I study Chinese from conversation lessons, reading novels, and from text books. This means I have different lists of vocab words that I would like to add. This also means I have different goals for each set of lists. Since I take conversation lessons, I go through a massive amount of new vocabulary every day that randomly comes up in conversation. If I could Skritter this daily, I'm sure I could retain it very well. Skritter is absolutely amazing for learning new words I find. The problem is I only want to know the definition(reading) right now of these conversation lesson words. I don't have the time to learn how to write 40 new words every day as writing is gruelingly longer to study and most of the characters are repeat at this point.(200 a week) I do have the time to memorize the meaning though. This would also be extremely useful for studying phrases or idioms that only contain well known characters. Easy character phrases like 倒抽了一口氣 or 殺賣香水的人 just seem excessively repetitive when they get long and you know the characters well.

Take note I am learning to write all my regular vocab words from my book so it would be writing overload to do both.

Is there a good method for making one list definition only, and another list writing, tone, and definition? I suppose I could carefully add the words while in reading only mode, then pause the list every time I reactivate writing. One button on the edit list would do wonders though and could prevent my tutor from reteaching the same word over and over to me.

No, there isn't. We're thinking about getting that in there, but it's a tricky interface problem to make intuitive. We're already past our complexity limit on the different parts/styles configuration options, so we'll need to figure out something really simple-seeming.

One thing you could do for now is to just make a custom list that you don't directly study. You just put words into it, then click on them to get their word popups, and then click the green + buttons to add just the parts you want for those words. Then they'll go into your queue.

I would like the same kind of thing too. I 'chat' with a Chinese friend twice a week, and it would be good to keep the new words I come across each week on Skritter - but I only want to learn to read the phrase and get the meaning - not write.

I only want to learn how to write the characters in my text book. (otherwise it would be an overload on characters to write).

Even for students that just use textbooks though, this would be a good feature, as there are always 'supplementary' words in most texts each lesson that students are not (at that stage) required to write.

I would find this feature also useful for teachers teaching upper primary / middle school / high school as the number of characters they are required to write are not as many as university courses.

So I think most people would benefit,

Cheers,
Donna

Thanks Nick. Thats a half decent way to add for the time being.

After thinking about it more I thought a nice way to have it set up would be to have the check boxes just like the one under Account->Study Setting->Parts Studying available while adding the list. When you are prompted on which chapter to start studying they could ask you there.

Or when you enter the list and look at the words where it displays how well you know Writing, Definition, Tone, Reading the check boxes could be above each column.

djfoxworthy, what is the meaning of your two "easy character phrases"?

Hmm; that first one's a good idea. We'll ponder upon putting it in the list's study settings when we get some time to work on it.

I would also find it useful to be able to prioritise different lists by setting different target retention rates.