Daily Reflection

What it is

A short passage, and three exercises that build on each other: the words that capture it, one sentence that distils it, then a full comment with coaching.

Everyone on the built-in plan reads the same passage on the same calendar date, which is what lets a family or a study group compare answers without arranging anything. That is the difference from Daily Reading, which keeps your own place in a sequence instead.

Choose your text

Four ways to get the day's reading, and two of them need nothing from you at all:

• Wisdom — What you get the first time you open the page, and nothing to set up. A short fable or maxim for every date of the year, from Aesop and La Rochefoucauld. Both are out of copyright, so they ship with the app and work offline — and because the Spanish is a translation of the same English, the two columns are the same words twice. That is what makes it worth reading in two languages at once.
• Scriptures — A short Bible passage for every date, from the public-domain translations that ship with Comment Coach: the Berean Standard Bible in English and Palabra de Dios para Ti in Spanish. One tap away in the same list, and it uses whichever translation you have made your favourite.
• Your own daily readings — Plenty of publishers issue a book with a reading and a comment for every day of the year. If you have one as an EPUB, import it into your Resource Library and it takes over: today's text loads automatically, its scriptures open where they are cited, and every tool on this page works on it. Import the same book in a second language and you get the bilingual view.
• A year you wrote yourself — A plan file is one small JSON file: a month, a day, and the reading in one or both languages. Drop it on the same import area as an EPUB. The plan Comment Coach ships is written in exactly this format, so it is a worked example rather than a specification — and a date it cannot read is skipped and reported rather than losing the file.
• Paste your own — Any text you want to reflect on: a scripture, a quote, a news excerpt, song lyrics, anything.

Switch between whatever's available with the buttons next to the date. An imported book wins by default, since it's the one you chose deliberately; otherwise you start on Wisdom. Whatever you pick, the day you are reading and the set it came from are both named above the text, and that is also the way back to the calendar.

The three exercises

They build on each other, and they are offered in that order — but nothing is locked. Start where you like, change any of them afterwards, and come back to the rest later.

Step 1: Key words

Read the text carefully, then give the words that capture it. The first is your headline word; add a few more if one is not enough. (How many the step accepts is yours to set, in Settings.) There's no right answer — it's your reading of it. After you submit you'll see what you chose yesterday, and the word you've reached for most this month.

Step 2: One sentence

Distil the reading into a single sentence. This is harder than it sounds, and that is the point — it makes you find the core message and say it plainly.

Step 3: A full comment

This one opens the workbench — the same full-screen tools you get for a comment on any article, on any paragraph, anywhere in Comment Coach. There is no separate, lesser editor for the day:

• Coach — clarity, conciseness, depth and relevance, with specific suggestions you can apply in a tap. In a second language it also covers grammar, vocabulary and natural phrasing.
• More like this — other angles on the same paragraph, when you have one idea and want to see three.
• Ask Hoot — a question about the material, answered from your own copy.
• Translate — the same comment in your other language, yours to edit.
• Refine — say what to change, in your own words.
• Rehearse — record yourself saying it, and hear how it actually lands.

Word count and speaking time are shown as you type, because how long it takes to say is the fact you cannot get by reading it.

Reading in two languages, each column answers for itself: key words in English and key words in Spanish, a sentence in each, a comment in each. Writing paciencia rather than patience is the exercise, not a formality — so Translate fills the other side from the one you wrote, and leaves anything you had already written alone.

Everything the text points at opens in place

The day's text is the publisher's own, so its references are live. Tap a scripture in the sentence — (Gen. 9:3, 4) — and the verse opens underneath, in both languages at once when you are reading in two. Tap the publication at the end of a paragraph — w24.12 9 ¶4-6 — and the paragraphs it names open the same way.

Nothing is fetched. Those verses and those paragraphs are in the file you imported, in your own edition, which is why this works with no connection at all.

Hear it read

Press play and the day's text is read aloud — one play button per language, each in a voice that belongs to it. A Spanish passage read by an English voice is unusable, which is why they are separate rather than one button for the page.

• Seven speeds, from 0.5× to 3×, on a slider rather than a menu — easier to reach on a phone. Your choice is remembered.
• Replays are free. Each clip is kept on your device the first time it is spoken, so listening to the same passage five times costs one trip to the network. Looping a sentence until it sticks is the point.
• It reads what is on the screen. A scripture you have opened is read where you opened it — the book's full name, then the verse. One you have left closed is skipped entirely, along with the brackets around it, because a citation is a footnote for the eye and an interruption for the ear.
• Verses too. In the Bible reader each translation has its own play button, and any single verse can be played on its own.

Ask Hoot, and the vocabulary scan

• Vocabulary scan — Hoot picks out words worth learning from the day's text, with meanings and examples. It reads the language you are learning by default, not the one you already have.
• Ask Hoot — A question about the day's text, answered against the passage, the verses it cites, and the publications it points at — from your own copy, not from the internet.

Both run on the text in front of you, and neither creates anything until you ask.

Play it with a group

After you finish, tap Share with group to make a link for the day and send it to family, friends or study partners.

Whoever opens it sees the same text and has to finish their own exercises before seeing anyone else's. That is what keeps it honest, and what makes the reveal worth waiting for. Once people have played, the board shows:

• Words — everyone's key words together, matches picked out. Two people reaching for the same word gets a Great minds think alike.
• Highlights — the sentences and comments people wrote, side by side.
• Leaderboard — who has taken part, and how often.

Importing a daily reading file

The built-in sources cover you from day one, so this is optional. If your daily reading comes from a publication available as an EPUB, you can import it without leaving the page:

1. Download the EPUB from the publisher's website to your device.
2. On the Daily Reflection page, tap the ⋮ menu and choose Add a source.
3. Pick the EPUB file you downloaded. Comment Coach detects the format — a book with dated daily entries is recognised, and each day's text is kept with its date.
4. The page switches to your imported source automatically.

You can also import from the amber banner that appears when you have no imported source yet, or from the source picker when you first arrive.

A book of daily readings covers one year. Browse to a date outside it and the page offers the built-in passage for that date instead, so you are never left with a blank page.