What Stichos is

Stichos writes short stories and dialogues in the language you’re learning, at exactly your level. You read them with help on every word, in your own language.

What Stichos does

1. You choose a language, a level from A0 to B2, and a topic, or leave the topic on Random.
2. You choose Generate. Stichos writes a new story for you and checks it before you see it.
3. You read it. Choose any word to see what it means in that sentence, explained in your own language.

Every plan gets the same stories, checked the same way. The plans differ in how many stories you can make and in a few extra features. See Plans and limits.

Example

Sarah is learning Croatian at A1. She picks the topic “Ordering Coffee and Pastries” and chooses Generate. Within a minute she’s reading a short story set in a café, in short, simple sentences such as “Jednu toplu kavu i vodu, molim.” She chooses “kavu” and sees that here it means “coffee”.

Who Stichos is for

• Learners on their own. You make stories in the Story Studio, keep the ones you like, and save words as you read.
• Tutors and teachers. Educator Studio is a workspace for making stories for your lessons, sorting them into units, and sending them to students with a link.
• Students who were sent a link. You can read a story from your tutor in any browser, with no account. See Reading a story you were sent.

Stichos is for adults, 18 or older.

What you can do with a story

• Change how much help you see. The reader’s Layout has three settings: Guided puts a translation under every line, Assisted shows a word’s meaning when you choose it, and Solo is the plain story. See Layout.
• Look up any word. You see what it means in that sentence. See Look up a word.
• Save words to your Word Bank. Each word keeps the sentence you found it in. You can download your words as a CSV file for a spreadsheet or another app. See Word Bank.
• Save stories to your Library. The stories you read lately are in Recent, too. See Saving and finding stories.
• Turn on pronunciation help. It shows how each word sounds. See Pronunciation.
• Listen. With the Premium Audio add-on on a paid plan, a natural voice reads the whole story. See Audio.
• Print it or take it with you. On a paid plan, print a story or save it as a PDF or an EPUB for an e-reader. See Print, PDF, and EPUB.

Stories that are ready to read

You don’t have to make every story yourself. Discover, a tab in your Library, has stories other learners made from Stichos’s own topics, checked the same way as yours. Reading them doesn’t use up your monthly stories. How many there are depends on your language and level. See Discover.

Stories you make from your own topic or your own key words are never shown to anyone else.

What doesn’t Stichos do?

• There’s no app to install and no offline mode. Stichos runs in your web browser, on a phone, tablet, or computer.
• There are no flashcards or drills today.
• Stichos doesn’t export to Anki directly. To take your words elsewhere, download your Word Bank as a CSV file.

Which languages can I learn?

Any of 40 languages, with any of the 40 as your own language. See The 40 languages.

Related: Levels A0 to B2 · The 40 languages · Plans and limits · Getting started as a learner · Getting started as a tutor