Everyone Can Use English

What it is

Everyone Can Use English is a GitHub repository from ZuodaoTech under the GPL-3.0 license, and its README is in Chinese. It holds three things. The first is the book 人人都能用英语, a guide to using English whose preface is signed 李笑来 and dates its first draft to 2010. The second is the 1000 Hours training plan, published at 1000h.org. The third is the source of Enjoy, an Electron app for practising a foreign language aloud. The README’s tagline says AI is the best foreign language teacher today and Enjoy aims to be its best assistant.

1. Write what you want to say in your own language
2. Have an AI tool turn it into English
3. Have an AI tool turn the English into speech
4. Read it aloud until you can recite it
5. Save the text and your recordings as that day’s homework

Who it suits

Chinese speakers who want to speak English and are happy to read Chinese. The book and the training pages are written in Chinese, and the plan says you learn by your own effort, with no one to teach, correct or push you. Developers can also read or run the Enjoy app source.

Skip it if you want a teacher who corrects you, or material in English only. It asks for daily work.

Where to use it

Most of it needs only a browser. The desktop app and the source build come from the repository and the 1000h.org install page.

• GitHub in your browser: the book as Markdown, one file per chapter
• Enjoy Web at app.enjoy.bot: the study room in a browser tab
• Enjoy Echo for Chrome: sentence practice beside YouTube and Netflix videos
• The desktop app: Windows 10 or later (x64 installer only), macOS on Apple silicon (arm64) or Intel (x64), with macOS 12 or later recommended, and Linux x64 as a deb or zip
• Enjoy Player: a native app for desktop, phone and tablet, per enjoy.bot
• A source build with Node.js and Yarn

How to set it up

Get it saves a zip of Mindket’s setup notes in your downloads folder, with a page for each platform. The book needs no setup at all.

1. Open the book on GitHub. Its book/README.md holds the preface and links each chapter in order, with no account needed.
2. Read the daily task. The 1000h.org kick-off page sets out what each day asks of you.
3. Pick an Enjoy app. Open Enjoy Web at app.enjoy.bot, add Enjoy Echo from the Chrome Web Store, or download the desktop build for your system from the install page.
4. Sign in to Enjoy. The enjoy.bot site says one account works across Enjoy Web, Enjoy Echo and Enjoy Player, and its free plan needs no card. The FAQ says the desktop build from the install page keeps most of its data on your computer, with no cloud sync.
5. Or build the app from source. You need Node.js 20 or newer and Yarn 4.6.0, then the two lines from the enjoy folder’s README.

yarn install
yarn start

The root package.json also has a workspace script, yarn enjoy:start, that runs the same start from the repository root.

On Windows 10 the install page says the installer can fail with “A JavaScript error occurred in the main process”. Its fix is to update Windows, then install the file the page links, https://aka.ms/vs/17/release/vc_redist.x64.exe (the page’s link text says vs_redist.x64.exe), and try again.

How to use it

Start with the daily task on the 1000h.org kick-off page. It has three parts: say what you want to say, practise at least three hours a day and hand in homework every day. The Enjoy apps give you a place to loop a sentence, record it and hear the difference. enjoy.bot lists dictation, scoring and a word list with spaced review.

Example

It is late, and tonight’s practice should be in your own words. In Enjoy Web you open its rewrite tool, which enjoy.bot lists under 创作 for what you want to say, pick the natural style and type:

今天又加班到九点，累瘫了。只想点个外卖，躺平刷剧。

It rewrites the line the way a native speaker would say it, not word for word. In enjoy.bot’s demo of this line, the natural version says you are “completely wiped out” and want to “order takeout”. A natural voice reads it aloud, and you send it to the player to shadow it one sentence at a time.

For newcomers and experts

If you are new. Read the preface first. It opens with a question put to its author, how to learn English well, and his answer is one word, “用”, which means use. The daily task has you say your own words aloud, again and again, every day. Reading the book and the training pages needs no account.

For experts. The root package.json makes the repository a Yarn workspace of enjoy, 1000-hours and 1000h-portal. It pins yarn@4.6.0 and asks for Node.js 20 or newer. The scripts include enjoy:dev, enjoy:test, enjoy:package, enjoy:make and docs:dev.

In the app’s settings you pick a default AI engine, Enjoy AI or your own OpenAI key. The FAQ says Enjoy bundles whisper.cpp for local speech to text, with cloud services as a fallback and Azure AI recommended.

Good to know

The book, the plan and most app pages are in Chinese. The setup notes say which page each step came from.

• Accounts and cost: enjoy.bot says there is a free plan with no card, and that Enjoy Web, Echo and Player run on a daily Enjoy AI allowance, larger on paid plans. The FAQ, written for the desktop app, says Enjoy AI there runs on a balance and that pronunciation assessment always uses it, even with your own OpenAI key
• Your data: the FAQ, written for the desktop app, says most of its data stays on your computer in a folder named EnjoyLibrary, with no cloud sync. enjoy.bot says the new apps keep one account’s progress in step across devices. Calls to an AI engine go to the one you pick, except pronunciation assessment, which the FAQ says always runs on Enjoy’s paid service
• Network: from some networks the app cannot reach Enjoy’s servers. The FAQ gives an API address and a proxy setting
• Docs against software: the README says the new desktop version is coming, while the install page offers downloads, and the docs warn they can lag behind the app
• Removal: the pages give no uninstall steps
• License: GPL-3.0. The LICENSE file is the standard GNU General Public License, version 3