A Short List of Resources for Studying Chinese

[mackie1402]

13 minutes ago, xinoxanu said:

I'm curious about the reason behind removing Skritter.

 

Since Ink Stone has been added, I'm guessing it's the replacement for Skritter. If you haven't seen it I'd highly recommend checking it out. Same function, one off payment (no monthly subscriptions) and only a fraction of the cost. 

[xinoxanu]

Thanks! Will check it out ?

[Tomsima]

1 hour ago, xinoxanu said:

I'm wondering if someone in this situation did succeed in making the move to other SRS systems, flashcard apps and the like, so please do tell... 

I bought skritter and used it for a good five six months or so. Then I realised my handwriting was pretty bad, so I started using a pen and paper instead of the on-screen character writing. Then I realised I was basically just using an expensive srs program. I downloaded a free heisig remembering the hanzi deck and began to work on that on anki. Then I realised the mnemonic thing was being lost. So then I just went and got both remembering the hanzi books, bought 30 100-card blank flashcard decks, and spent a year making flashcards. Loved it and it worked.

So whatever works for you I guess

[艾墨本]

I removed skritter because it doesn't merit the high cost for the slight gains of functionality over an app like inkstone.

 

My personal preference is pleco + pen and pad, but I know many prefer the fully digital solution. As @Tomsima points out, to each their own. That said, I put Skritter on before having used it. I bought it and used it for a few weeks and hated it, especially compared to much better user interfaces of other similar apps (like inkstone). Skritter was once the best, but it has fallen behind.

[furiop]

If someone uses Anki for Android, there's an app for Anki-->Inkstone files migration

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lonlazer.anki2inkstone

[furiop]

There is a resource I cannot classify: Dushu A chinese files reader (epub, txt, copy&paste) / dictionary  / flashcards tool / selective pinyin converter / difficulty analyzer / list of words downloader and so on...

 

It is an useful tool for improve reading ability.

 

Pro version, paying once: a small amount for a professional app.

 

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.trescher.dushu

[NinKenDo]

Hey I noticed the entry for Wenlin says that it supports "(Mac/OS)". Wenlin is amazing so it would be worth making it clear it works on Windows. Also it might be worth mentioning that it runs a treat under Wine, as I can attest from experience. It's also theoretically possible to compile it as a native Linux app, but I've so far failed to do that, so not worth including that.

[艾墨本]

6 hours ago, NinKenDo said:

Hey I noticed the entry for Wenlin says that it supports "(Mac/OS)". Wenlin is amazing so it would be worth making it clear it works on Windows.

 

Thanks for pointing that out. That was a mistake and should have said Mac/Win. I've updated it. I decided not to include Linux but I bet if people googled linux wenlin and compile together they'd find your post.

[matteo]

Can I ask why Anki seems to be so unpopular?

It is highly customizable, totally free, you can have it on several devices...did I mention it is free?

I transitioned to electronic format when the number of physical flashcards was getting out of hand (probably at >1000) and I realized that I was being very inefficient; I looked into Skritter but did not get it as I really don't like the idea of a subscription fee, and it didn't seem to provide massive advantages with respect to Anki.

Anki is doing its job -which is essentially, reducing as much as possible the time I spend memorizing words while minimizing the disadvantages- really well.

Not sure if there is a way to write on the screen with Anki, in my opinion that is not a must-have feature as it cannot replace writing - do you disagree? 

 

So my question is, what is the big advantage of Skritter or Inkstone and why are people paying money to use them?

 

[furiop]

23 minutes ago, matteo said:

So my question is, what is the big advantage of Skritter or Inkstone and why are people paying money to use them?

 

I'm using Inkstone on my android smartphone: a word is proposed in english and pinyin and I need to write it in chinese characters, using the finger o a capacitive pen.

I can need some help, but, doing so, the character is marked wrong.

New and old words appear and I can repeat writing: my writing activity is improved.

In https://www.skishore.me/inkstone/ there is a demo: it is a flashcard app devoted to interactive characters learning.

There is also a free version of Inkstone, but, in my humble opinion, a little reward for the programmer is an ethic behaviour.

 

Anki is ok for text/characters flashcards. I prefer https://quizlet.com .

 

[大块头]

3 hours ago, matteo said:

So my question is, what is the big advantage of Skritter or Inkstone and why are people paying money to use them?

 

Inkstone has disadvantages such as limited customization and an agonizingly absent "undo" button, but it makes learning stroke order and scoring your responses as effortless as it will ever be.

 

I still use Anki for recognition.

[艾墨本]

3 hours ago, matteo said:

Can I ask why Anki seems to be so unpopular?

It's not unpopular. It's also one of the bolded tools on my list (meaning it's a must have). Also, it's not free for iPhone.

 

As for customizability, this is a double-edged sword,  both making it more capable but also increasing the learning curve, especially for the many people who are not very computer literate. For this reason, I prefer Pleco's notecards that, while having a rather messy series of menus and options, greatly simplify the customizability of Anki to a series of buttons.

 

Lastly, I recently removed Skritter because, as you mention, there are better options for significantly less money.

[markcarter]

FWIW, our Hanping Pro and Hanping Cantonese apps greatly simplify creating/exporting AnkiDroid flashcards. This (optionally) happens silently in the background as you star/tag words. You can also do manually-triggered bulk exports where you just select the card types (templates) (e.g. Hanzi -> Pronunciation & meaning, Meaning -> Hanzi & pronunciation)

 

The generated cards include tone coloring, audio playback button, and hanzi are clickable to bring up the word in the Hanping Dictionary app.

[furiop]

9 hours ago, 大块头 said:

disadvantages

 

Inkstone new version do HAS the UNDO button, we can use during the writing activity: a "X" in the upper bar.

 

WRONG, see next post 

 

[Shelley]

10 hours ago, matteo said:

Can I ask why Anki seems to be so unpopular

I don't think its that unpopular its just that Pleco does it so much better.

Pleco is for Chinese and Chinese only whereas Anki is a general learning tool you can use for learning anything almost. This has its advantages and disadvantages.

To add a character in Pleco its one button, with Anki as I understand it (never used it) it is more complicated.

[大块头]

3 hours ago, furiop said:

Inkstone new version do HAS the UNDO button, we can use during the writing activity: a "X" in the upper bar

 

On the latest version of Inkstone (0.1.4), that button you've indicated is for adding a word to the blacklist. There is another button to erase all strokes you've written, but no button to rescore a card you've accidentally scored incorrectly.

[furiop]

16 minutes ago, 大块头 said:

There is another button

 

In effect, I was wrong: the button is the second from the left in the upper banner.

For changing the "state" of a character there is another button, a flag, that open a new menu,

 

[Tomsima]

Just a note on the srs algorithms used in these programs: the algorithm used by anki is different to the supermemo algorithm, the first send to work better for short-term cramming, the second for long term accumulation. It's worth checking to see which one a program uses before planning a study schedule. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Mike from pleco has said their srs algorithm will change with pleco 3. From my experience pleco flashcards are very user friendly, but the srs system doesn't seem to work as well as pleco/supermemo itself

[mikelove]

Pleco 4, and actually it's going to be more of a 'pluripotent' thing. We've basically turned the scoring algorithm into a bunch of rules which people can customize, and then overlaid them with various 'templates' that customize them for you so you don't have to do that customization yourself if you don't want to.

 

One of those templates mimics our old system, and one of them actually mimics Anki (and can be used in conjunction with our amazing new Anki importer), right down to the priority order of < 1 day versus > 1 day learning cards - the scheduler is rule-based too - though we may only mimic the 'experimental' Anki 2.1 scheduler as most of the changes in that (subdecks lumped together instead of reviewed in order, e.g.) seem like unambiguous improvements compared to the old one (and also happen to be easier to implement within our system). There's also a new default Pleco system which basically starts from the principle that SRS is not that useful for long-term recall (because long-term memory doesn't even really decay exponentially anyway); it uses fixed steps for learning / forgotten cards, but then lumps all of your 'review' cards into a big pool and doesn't try to schedule them / simply gives you however many you'd like roughly sorted by how long it's been since you last reviewed them.

 

We also redesigned the card scheduler to stream cards continuously instead of building a list at the start of the session, so 'repeat incorrect' can now be accommodated within SRS rules instead of being its own separate little weird thing, and there's no more of that awkward Palm-era "end the session and then start a new session to deal with cards that became due during that last session" business; it'll even deal with new cards you create during the session, you can literally highlight a word in a flashcard example and add that word to flashcards and then have that come up as your next flashcard ?

 

[Tomsima]

8 minutes ago, mikelove said:

it uses fixed steps for learning / forgotten cards, but then lumps all of your 'review' cards into a big pool and doesn't try to schedule them / simply gives you however many you'd like roughly sorted by how long it's been since you last reviewed them. 

That sounds fantastic. I'm pretty fed up with trying to find a computer based answer to thousands of flashcards and notes lying all around my flat, but whilst  all seem to do new cards well, they all seem to fail at just simply 'serving' studied cards.