hey there

It seems to me that a subject of whole sentences writing was raised here a few pages ago. Someone said that it's kinda in beta stage here, but I'd like to try it as well, please. Hope that the sentences are simple enough, though :) Still very very interesting option to learn the phrasing of language (Mandarin for me). Having words in the pocket is not enough :)

thanks

Curious about this too... Bump.

I'm not sure if it's visible to everyone, but my www.skritter.com/account/settings-general page has an alpha features setting. You could try checking that.

I've found the sentences to be rather complex. Still great for checking to see an example of the usage though when the definition leaves you wondering.

The beta thing was about providing example sentences to read on the word/character prompts... But everyone can see that now. There's no using Skritter to write complete sentences thing going on here...

If you really want you can add long sentences instead of words into Skritter, but I don't really think Skritter's suited for that much...

@Byzanti: ah... thanks for clarifying. In that case... can it be considered as a feature request? :)

I am the only one? Of course only if such a functionality is not implemented yet :)

@breakphreak are you referring to studying by writing complete sentences? If so, you can already do this; just add the sentence to Skritter as if it were vocabulary. Keep in mind that if it gets too long it will not display properly. You might want to play with some of the longer phrases in some of the idiomatic phrases lists to see how they work out for you in terms of formatting etc:

http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=agVza3JpdHIWCxINVm9jYWJMaXN0SW5mbxjW_4AMDA

@jww1066: yes, that's what I mean (more or less). I will adopt your idea immediately. However, I've just thought that seeing a complete sentence (or word) written can be a decent added value (at least for me).

Sorry, I do know that I am kinda new here. I do like the system (very), but have some vision and hope that its parts might be interesting and useful to share.

I kind of think that if you start adding a bunch of full sentences, you're very quickly going to feel bogged down. Here's a suggestion. Leave Skritter for characters, words and short phrases, and instead add sentences into a flash cards program like Anki.

Using Skritter for writing whole sentences sounds nightmarish.

Flash cards are nice to learn sentences through reading, but flash cards won't help to learn them through writing. I think that a combination might be a winner.

I don't think that the interface will become too messy. However, I do realize that (hypothetically) there would be a change (like being able to write a complete, though not very long line of characters).

In this way we'll be able to see our sentences (and words) written completely on the screen.

@byzanti as long as they're not super long it's fine. The added context makes it easier to learn new characters (IMHO) although it does take longer to write longer phrases. I've got a lot of idiomatic phrases under study and they haven't bogged me down too much. The only real issue is that when the phrase gets up to six or seven characters the font in the Flash window gets smaller and smaller as it tries to display the whole thing in the same space.

James

Ability to write short phrases like "My name is John" (wo jiao Jon) or "What is the time now?" (xian cai ji dien jong?) etc can provide a great value for newbies (in addition to words that resemble more than one single character).

Ah, sure. Misunderstood. Much more than 4 characters or so however I find starts to massively disrupt the skrittering flow. In my mind I was imagining you were writing longer phrases like

"我最喜欢的动物是一只猫“ (My favourite animals are cats)

or perhaps, "我最近爱上吃小猫炒饭“

Still, 4 characters is quite a lot of you're new to them. Idioms still kill me. I have to write out the whole lot, even if it's just one bit that I suck at. You can also add your own custom sentences to the bottom of the definition field if you click on it. I do this a lot. Might help?

Yes, customized custom sentences it helps definitely (I've thought about it too and I will start to submit some of my own).

Just reading and writing has different paths via neurons (kidding :), so attacking a prob from more than one angle (both reading and writing) might be more effective when learning a language. Like in school :)

Personally, I listen to Pimsleur (level N2 now), so 4-5 characters long sentences are doable. And when you write a complete sentence like also being able to understand it - it's a great feeling :)

I just more and more encounter the problem that can recognize the character when Chinese friends are talking to me on facebook for example, but can't get the meaning. Even on very simple sentences. Also, tried to write something like "we just came from the sea" (wo men jiu cong hai lai le) and got in a red shame :)

I agree that phrases / words / sentences is a functional extension to the current Skritter, but it might have a value for some :)