Word lists

Flash cards that listen, a card game, a spoken test, write practice, a write test and a quick recall check over any list of words.

A word list is any list of words — a vocabulary set, a chapter's new characters, the words your child keeps getting wrong. Add it as a book with its type set to List, and six ways to work on it open up: Flash cards, the Card game, a Say test, Write practice, a Write test and Do you remember? — plus the Leaderboard.

Wherever a word is shown as a tile or a card on these screens, tapping the word says it aloud — the screen says Tap a word to hear it wherever that is on offer. Each word is a button, so with a keyboard you can also move to it with Tab and press Enter or Space, and a screen reader reads it out. The two places it is deliberately silent are the word in front of your child during the Say test and the countdown card in the Card game: both are the moment they are being scored on saying that word, and hearing it first would make the mark meaningless.

The hub

Word lists opens on a hub rather than straight into an activity. At the top are two pickers — List, and Lesson where the list has named lessons. Everything below follows what you have chosen, and each lesson keeps its own best scores. Lists are sorted by the number in their title, so 第二级 comes after 第一级 and Level 10 after Level 2.

If the list uses # headings, each becomes a lesson — usually a week or a chapter. Otherwise the whole list is one.

This list's words shows the chosen lesson as a grid of cards: the word, its pinyin and its English. This is the quick way to check a scanned list came out right without stepping through every card.

What would you like to do? offers them. Each one runs in place of the hub, with ← Back to the list to return. On a wide window the words sit beside the pickers and activities, and in flash cards the switches and voice settings sit beside the card; on a phone everything stacks in one column, in the same order. The word tiles share out each row's width, so a row is filled edge to edge rather than leaving a gap at the end.

Pinyin

The Pinyin picker on the hub decides how much support the cards give:

• Fade as you learn (the default) — the pinyin comes away gradually as your child shows they know a word.
• Always show — never hidden.
• Never show — hidden, but Show pinyin on a card reveals it.

The choice sticks across the app, so the Spelling screen follows it too. It is set here on the hub, not in Settings.

Flash cards — they listen and coach

One card at a time, with Back, Next and Shuffle. Listen reads the card aloud, and Play all works through the list — with Pause, Stop and Start again — plus the Loop and Echo (say it after me) switches. Voice and timing, folded away under the switches, sets the speaking speed, how many times each word is said and the gap between words.

The change worth knowing about: Listen to me is on by default, and with it on the card is not just shown — it is heard.

• The microphone opens the moment a card appears. While it is open a coral pill under the card reads Listening — say the word, then press Next; your child says the word and presses Next. When the pill is not showing, nothing is being recorded.
• There is no "say it now" button and no countdown to race. Pressing Next is what ends the attempt; the microphone also closes by itself after a generous pause, longer for longer words.
• A moment later the coaching appears under the next card, naming the word it is about, so nothing ever waits for marking. It shows how well the word went, what Zen Reader heard when that differs from the word, and for Mandarin a note on each character's tone.
• Hear it said plays the word read correctly. Try it again goes back to that card — it is offered whenever the attempt was not full marks, so a good one is simply praised and left alone.
• Pause, Stop, or switching Listen to me off throw away a half-said word rather than marking it. A child is never scored on an attempt they were interrupted in.
• Silence is not an attempt. If the card passed with nothing said, the strip reads We didn't hear anything — try saying it again. and offers Try it again. Nothing is marked and nothing is sent to be transcribed, so a quiet moment never shows up as a wrong answer — or as words the child never said.

The run is recorded and kept, and its mark counts each card once, at its best attempt — deliberately, because trying a card again is the whole point of practice. Every attempt is still listed in the report.

If your device has no speech recognition the switch is simply not there, and flash cards behave as plain cards.

The first time anything in Zen Reader needs to listen, a short Before we listen note says why before your device asks for the microphone (and, on an iPhone, iPad or Mac, speech recognition) — Continue or Not now. If microphone access has been turned off, Zen Reader says The microphone is turned off and offers Open Settings where the device allows it, and turns the switch off.

A How this character is built panel on a Chinese card explains the character's main part and what it hints at.

The card game

Three cards face up, a countdown, then your child says the right one. Each answer scores 3, 2, 1 or 0 — with a demotion for a Mandarin tone that is not right. Scoring happens in the background so there is never a wait between cards.

Leaderboard on the hub shows the best card-game score per child in the family for the chosen lesson.

The Say test

Each word in turn, said aloud, recorded and scored, and saved as a proper session you can look back at. It is called the Say test because there is a written one beside it.

The test listens by itself: recording starts as each word appears, and Done moves straight on. ⏸ Pause and ▶ Carry on are there if you need to stop, and Cancel abandons the attempt — nothing is saved until the end, so a cancelled test leaves no mark.

If a word passes in silence, the test says We didn't hear anything — try saying it again. and listens for the same word once more. A second silence is taken as the child's answer: that word is marked as not read and the test moves on, so a child who does not know a word is never held on it. Whatever was or wasn't said, the test never records words a recogniser invented out of a quiet room.

Once a list has been tested more than once, the results screen adds Your progress on this list: a bar per attempt, so improvement is visible without opening the portfolio.

Write practice and the Write test

Both hand off to the same handwriting flow spelling uses, scoped to the list and lesson you have chosen: your child writes the words, photographs the sheet, and the words are marked. See Spelling practice for how to photograph a sheet and how the marking is checked.

The difference is the same one the school makes.

• Write practice shows the words. Your child copies each one a set number of times.
• Write test does not. The words are read out one at a time and written from memory — the written counterpart of the Say test, and the form most schools actually test in.

They are kept apart everywhere: the portfolio counts a written test as assessment rather than study, and each report is headed "Word list write practice report" or "Word list write test report" so the two can never be read as the same thing. Both are kept in the Word list portfolio, not the spelling one, so a word list never double-counts into your child's spelling figures.

Do you remember?

The last button in the strip, and the only one that is not about the lesson in the picker: Four choices per word, across every lesson in this list. No microphone needed. It is the quick way to find out which of everything met this term is still there, without asking a child to say or write a hundred words.

Each question shows the characters and offers four answers to tap — the English meaning where the list has one, otherwise the reading. When the reading is the answer, the pinyin is not printed above the options, because that would give it away. The three wrong answers are all words from the same list. Tap one and every option shows whether it was right; Next moves on, with no timer to race.

At the end: You knew 17 of 20, then Worth another look — each missed word with its right answer, so you know what to practise — or Every one right. Go again starts a fresh shuffled round.

Some things to know:

• A round is kept, but it is never a mark. Picking a word out of four is a lot easier than saying or writing it, so it is a check on what is familiar, not a test. Each round is listed in the Word list portfolio's activity log and in Family activity, but it is never added into the portfolio's totals, averages, trend or word mastery.
• A round left half-way is kept too. The answers given before leaving are saved and count towards words you recognise just like a finished round's; the round is marked Stopped early in the activity log, in Family activity and on its report.
• It feeds its own count. Every answer counts towards words you recognise on the Reading portfolio — a separate number beside characters you can read, never added to it. A word counts once at least 5 of its 7 most recent answers were right.
• It is kept even offline. A round finished without a connection is saved on the device and sent once you are back online.
• It needs no microphone, camera or AI, so it works offline and on any device.
• A word is only asked about if it can be. A word with neither an English meaning nor a reading is left out, and so is one where the list is too short to offer four different answers; the screen says how many were left out and why. A list needs at least four words with distinct meanings or readings before it can ask anything at all.
• Skipped words stay skipped here too.
• The button is greyed out when the lesson currently in the picker has no words to show, even though the check itself covers every lesson — pick a lesson that has some.

Words your child already knows

Skip this word on a card takes it out of flash cards, the card game and the Say test for that child. A Reader taps Ask to skip this word instead, which waits for a parent to approve. Skipped words lists them all, and Include again brings one back.

Where the results go

Flash-card practice, the game, both tests and write practice are all kept and appear in the Word list portfolio. Practice, game and the two written kinds open their own detail report; a Say test opens the reading report, because a spoken test is scored the same way a reading is.

A practice report lists every attempt with what was heard and the tone notes, and ▶ Hear it plays back your child's own voice on that card. A write practice or write test report shows the child's own writing beside each word, clipped from the photo; tap it to enlarge it. From it you can share it as a PDF, add a comment, delete the run, or Reassign… it to another child if it was recorded on the wrong login.

A Do you remember? round is in the same activity log, labelled Do you remember? with 8 of 10 words remembered. Because it covers every lesson at once, it is listed when the lesson picker is on All lessons, not under a single lesson. View opens its report: one card per word in the order asked, with the answer — or, for a miss, what was picked and what the answer was. Tap a word to hear it. From that report a parent can Reassign… the round to another child or delete it; either way the words you recognise count is worked out again. A Reader can delete only their own round, and only one that got almost nothing right.