I really love the "hide pinyin" feature that Skritter has; actually I feel like it is necessary to study effectively. I would really like it if an option became available to hide the pinyin of a word during tone practice. That way the tone of the character would become associated with the character itself, not just the pinyin for that word.

I often find myself immediately looking at a word's pinyin to remember the tone, and not the character itself.

Anyone else think this would be a good idea? I feel like it might not be too hard to implement because the "hide pinyin" feature has already been developed.

It seems like it would present grading difficulties. Knowing the tone without knowing the pinyin seems improbable, so you're just trying to make it more associated with the character (while still knowing the pinyin). But if you didn't know the tone because you forgot the pinyin (or thought it was another pinyin), then that shouldn't be counted against the tone, because you didn't have enough information in the prompt. You could click to show it when you didn't really remember the pinyin, but tone prompts are supposed to be really fast, so that's too slow.

And then there's characters with multiple pinyins... it gets complicated.

Now that we have reading practice, what do we need the tone practice for?

So that those of us who don't want to use our keyboards at all while practising can still get some tone practice in?

I agree with mike.I studied a bit with the reading practice, but because of my tight time schedule,I dont have the time to do that. It takes up a lot of time to write out. But I also see the point nick is making. Catch 22.

Why not have a reading practice, but instead of having to type it out, you grade yourself like all the other practices? I know its better to type, but would rather grade myself for the sake of time.

I agree, i think it would be better to just "think" the pinyin and then check it, having to type it (ie move from wacom tablet to keyboard and back again all the time is quite annoying and very slow)

Not keen on this idea. Tone tends to be my quickest prompt (99% of the time on instinct) and wouldn't want it slowed down :).

Which idea are you referring to Byzanti? ;)

Seems we have 3 on the table. 2 for the tones and 1 for the pinyin.

I would also rather like to keep the tone practice as it is. But would like to get some practice in the pinyin, other than having to type it out.

Woops! I was refering to the original post!

As for what you two are proposing - I think we can do that already outside of reading practice. I certainly do (hidden pinyin on writing prompt, think the word first).

:)

True, but without the space repetition system. So its not optimized studding...and thats what this is all about, right? :D

Not really! I grade my words on knowing what they are, not just being able to write them. After all, what use is knowing how to write "学校“ for school, if you can't remember the word for school?

It works very well.

The problem is, when you practice the writing, its Skritter that grades you (thank heavens).

Although what you makes sense. It would be easy to incorporate this system. All that needs to be done is under the reading you get chose between self grading or typing.

Skritter may grade you, but you can control it to do as you want pretty easily. Control characters by marking them correct, control when you want to see it again (eg you if forgot the translation -- or you wrote it incorrectly) by toggling the word level thing to red/yellow etc.

You can still use the show button (or hit enter on a blank prompt) to show the reading prompts, after which you can change correct/incorrect. The only thing missing for that is grading buttons to let you do 2 or 4 in there. It's a bit of a screen real estate problem to include the grading buttons in there, and their keyboard shortcuts are basically unusable because of the tone typing. But perhaps we can get them in there if it turns out to be important.

Would it be hard to "divide". You chose:

a) Either you can type. Setting and everything looks like its now.

b) You can get the grading system.

Dont know how much programming would that involve. Currently I just leave out the reading option. Just to much time consuming and a sleb to type out everything. But I know its leaving a hole in my learning of the language.

Well, it's an extra preference. I hate extra preferences. Have you tried it without the grading buttons to see if you like it? It should be most of the way there.

Understandable why you hate them... Have tried the typing option. Dont like it very much. Thats also the main reason I dont like Byki (I use a very good program to learn my German - "200Words a day" - and have the typing option switched off there as well). Typing just change the dynamic of the study pattern to much for me. Although it helps you to remember, for me the disadvantage is more than the advantage.

But not a big deal. Just would've been nice.

I have a similar problem to the original poster... However it is less that I look to the pinyin to remember the tone, but rather, sometimes I look at the definition to help me remember the pronunciation and then I can't help but see the pinyin there. I don't want to see it. I want to have to remember the pronunciation just from knowing the definition and character, and then, in turn, remember/know the tone. That's the whole point of tone practice for me. Seeing the pinyin snaps me out of it. :\

So, yeah... I'd really like for the pinyin to be hidden in tone practice as well OR have the definition moved up above the writing area so I don't need to look over to the right unless I want to do grading or word lookup.

I agree with Nick though... an extra preference is bad. But as it is now, it feels like a broken preference, since when you turn it on it really only hides the pinyin about half the time you are practicing.

Andrew