Your words
Lectio
Read. Click. Remember.
Reads your books and turns a chapter into the words and phrases worth learning.
Lectio is at version 0.19.10, in testing; its service is being prepared and is not public yet, so there is no download on this page. Free is everything that works inside Lectio — reading, Read aloud, dictation, word lists, broad IPA, How hard is this?. Lectio Pro, coming: what goes to another app (VLC, Phonema, Antiphon), the audio exports, and the AI notes and practice sentences.
Today 0.12.0 · in testing
- Subtitles as books.srt, .vtt, .ass: a film becomes a book in parts, one sentence a line, its time beside it.
- Shared text and web pagesShare text or a link from any app; Lectio keeps the article, without the menus.
- Free classicsProject Gutenberg’s English books, searched on your phone, easier ones first if you like.
- More file typesEPUB and PDF, and now .txt, Markdown, Word .docx and .html.
- LyricsPaste a song: every line stays a line, and Read aloud says it so.
- How hard is this?Six CEFR levels, A1 to C2, an estimate, and the harder words not in your lists.
- Click a sentenceKeep it with its book and its place, as in Mimesis; Play clicks reads them back in the next version.
- Clicks → VLC or Phonema ProA clip per click in your voice, with its subtitles; or narrow IPA and a PDF from Phonema.
- Export a chapter, your way One sheet: Text + IPA, IPA only or text; syllables, stress, notation; MP3 or VLC (Pro).
- Read aloudThe chapter in the phone’s own voice, sentence by sentence, at 50–150 %.
- DictationHear a sentence, write it, see the words you missed.
- Propart of the paid upgrade, coming
- built, arrives in the next version
LEARN IN CHUNKS · CHAPTER 3
The sea was calm.
ðə ˈsi wəz ˈkɑm.
The gull flew over the cliff.
ðə ˈɡʌl ˈflu ˈoʊ·vɚ ðə ˈklɪf.
A gull rose from the reef.
ə ˈɡʌl ˈɹoʊz fɹəm ðə ˈɹif.
What it does
Open a book you already have — an EPUB, a PDF, a subtitle file, a web page, a song — and Lectio reads it for you: its title, its chapters, the text of the chapter you are on. Then it tells you what a learner wants to know before starting: can I read this, which words will carry me through it, and which sentences will teach me a word on their own.
Lectio is named after lectio divina, slow reading in small parts. It takes books in and gives words and sentences out.
What it can do
- Can I read this? The coverage of a chapter against the words you know, with a plain verdict, and the unknown words that carry it.
- Sentences that teach. Sentences with exactly one new word, and Learn in chunks; practice sentences written by AI and checked before you see themPro.
- A chapter on paper. A PDF with broad IPA, free; narrow IPA and connected speech through the Phonema appPro.
- Hard sentences. Picked by rules, free; the notes that explain themPro.
Your data
No account, no ads, no tracking. Lectio does have a server, because reading a book and working out what is worth learning happens there: the book you open is sent, read and deleted in the same request, and a chapter's text is answered and not stored. Only learning mode's notes, part of Lectio Pro, send the chosen hard sentences to a language model to be explained; the rest of the chapter never is, and a free Lectio never reaches a model at all. Your word lists stay on your phone unless you choose to copy them.
Get it
Package
com.neurophonetics.lectio
The rest of the family
Separate apps, each doing one job. None of them needs another — they simply go well together. When you want to hear how the words you gathered are said, Phonema writes them in IPA.
