the older character-by-character view, kept for anyone who preferred it.

Below that, Word by word lets you hear yourself and hear it read correctly on any single word, and Tones to practise collects the Mandarin tones worth another go.

When a mark is wrong

• Edit recording. If the recording caught a false start, a sibling, or a minute of chatter at the end, open the editor, cut it and score it again. The reading keeps its identity and history. See Trimming a recording.
• Score again. Listens to the same recording afresh with the current version of the app. The new score replaces the one shown — and Undo re-score puts the old one back, so it is safe to try. If the fresh attempt does not recognise the recording as reading at all, Zen Reader keeps the old score and tells you it did rather than replacing a good result with a bad one.
• Correct the marks. Where a mark is simply wrong, put it right and the score follows. You must say why before it saves — a one-line reason, so a correction can be understood later rather than looking like the number was just moved.

On a word list Test, there is a fourth option: Adjust this card. A test is one recording covering many cards, so a card can be marked wrong simply because the slice of the recording attributed to it started too late or ran into the next word. The adjuster shows that card's waveform with what was heard, and lets you move the start and end — tap the waveform to move the nearer edge, nudge it with the buttons, Snap to speech, or Play selection to hear exactly what you have chosen. Check this card again re-checks that one card only; every other card on the test keeps its mark. Undo adjustment puts it back the way it was recorded.

If the same word is wrong every time, the page's text is the likely culprit. See Adding and preparing a book.

Some very old readings were marked letter by letter by an earlier version of the app. Those cannot be edited or scored again, and the report says so; their score stays as it is.

The other things on the report

• Download recording — for your own records.
• Share — sends the report on.
• Download PDF — a printable version. Each card names the version of the app that produced its figures, so an old printout can be placed in time.
• Copy report — the text of it, for pasting into an email.
• Reassign… — moves the reading to the right child, for when it was recorded on somebody else's login.
• Delete — removes the reading and its recording. A reading that counted can only be deleted by a parent.
• Comments — a dated note about this one reading, with a choice of who can see it. A teacher's "only me" means the author alone.

Where a downloaded file goes depends on the device. On Windows you are asked where to put it. On a Mac, iPhone, iPad or Android device there is no Save-as dialog, so Zen Reader hands the file to the usual share sheet instead — save it to Files, drop it in a cloud folder, or send it straight on. The share sheet never tells the app what you chose, so Zen Reader says the file was handed over rather than claiming it was saved.

Understanding

Where your child answered the comprehension questions, the report shows Understanding: 3 of 4 right with each answer. It is reported beside the accuracy score and never folded into it — reading a page correctly and following it are two different things.

One reading, the whole book, or every part

Opened from a single reading, the report offers Show every reading of this book and Show only this reading. The whole-book view is the one to look at for "is this getting better".

A single recording that covered several pages is shown as Part 1 of 8, and so on, with an overall percentage across the parts that have been scored. That view has its own strip of actions covering the lot at once — share or export the whole report, and Re-analyse every part, which can be stopped partway. Taking the recording gives you one file joined from every part, and it says how many parts went into it, so a take that was missing a part is not passed off as complete.