I depend on Skritter for increasing my Chinese vocabulary as someone who lives in the U.S.and in a family of English speakers. I find that my vocabulary has increased significantly but often I can only recall that word "passively" - that is when it is presented to me either in writing, or when listening.
Is there a way to quiz in the opposite direction - that is being presented with the English definition and then writing the Chinese? I realize that there could be many synonyms but maybe it could just use the list.
If Skritter would not be an appropriate app, could someone suggest an alternate method or app that might have this function?

Maybe I misunderstand your question but do you know about the "hide definition"-setting in the options? I think it might be what you need.

tausha,

My question is about whether Skritter could show me "Cat" and I would have to write 貓 I didn't think hide definition did that?

Have you tried it? Because it does it for me...

Hiding the pinyin might be more what he's looking for.

Ah, yes, sorry, I meant "hide reading". Dammit, tausha, pull yourself together. But it's already quite late here so I like to think that I can blame my tiredness... I don't think there are that many "hide something" options anyway.

Yes!!! this is exactly what I need! Thanks so much everyone!

Do you guys actually use the "hide pinyin" option? I used to have it on, but it took me much longer to do my reviews. It's hard (or sometimes impossible) to distinguish synonyms like 平时，常常，常，经常，平常，往往... (I know they are not all quite the same, but from the translation it is still hard to distinguish them.)
So does anyone of the people who do a lot of reviews have "hide pinyin" off as well?

I'm kind of confused anyway. I only use the iOS app and there is just a "Hide Reading"-Setting. Here on the webpage, as I just noticed, there are two settings, "Hide pinyin" and "Hide definition"... so... I didn't even know "Hide pinyin" existed, because I used "Hide reading", which is apparently the same (if I read the FAQ correctly). I'm not quite sure why the "Hide definition" is absent from the iOS app, I guess I would have to try the webpage and look for differences.

A consistent terminology would still be nice, I think. That's why I gave wrong advice last night.

And yes, I hide pinyin! If there are a lot of synonyms I just try several initial strokes and rate it green manually if the correct one is among them and it wasn't just wild guessing.

I always use 'hide pinyin' and find the same problem with synonyms like those, but the only workaround I can think of is tausha's, provided the definition is close enough.

I've never used 'hide definition' - but this is an interesting one, because knowing the tone of the characters is a different idea to knowing the tone from an English word. I wonder if it matters?

I tried hiding the pinyin for a few months. I'm not sure if it helped or not. Like someone said, it does make going through the reviews a lot slower.

I always have hide pinyin turned on as I felt like I was relying on pinyin way too much. I click show if I need to see the pinyin but I don't think it slows me too much.

I would tap www.italki.com into your address bar, find a language partner, and Skype/Wechat that person everyday.

In the past I used Skritter to learn new vocabulary, but then I realized I couldn't apply half of what I learned on Skritter to my real life conversations. So I stopped using Skritter as a new vocab tool, and instead it acts as a reinforcement for all the words I pen in my notebook.

When you meet that perfect language partner on Italki, I suggest you sit with a notebook, pen (or 鉛筆）， and write down the words you don't fully understand. Then ask your language partner to give you a few more examples on how to use the word, pick your favourite sentence, and write it in your notebook. I think the best language partners are those who are willing to alternate days (English only on Monday, Chinese only on Tuesday, Wednesday is English day 等等）。 You'll also want someone who is patient.

Once your langauge partner's wisdom earns a spot in your notebook,I would then suggest reading your notebook a couple times a day. Once you feel a little more confident with the new vocabulary, you can add it to Skritter. Skritter should (hoepfully) solidfy your understanding of the new vocabulary, which will eventually turn it into learned vocab. This whole process may take a few days for a few words (I read somewhere a second language learner needs to see a word 10 times in context in order to fully learn a new vocab).

I could be koo koo though!

Happy learning!

klooste,

That is an excellent idea. I don't think I could do something everyday as my schedule is pretty irregular. For me Skritter is a place to hold the vocabulary I learn, ensure there is new vocabulary being added, and ensure it doesn't go away, even if I forget it. Some vocabulary I learn from conversation and listening. It can be time consuming because I have to stop the conversation, webcast etc. Those are the good days where I have time to practice my listening and speaking skills. But there are many days where I don't get to practice those skills and all I can do is squeeze in 10-15 minutes of Skritter and at least learn some new words. So at least there is some forward progress. But as you probably know - just because I have "learned" a word in Skritter doesn't mean I necessarily know how to use it in a sentence. But it does help me "target" the word when I do hear it in conversation or see it in a paper. There have already been a few times when I wrote off a word or phrase as not being useful only to see it weeks later pop up organically in conversation or a tv program. Hopefully my schedule will be more predictable and I can follow your suggestion - because I do find it strange that I have to learn to write a word to learn a word, as this is most certainly not how I learned English!