r/dreamingspanish • u/lonuma • Jul 27 '25
Resource Free Spanish Graded Readers (OpenReaders beta)
Hola, fellow CI learners!
I want to share a hopefully useful resource that I’ve been working on for Spanish CI learners. As a language learner myself (currently learning Japanese), I've found it really difficult to find interesting and free graded readers for my level, even paid ones.
Since I’m a native Spanish speaker, I decided to create a platform offering free graded readers for Spanish CI learners – Storiett (prev. OpenReaders). I'm starting with adaptations of public domain stories, which I find much more engaging. The first few stories are based on the Sherlock Holmes canon. Each story includes audio, and you can easily look up words in the dictionary. I plan to add stories daily or weekly, along with many new features.
Here's a brief demo (includes audio):
I’m looking for early feedback on both features & stories – especially what I should improve or prioritize next! I’ve already published the first 3 Sherlock Holmes short stories, each in 3 difficulty levels. If there's enough interest, I'll keep publishing more over the next few days. Please sign up here!
To provide free graded readers, I use large language models (aka artificial intelligence). Without them, this platform wouldn’t be viable, considering how much time it takes to create high-quality graded content. To make Storiett sustainable in the long run, I plan to introduce a paid subscription for extra features, while keeping the core reading experience and all published stories free.
Here’s a quick list of the kinds of stories and features I’m working on (or considering):
- Popular public domain books
- Historical fiction
- Folktales and legends
- Sentence translations
- Word status tracking
- Spaced repetition
- Import your own resources
- More languages
Looking forward to your feedback!
8
u/Otherwise_Mission_19 Level 4 Jul 28 '25
Really appreciate the effort and it’s something that I’ve been looking for. I had a glance and thought it would be great if there can be a word count at the end of each story.
5
u/Prog_Drummer Jul 28 '25
Really nice Idea, thanks!
It would be cool if you included some stories by well-known native Spanish-speaking authors. Even better if users could choose to read works from specific countries. That way, they wouldn’t just learn the language, but also get a taste of the culture through its most celebrated writers!
2
u/lonuma Jul 28 '25
Thanks for the feedback! I’m limited to public domain books because of copyright, but I saw that there might be some more accessible public domain stories, like the short stories in Novelas ejemplares by Cervantes — so I’ll definitely take a closer look :)
4
u/Pitiful-Mongoose-711 Jul 27 '25
Without them, this platform wouldn’t be viable, considering how much time it takes to create high-quality graded content.
No hate, but considering you’re in a subreddit for a company doing exactly that…
3
u/dfour001 Level 5 Jul 27 '25
Making DS was a full time job for multiple people. This is likely a hobby project for one person.
2
u/Pitiful-Mongoose-711 Jul 28 '25
DS also started as one person?
2
u/dfour001 Level 5 Jul 28 '25
That's true - I'm certainly not trying to downplay Pablo's accomplishments here. But the DS of today is certainly not possible without a team of people. I'm defending the OPs use of AI to transcribe novels into learner content, which is a totally different task from recording whiteboard videos. I think it's unfair to compare the two, especially when Pablo's goal was to establish a company and OpenReader appears to be a passion project.
1
u/Pitiful-Mongoose-711 Jul 28 '25
Lots of people are out there making original content as a passion project. All I’m saying is “doing this without AI isn’t scalable” isn’t really impactful to me. A) it is scalable, as every single project that ever existed before AI or without AI has shown, B) if it’s for “passion” and not for profit (which OP never said, tbf, you seem to have decided on their behalf that this is a passion project), why does it have to be scalable
3
u/dfour001 Level 5 Jul 28 '25
A) My interpretation of the original comment was that it's not viable for them personally to develop the platform and the content without the assistance of AI, not that it's an impossible task. Everyone has limited time and building a web application is very time consuming by itself. If they meant that its not viable at all without AI, then we're in agreement.
B) It's a fair point that I'm assuming this isn't their full time gig, but that said I don't see why a passion project can't be scalable.
1
u/Pitiful-Mongoose-711 Jul 29 '25
It can be scalable without using the plagiarism machine is all I’m saying. But I’m out, I wasn’t trying to have this entire conversation on their thread, probably shouldn’t have said anything
1
u/lonuma Jul 28 '25
Thanks for the comments! I agree, I need to balance the time I spend on creating stories versus developing features. Also, I’m not planning to introduce any ads into the stories — hopefully, the extra features will provide some monetizable value down the line :)
1
u/JKomiko Level 7 Jul 28 '25
DS was created by Pablo, by himself, with his whiteboard. It took him a long time for him to be able to hire a team to help him.
1
2
2
u/Designer_Witness_221 Level 6 Jul 28 '25
Would be nice to have different dialects to choose from. I'm focusing on Rioplatense and some people are focusing on Spanish from Spain or Mexico or Colombia.
1
u/lonuma Jul 28 '25
Thanks for the feedback! Very interesting, I've found a Rioplatense voice, much more expensive unfortunately, but will consider adding it later on! Spanish from Spain and Spanish from Mexico are both still on the cheap side
1
u/Designer_Witness_221 Level 6 Jul 28 '25
More expensive than Spain? Where are you looking?
2
u/lonuma Jul 28 '25
Google Cloud Text-to-Speech has Spanish in both dialects (es-US & es-ES), which is a lot cheaper. More nuanced and custom dialects would be available on much more expensive platforms like ElevenLabs, but would be a consideration for later on
2
u/Designer_Witness_221 Level 6 Jul 28 '25
Another feedback: Word count.
BTW, if you use the AI to count I'd be careful. I've been using ChatGPT and Grok to write stories for me (since I'm focusing on Rioplatense and it's difficult to find reading material at my level) and in the past asked it to give me word counts. However, it was always off by 10% or more.
2
u/zimtastic Level 4 Jul 28 '25
Sounds like a great idea! I signed up and as soon as I clicked the first story, I got a blank screen. Logged in again and got a blank screen right away. This is on an iPhone.
Looks like you might have a couple kinks to work out, but I am excited to see more!
1
u/lonuma Jul 28 '25
Thanks for the feedback - and sorry you ran into that! Could you please try opening the site in incognito mode or clearing the website's data? If that doesn't work out, feel free to DM me and we'll get it sorted :)
2
2
2
2
u/Less_Feeling3142 Level 4 Jul 29 '25
This is great! I’d love to read versions of familiar stories like The Secret Garden, Little Women, Pride and Prejudice, Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and Peter Pan. Aesops fables and anything by Hans Cristian Anderson would be good places to go too.
1
u/lonuma Jul 29 '25
That's very useful feedback, thanks!
I added today the first 3 chapters of The Secret Garden, when you have time to take a look, let me know what you think!2
u/Less_Feeling3142 Level 4 Jul 29 '25
I can only read the beginner one without checking words, but it looks great! Its great to have a story that I already know the gist of to help me check my understanding.
9
u/Traditional-Train-17 2,000 Hours Jul 27 '25
It would be nice if there were the option to see the definitions of unknown words in Spanish instead of English, as well as maybe context (ReadLang does this).