I have realized, that if I do not know a character in a word, skritter will not only set the word as "forgot", but also the character, which was not known. However, in most cases, it is not that I do not know the character, but I have forgotten which li, shi, chi, zhi etc. is the wright character in this word. For example, I just studied 中介, zhong1 jie4, agency. I've forgot, which character jie is used in this word. But I definitely know 介and there is no need for me, now to study the character jie again. What should be repeated is the whole word and not the single character. The today procedure would lead to quite some unnessary reviews.

Now I avoid the problem by clicking "correct", when Skritter shows the red "forgot" for the character. Then on a word level, Skritter shows also the word as correct, so I toggle to "forgot". If the problematic character was the second one in a word, then Skritter went forward already to the next item. So I have to go back to correct it. This is quite time consuming and some times, I forget to do it.

My choice would be:
a) Skritter never sets a character to forgot, when reviewing a word. The test is on the word, not on the single character. The character will come back for review anyway.
b) If the current logic is kept, then I would prefer to have the small toggle button (the red - yellow - green - blue one) not only on a word level, but also on the character level on the right bottom side, so that I could control and change it.
c) Have both, which I would prefer. So, if I see a character in a word, which I am not so familiar with, I could set it to forgot or so-so. But in general, I would not have to change it.

I would be interested, how other people see this?

Roland

I have this problem too. I understand though that this problem might be hard to solve since in some cases a new character might be the problem.
Maybe you guys could implement a keyboard short-cut that marks the current character as correct but keeps the word wrong.

I don't study single characters unless I have specific trouble with them.

My suggestion is to turn off "also add characters when adding words" in your language settings and delete all the single characters when they come up, adding more words which use the character instead.

What is the reason for studying single characters rather than choosing a few words that character appears in? Most single character definitions can be confusing and very much out of context, citing tones and meanings the character only carries in certain words.

@Thomas studying the single characters as well as the words is very helpful for some of us. I learn to keep track of which characters are in which words because often the meaning of the character is related to the meaning of the word and that acts as a mnemonic to help me remember which of the many characters with the same pronunciation to use. It also increases the likelihood that when I encounter a new word with a character I already know, I'll be able to quickly learn and remember it. I would definitely not want to turn off "also add characters," but, like the others, would like to be able to distinguish between situations where I forgot which character of a given pronunciation was the right one for the word and situations where, in fact, I didn't know the actual character.

@Roland, how do you toggle the word to forgot but leave both the characters in the word as correct? If you go back, don't you just end up toggling the first character instead of the second character to forgot?

@dorritg the button toggles on the definition side allow you to grade the word, where as on the writing box side you can toggle the individual characters.
I'm still confused as to why you wouldn't add 3 or 4 words with the shared character to get a feel for it rather than remember a sometimes abstract character definition. Doing both might be a good idea, but I see that as overkill...

@Thomas

"What is the reason for studying single characters rather than choosing a few words that character appears in?"

Let me rephrase this question: What's the point of studying radicals when you can choose words that the radicals appear in?

@Roland

You need more reviews than you think. Trust me on this one. I'm a wrestling coach and we still review simple moves and positions -- that we learned at the beginning of the season, or earlier for some -- every day.

@Thomas I only use Skritter to study individual characters. I use the Heisig books and corresponding lists on Skritter. I find that focusing on characters alone helps in providing me with a better foundation for my Mandarin studies.

For learning vocabulary, I use a sentences taken from ChinesePod dialogs and expansion sentences, which I then load into Anki. I find that, for me, this works better than studying individual words, as it provides a context for how a word should be used.

I didn't understand how important context was until one day I had to write a composition for my French class. I was writing about Thanksgiving and wanted to describe the food that we ate. As I wrote, I looked up the words for various foods that I didn't know. When I got my graded composition back from my teacher, she noted that in one part of the composition, I said that we ate 'corn', the only problem was that the French word that I used for 'corn' didn't mean 'corn' as in 'corn on the cob', but instead meant a 'corn on a person's foot'!

I avoid the problem by clicking "correct", when it shows the red for the character.

@g1itch
instead of clicking that button, you can also just press "v" - to change the state of the current character from correct to "wrong" or the other way around.

ah, even handier!

@mykal I totally agree with you about context. For the past year most of my vocab I put in Skritter has come directly from books (or menus) I'm reading, movies or TV shows I'm watching, or conversations I'm having with friends. I'm also a fan of the example sentences Skritter has now too!

That's a good idea with ChinesePod sentences in Anki, but I don't have the patience to use two systems. I try to use Anki for my major, but Skritter is so much more fun! I do have to give ChinesePod credit for half (with my girlfriend awarded the other half) of my oral Chinese skills, though.

@icecream, if you're saying we shouldn't waste our time Skrittering rare radicals I agree. They're very helpful to know, but to me, better learned as parts of characters.

merry xmas all! (China time)

Whether to learn radicals first or words or single characters is a question, which have been discussed in many forums before. Also, whether there is a keyboard shortcut or not, is not my main point.

What I don't like is, that when skritter is testing me on a word, it also makes an assumption about me having fortgotten the single character or not. Even worse, Skritter is doing it without letting me know and without giving me an obvious chance (not a workaround) to correct it. I believe, it would be a good design principle, not to do things like this without letting the user know and let him influence on this decision.

Within the next 2 - 3 month, I will exceed 3000 characters and 5000 words in Skritter, which makes about 8000 entities - multiplied by 4 (writing, reading, pinyin, definition) = 32.000 items for review. Therefore, it is essential for me to avoid unnecessary reviews.

@Thomas

lol… No! I feel the opposite way. I was trying to use that statement to show how absurd your statement was. However, as Roland has mentioned, it has been discussed to death on this forum so I’ll keep it short: When you memorize by heart the radicals alone you don’t need to expend as much cognitive energy when you finally do combine them together in more complex characters. You can “chunk” meaning much more efficiently and effectively. I think radicals are the first thing you should learn.

@Roland

I see your point but I still don’t seem to understand the problem. How often do you get pinyin practice? I skip over those every time. As for having to do more single character practice: suck it up! You might be right -- Skritter, sadly, is not omniscient -- but you really do need those extra reviews. It might seem unnecessary or excessive but it will help you overlearn the material, which should, hopefully, lead to automaticity.

For a while I have been hoping for a keyboard shortcut to change the word-level grade. I thought one was in the works?

jww1006: that would be awesome, i hope for this too

@icecream believe me, I couldn't have learned more than 10 characters without 'chunking', I'm saying having prompts for words, each individual character AND radical is overkill for me. Like Roland, I try to cut down on my number of prompts and find 'chunking' in between the lines a good solution, but to each his own.

icecream: sorry, I didn't mention, that I am referring to "writing". I had a similar experience before with pinyin, however, Nick fixed it. Nevertheless, I am currently still working against almost 2000 reviews due(although I haven't added anything for the last 2 month and I am doing around 300 - 400 per day).

My concern is, that if the number of characters and words in my list is getting longer and longer, I am not able to add anything new, because I'm so busy with the reviews. I also do not want to reduce my target retention rate, because 95% makes a lo of sense for me.

For that reason, I was looking into my vocab list to find out, whether or not I have reviews, which are not necessary. And there I came across the problem, that when I don't know which character is the right one in a word, I do get 2 reviews: one for the word and one for the (most probably) well known character.

Therefore, I wanted to know, whether other people have the same problem. If so, it would make sense for our Skritter gods to look into this problem and find a solution, to reduce unnecessary reviews.

If I am the only one, who sees this as a problem, then it's OK - by now I have a work-around.

It sounds like a simple tradeoff: higher retention vs. learning new characters. Personally I think you should spend more time worrying about the latter. Plus, as an added benefit, your original problem will go away.

I wouldn’t worry about the retention rate or the number of reviews and instead focus on finding patterns within the characters. I know that whenever I study new characters I deepen my character intuition which in turn helps my retention when I finally do go back and review. There is a significant lag though – I think that’s to be expected – but it keeps things fresh and entertaining. I love novelty. Skritter is flexible enough for you to find a way around any issue you're facing.

I have been planning to try a system whereby Skritter guesses whether it's just the character that you've forgotten or which character is in the word, so that it does the right thing more of the time. I am not sure when I can get it done, but it should be loads more efficient and not require you to muck around with the manual word grading buttons as much.