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How to add items to my words from a list?

gattosilvestro   December 16th, 2010 7:59a.m.

Hi, I use a Chinesepod list as an example of my problem, but it's the same for every list.

I go to Home > Vocabulary Lists > ChinesePod Lessons > Street Food Buffet > Key Vocabulary. Now I can see all the words that I can add to "my words" from the "Key vocabulary" section of the "Street Foot Buffet" lesson, but I don't know how to add them. The only two options are "Remove from my words" and "Study section" for cramming.

Mandarinboy   December 16th, 2010 8:27a.m.

If you go back to Home > Vocabulary Lists > ChinesePod Lessons > Street Food Buffet > and click on the "study list" button you will study that list and words from that list will be added. If there are any words you do not like to study from that list you can remove them after they have been added.

nick   December 16th, 2010 9:03a.m.

This was one of the reasons we got rid of that button to add words to queue. Many Skritterers were using it entirely and never seeing the "Study List" button, which works better because it associates the words with the list from whence they came and gives you progress and all that.

KenM   December 16th, 2010 9:16a.m.

Actually, Nick, I think there's a minor downside to that. If I get a character that I don't recognize, and I look over and see that it's coming from a small list with a specific topic (like almost every ChinesePod list), that gives me an additional clue, and I don't want any additional clues.

nick   December 16th, 2010 9:53a.m.

Hmm, that's true. You could add a custom CSS rule to hide that piece of information if you like; I think we will keep it in for the general use case, though.

west316   December 16th, 2010 10:25a.m.

@ KenM - The one problem with that is that when speaking or writing, you will always have a context. That, in my opinion, is a huge problem with Skritter. It is rather artificial at times. It gives me a random word where I am just going to get a pinyin. No tones. No characters. No context. There is no such thing as a pinyin with no tones. There is no such thing as a word with absolutely no context. If the example sentence is a decent one, that can help, but, ultimately, the lack of context, rather than too much context, is a problem.

(Note to Nick: I can not think of any way to fix that. It is a common problem in the learning environment. I am not complaining for you or the other Skritterē„ž to come up with some method to fix that. Even a lone sentence without context can be a problem.)

Byzanti   December 16th, 2010 11:31a.m.

west316: I fixed that a long time ago. I just add a whole bunch of information to the custom definitions. My definitions are in 3 parts. First the English definition (with brackets when needed for what its similar to/what it might conflict with/notable usage), second example sentences (that I've added myself and recognise at a glance, sometimes just the word itself + another word that it's often used together with), and finally a picture.

As such there's a load of context. Recall is super fast, and I get reminded of the usage.

Incidentally I only do writing (with hidden pinyin/raw squigs) and tone prompts. Others are superfluous.

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