Getting Started with ABC George: Your First English Book

ABC George opens on an empty shelf. There is no placement test, no level to choose, and no account to make. The app assumes you came to read a book, so the first ten minutes are about getting one onto that shelf and reading the first page. This post walks through those ten minutes: finding a book, choosing how to read it, looking up a word, and taking the first quiz.

What Is ABC George?

ABC George is a free English reader for iPhone and iPad. The Project Gutenberg catalogue of more than 61,000 English books is bundled inside the app. You download a book, and from then on the text, the dictionary, your word book and the quizzes all work without a connection. There are no ads, no in-app purchases and no account.

The app has four tabs along the bottom: Library, Discover, Words and Quiz. The interface is in English only, on purpose: it means every button is a little bit of reading practice.

Step 1: Open Discover and Go to Start here

Discover is the catalogue. Because the whole list lives on your device, searching by title or author is instant and works on a plane.

For a first book, skip the search and open the Start here shelf. It holds thirty short, plainly written classics that I picked for learners. Most of them take an evening or two. There is also a Most downloaded shelf, which shows what Gutenberg’s own readers read most, and shelves for children’s books, fairy tales, short stories, adventure and detective fiction.

My honest advice is to resist the famous long novel you have always meant to read. Pride and Prejudice is in there, and it will still be there after you have finished two short books and know how the app works.

Step 2: Download the Book

Tap a book and choose Download to my library. The app fetches the text straight from gutenberg.org, strips the Gutenberg header and footer, finds the chapters, and splits very long chapters into reading-sized sections. This is the one step that needs a connection. After it, the book is yours on the device.

Step 3: Pick a Way to Read

There are three views of the same book, and you can switch between them at any time.

Pages turns like a Kindle. Tap the margins or swipe to turn. When you reach the last page of a chapter, the next page is simply the first page of the next chapter.

Scroll is one continuous column of paragraphs, with a Next chapter button at the end.

Chat is the unusual one. The chapter arrives one sentence at a time as chat bubbles, with quoted dialogue on the right. Press Next for each line, or press play and let the chapter run by itself.

Your place is shared across all three. If you leave Pages on page 12 and open Chat, it starts from the same sentence. I suggest trying Chat for the first chapter. One sentence at a time is much less intimidating than a full page of nineteenth century prose.

In Reading settings, the text button at the top of the reader, you can set type size, line spacing, margins, typeface and page colour: Light, Sepia, Grey or Dark.

Step 4: Look Up a Word

This is the part the whole app is built around. Long-press a word to select it, and a toolbar appears above it: Look up, Speak, Copy, Cambridge and Translate. Choose Look up.

The dictionary is WordNet 3.1, bundled with the app, so the answer appears immediately and needs no signal. Senses are grouped by part of speech, and common words also get a plain-English learner definition. Inflected forms are handled for you: ran finds run, cities finds city. If you selected more than one word by accident, the app asks which one you meant.

The word is now in your word book, saved with its definition and the sentence you met it in. Nothing is marked on the page. The book keeps looking like a book.

Step 5: Set Your Translate Language Once

WordNet is an English dictionary, which is what I want most of the time. When an English definition does not help, the Translate action opens Google Translate into your own language, inside the app, so you do not lose your place. Cambridge opens the full Cambridge entry the same way. Both sheets block ads and trackers.

Open Settings once and check Translate into. It defaults to your device’s language. These two web actions are the only parts of reading that need a connection.

Step 6: Take the First Quiz

After a chapter, open the Quiz tab. The questions are built from the words you actually looked up, in four kinds: fill in the blank using the real sentence from the book, word to meaning, meaning to word, and spelling.

Answers feed a five-box Leitner schedule. A right answer moves the word up a box and it comes back later: one day, then three, seven, sixteen and thirty-five. A wrong answer drops it a box and it comes back soon. The daily goal starts at 20 answers, and you can change it in Settings.

What to Expect in the First Week

A good first week is one short book finished, or most of one, and a word book with a few dozen words in it. You will look up more words than you expect in the first chapter and fewer by the fifth. That drop is the reason the app exists.

Where to Go Next

Once you have a book on your shelf, see how it compares with other options, pick up practical tips for daily use, or see who the app is for. All related posts are collected under the ABC George tag.

Pick the shortest book on the Start here shelf. You can probably finish the first chapter tonight.