Now that I'm not actively studying Mandarin in school anymore, Skritter has become my entire study routine. It's been wonderful for reviewing characters, but otherwise my skills have stagnated or atrophied. So today I went searching for an iOS app that would help with reading comprehension, and found one I thought would be reviewing for others in the Skritter community.

Decipher Chinese is a series of apps that offer short essays or articles for reading practice. I will start by saying my experience has only been with the 'Taster' (free) edition. However, three other levels are offered for 4-6 US$ each: Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced.

Decipher Chinese has several nice features. Pieces are categorized by type, such as Story, Essay, or News, and listed with brief English titles and summaries. They also have little HSK ratings to indicate approximate difficulty level, such as HSK 2.0, as well as the total number of words used in the article.

Once you select something to read, everything is presented in large, easy to read characters. If you don't recognize a character, you can tap it to bring up the pinyin and definition. Tapping again hides the definition but leaves the pinyin. A 3rd tap will remove the pinyin. If you can't finish an article in one sitting, you can save your progress and come back to it. At the end, you can mark an piece as 'completed' and it will move from the main screen to a separate list, in case you need to come back and review.

Overall, while it is possible to find your own reading material and conduct your own dictionary searches, Decipher Chinese offers a nice and convenient way to practice reading on your iOS device at a variety of experience levels.

If this type of convenience is intriguing to you, go try out the Taster version for yourself!

Sounds like a cool app, did you know there's a similar way to practice reading on your computer? Chrome and I think Firefox have an extension called zhongwen, turning it on will let you hover over any word or character on the internet and get you instant pinyin + definition.

There are also programs you have to pay for that allow you to do this with Word docs, PDF's, and really any other program on your computer. One example is MDBG Chinese Reader, Pleco also has a similar addon if you want to do it on your phone or tablet.

Of course, these programs don't supply you with the actual reading material like the Decipher Chinese app does, but I thought people would be interested since it is very similar.

There are lots of children books on the apps store and many of them are free. I find them entertaining and educational at the same time. Try to search for tinman and weibo. Some of them come with English and Chinese version with sound. Really good for listening and reading practice.

There are some other stuff that a bit more serious like Chinese encyclopedia. I'll post their names when I got home.

Sounds very cool, I'll give it a try. Do you know if you need an internet connection for it to work?

Also, with regard to similar programmes for computers, there Lingoes which is free and definitely works with Microsoft Word, not sure about PDFs. I found that the set-up wasn't very user friendly, but once you get it going it's great: http://www.lingoes.net/

That app looks pretty nice, thank you @蓓蕾

You might want to include the link with your review :-)
http://www.decipherchinese.com/

I tested the free version both on iPad and Android, most basic level (sigh...) and I like it! Having the characters, being able to hear each sentence read, clicking to see pinyin and definition, and a full translation if needed... It's good for me, and could get me doing more reading and listening comprehension. I think I'll buy the elementary version. Do they have a traditional character version I wonder? Ah whatever, traditional, simplified... It's all Chinese...

@戴德辉 the Zhongwen Chrome extension is sooo great and I miss it greatly on iPad. But for me it doesn't help to develop reading skills as much as this kind of app could, where the text is selected for a given level and where you can hear the text spoken.

Looks cool :). Unfortunately, reading on my iPhone screen isn't very pleasant so I wasn't tempted to buy it.

Zhongwen is great for the computer, and it supports adding to skritter just by pressing S, which is awesome.
http://zhongwen-chrome.blogspot.co.uk/

I use it to read http://chinesereadingpractice.com/

Re: Junglegirl, once you have downloaded the app you do not need an internet connection.

Re: Kai Carver, I completely forgot to mention that it has sound recordings of the sentences! I was using it in a situation where I could only read, not listen, but it is another nice feature for extra listening practice and reinforcement of the character's pronunciation.

Re: Catherine, the one thing I would mention is that when I tried it, the size of the font was HUGE compared to things I usually load on my screen. So if a major peeve for you is that font size is small, I might give a look.

cool! thanks for sharing. i am now on the free version but think of getting a paid one.