StoryPlanet English

What is StoryPlanet English app?

StoryPlanet English app has been designed to help students raise their proficiency in the English language. It is a continually growing app with new learning content added five times per week, a strong awareness of the need to learn English in a real-life context and not just in formal texts, and a useful revision facility. 

What we love about StoryPlanet English?

The StoryPlanet English stories are written to introduce students to English as it is in real life, not just as defined in dictionaries, grammar guides, and textbooks.   

Phrases and words that hold specific meanings in certain contexts to native speakers but which are far from their literal meaning, are difficult for language learners. StoryPlanet English manages to cram a huge amount of these real-world language usages into its stories and provide a clear explanation for each one. 

Nothing matches engaging in real conversations for effective and practical language learning but these stories are a great way of laying the groundwork.   

StoryPlanet English app's continual expansion is also something unique. New stories are added piece by piece over each weekday providing new ideas for teachers and different source materials for students to learn by. 

What skills does it improve?

StoryPlanet English provides an easy to access and interesting bank of stories that students can read to improve their English language skills. The stories provide practise for both textbook English language and the language as spoken by native speakers in informal settings. 

StoryPlanet English is a good fit for students who want to develop conversational skills and immerse themselves into the practical application of their learning alongside an understanding of the formal aspects of the English language.  

What age is it appropriate for?

The stories in StoryPlanet English are all safe for people aged eight and up. StoryPlanet English is designed for students learning English as an additional language so their existing proficiency is important. The stories range in difficulty from A2/B1 (Intermediate) to C1/C2 (Superior).

Is StoryPlanet English easy to use?

Navigation to the story and revision sections is easy through a user interface that is intuitive and familiar. 

How will students benefit?

If a student has StoryPlanet English on their mobile device, they have the means to practise their English skills wherever they are. The stories read well and frequently expose readers to words and phrases that often prove confusing to English language learners.

Collecting new words and phrases into a personalised list for later testing is a useful way of creating a custom revision guide. These tests include multiple-choice and missing-word challenges. 

How will teachers benefit?

Teachers who use StoryPlanet English with their students have access to a growing library of stories that will be useful in the classroom. The variety of genres will help teachers to create lessons covering a broad range of contexts.   

Guides, tips, and a teachers' newsletter provide ideas for topics, activities and more. As well as giving students a practice platform, StoryPlanet English can help to reduce the time teachers need to spend planning and collating stimulating resources. 

What StoryPlanet English can improve on?

There are no significant criticisms to be made of StoryPlanet English app. It is an app newly arrived on the app store and it is still under active development with new features planned for it. 

The app highlights difficult words and phrases in each story through the use of bold text. It works well but it would be nice to be able to toggle this formatting on and off. The contrast between bold and not bold is a little hard on readers' eyes and could be an issue for some students' with dyslexia. An easy-to-access toggle would be a great quality of life improvement. 

The app's structure could do with a little rejigging too. The most-used parts of the app are fine but the info section is unfocussed. It mixes information useful to students, such as a guide to abbreviations and learning tips, with the app's credits, data policy and general app information. Splitting these out would follow a more typical app structure and make the student-focussed pages easier to find.  

How much does StoryPlanet English cost?

StoryPlanet English app is free to download. It comes with a full single story and the facility to create practice exercises from it. This basic package is useful for teachers and students in its own right and provides an effective means by which to assess the app's suitability. 

What is included with the free version vs. paid?

The full StoryPlanet English app experience is unlocked through the use of a subscription. The complete app includes many more stories and new content is added every weekday. 

Is StoryPlanet English safe to use

In keeping with the app's suitability for students aged eight and above, the stories do not contain content or themes of an adult nature. There is no advertising or data-collection within the app and no social media or communication facilities either. 

Overall rating of the app

StoryPlanet English is a well-made app as it stands but the developers plan to add more to it. They expect to add audio recordings of the stories, different types of practice activities and more in the future updates of the app. 

At the moment, it is an app that provides a lot of high-quality material for those learning and teaching English as an additional language. The careful design of its stories to be both readable and to expose students to new aspects of the language, lift StoryPlanet English above its competitors. They make it a 5-star app that students and teachers of EAL are strongly advised to consider.

You can download StoryPlanet English on your iOS or Android devices from the app stores. Download the StoryPlanet English app from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store.