Probably been raised a million times b4 so apologies in advance...

I just wondered what people's thoughts were on studying both parts, since (as far as I can tell) the tones are covered in the reading part.

So on the one hand, tones are such an important part of Chinese that it's great to focus attention on them (esp. for beginners perhaps?).

But since you can free up a lot of reviews by skipping the tone part and just doing reading (where tones are kind of covered) maybe it's best to do that. So for example if you have 3000 reviews due in one week, by skipping the review parts I assume you will bring that down by around a quarter leaving about 2000/2500 reviews and much more time for studying new vocab, gentlemanly relaxation, doing the dishes etc.

Any ideas?

I also think it's redundant, so I just study readings. On the other hand, studying tones is very quick, so maybe it doesn't really matter.

I like to do the tones, because I make quite a lot of mistakes in tones and because reviewing tones is very quick.

I don't currently study the tones because I find them difficult to remember outside of the context of the overall pronunciation of the word.

I still get benefit from using tones. The big advantage they have over pinyin is that they are much much quicker to do. It's just a flick after the word.

The benefit from tones or pinyin would be similar for me (especially since I find the pinyin easy to remember), it's just that I save time this way. So I just do writing/tones.

Speed is really important. I just study the tones, not the reading parts at all. But I do make sure to mark tones and/or meaning wrong if I think the wrong pinyin. And meaning wrong or at least iffy if I mistake the tone. (That's using hide pinyin of course.)

The tones are graded separately from the pinyin, so if you turn off tones and just do pinyin, and you actually type in your answers, then when you get the tones wrong but the pinyin right, Skritter isn't going to give you the pinyin again soon. Instead, it will mark that you need to review the pinyin, which is inactive and not studied. When you turn off tones, you're telling Skritter that you don't need it to watch over your memory of tones.

Yeah, except its watching over your memory /as you tell it/ so its fine to add extra stuff to set your own standard of what 'memory' is.

By the way, I was just thinking today that there should be a 'hide meaning' option for tone practise, to go with hide pinyin.

I don't study tones b/c I do find them redundant; I just study the other three types. But then, tones have never been much of a problem for me. I think the idea is that it's for people who struggle with pronouncing tones, so even if they know the pinyin in theory they might not be able to reproduce the sound correctly. That's why tones are self-graded, because you're supposed to say it out loud and then tell skritter if you said it correctly or not.

@nick - just to be sure I understand, is it the case that if I have readings enabled and tones disabled, and I put in xing4shi4 when it should be xing2shi4, the item will *not* be scheduled for prompt review? That would be very, very surprising, as the reading mode marks it wrong, turns it red, etc. so I was assuming it would schedule the item as "soon".

James

James, that's how I intend the system to work. Does it match your experience?

There's a lot of complexity going on with the grading of reading prompts, where Skritter tries to figure out how well you know each part (reading, tone) of each item (individual characters and whole phrase) of what you just typed. It can do a very good job at figuring out what you know, but it can't do a good job at displaying simply to you what it's marking right and what it's marking wrong.

I'm not sure what's the best course of action in this case. Thoughts?

@nick I'm not sure. Ever since you enabled readings (a long time ago now) I've been operating under the assumption that an incorrect tone would cause the whole reading to be marked wrong. Now I apparently should be re-enabling tones and re-studying all the readings I thought I knew.

If readings = true and tones = false, the student is only studying pinyin but not tones. What's the use case for this? Who in the world would want to do that? I was assuming that readings = true made tone study redundant.

James

Hmm...that's what I also assumed. If that's the case then why put the tone part in the reading at all?

I'd of thought that it would be a good way to speed things up (esp. since tones and pinyin are both part of pronunciation it seems logical to put them together)

I had thought the same thing as James as well. The turning red behavior for incorrect seems to indicate that you have to get both pinyin and tones perfect to be counted as correct?

Oh dear Nick, like the others, I'd also assumed that since the pinyin testing included the tones it also kept track of my accuracy in producing them and therefore was a way to speed up the learning process. I will now have to go back, switch on the tones again and fight a significant backlog....

In my view, if the "reading" test does not keep track of the tones, it should not include them as part of the grading. Strangely enough, this might be quite helpful, since when you type pinyin in order to input characters into a computer, the tones numbers are usually not required, rather numbers are used to select the character required from those with the same sound. Therefore building a muscle memory of typing the tone numbers as part of the pinyin is actually unhelpful in this context, as it is likely to cause you to select the wrong character when you use pinyin input on the computer. For example, on my Mac, "wo3" generates the character "窝" (pinyin: wo1); to obtain the character "我" I must type "wo1" (as "我" is the most common character with the sound "wo").

Having said all that, I would still prefer to learn the tone of a character or word alongside it's sound, as I find it difficult to separate the two aspects of the pronunciation in my mind.

I'm afraid I didn't read this properly the first time, and/or I was confused by Nick's post that said "Instead, it will mark that you need to review the pinyin, which is inactive and not studied", when I think really he meant tones, not pinyin.

I too have been assuming that studying reading killed two birds with one stone, and I'm not too happy about the prospect of going back and adding tones for all the words I've already learned.

I will garb in long clothing, indwell a cave, and think about this. Please await my self powwow.

Okay, here's the plan. I'll change Skritter so that if you're studying pinyin prompts and you have tones disabled in your account study settings (not temporary parts study), then getting the tone wrong causes the whole thing to be wrong.

For those who are disappointed that there may be some pinyin items scheduled as known which they don't actually know--sorry about this. Here's what I'd recommend:

1) Turn on tones in your account settings
2) Study through those tones which are overdue, starring any words which you get wrong
3) Turn tones off again
4) Turn on temporary part study with pinyins only
5) Study your starred words list until you've covered all those pinyins again.

You'll want to wait for 4 and 5 until I have finished changing the code to match expectations. I'll try to get that done by tomorrow.

@nick - I already did 1) and 2) and was surprised how few tones came up as due. I'm currently way, way behind on my studies thanks to some recent work changes and have thousands of writings, readings, and definitions due, but only maybe 200 or so tones came up. Is it possible that, because I haven't been studying tones for a long time, most of my words didn't have their tone item added?

James

@nick - In an attempt to add tones that might have been missed on the first pass, I set my study options to tones only and started at the beginning of my Old Queue. However, adding items is GLACIAL. When it comes time to add a new item, it spends a couple of minutes thinking every time. I can also see from the "Old Queue" contents view which sections it has finished, and its progress is very, very, very slow. At this rate it will take me something like 40 years to get through the Old Queue.

James

We're going to make some fixes to speed that sort of process up by doing some of it in the background as soon as you change the list. I don't think they'll apply retroactively, though.

I'm not sure if the tones weren't activated, or if they were but you just didn't get that many readings wrong because of just tones. If others could report their experience, that would help.

Many thanks for the change you are planning to make Nick, I think it will make the system work in the way that those of us who have switched off tone learning expected it to.

Unfortunately I think your recovery method is somewhat impractical for me (I am studying the 2.5k words for HSK5 and had an extra 800+ reviews to do when I switched tones back on). My plan is to let the problem gradually rectify itself as the pinyin readings come up for review over the coming months.

That'll work too, 石磊, although at some later date you might want to do this check just to find some really long-term reading items where you always got the pinyin right but missed the tone each time.

I've just uploaded the grading fix.

Please correct me if I am wrong. How could disabling the tones be faster than with the tones?

Suppose you get only the tone wrong, then you have to retype the whole pinyin word just to review the tone. Where if tones is enabled and you get the tone wrong whilst practicing the reading you get a tone practice that could be done with a flick of a finger.

Yes, tone practice is now included in the reading practice, but I can do most likely 15 tone practices whilst doing one reading practice.

@aharlekyn: I don't mean this to sound rude, but are you a poor typist? I could see that I might be able to do 2 tone practices in the time it takes for 1 reading practice, but certainly nowhere near 15. And since tones aren't a big problem for me, any extra time spent on reading practice is still far less than what I would have to spend if I did tone AND reading practice for every word I studied.

Yes, I am sure I am a poor typist compared to you, but wouldn't think of myself as below average.

Of course I exaggerated somewhat. But even it it is just 2 tones for 1 reading it would still be faster, right/ Especially if tones is not a problem for you.

Another reason why I would like to avoid unnecessary repetition of the reading practice is the inability to mark it right with 1-4 if you made a typo. That means I either have to move my hand to the mouse or retype the pinyin.

All this is theoretical though. If you can do 2 tone practices or 15 it would still be faster to practice tone separate.

The only scenario where it would be the same length would be if you take exactly the same time to do a tone practice as with a reading practice.

You are still doing tone AND reading practice for every word, but now you have to do the reading practice again for every tone practice. Therefore you are still spending the time you would have spent on tones, but more, since you loose time on studying reading that you do not need to study. Kind-of defeats the purpose of the spaced repetition right?

@harlekyn: I'm sorry, but I don't follow your logic. What about all the time I would spend on unnecessary reviews of tones I already know if I turned on tone practice?

I am not doing tone AND reading practice; I am doing reading practice only, which covers both. If the few that I get wrong take slightly longer to review, surely it's still quicker than doing double the number of reviews?

And since tones are an essential part of pronunciation, if I got "only" the tones wrong in a reading review, I would not consider that as a reading I don't need to study. I would consider it as one I got wrong, period.

Yes, you would have double the reviews, but since you already "know" them, they will vanish soon. Very fast. But for those you do not know, you wont have to practice reading as well.

And as soon as they vanish you would start saving time.

You are still doing tone and Reading practice, but not separate. For every tone mistake you have to do a reading practice as well.

On the long run, the initial chunk of reviews would even out and you will do it just like now. With the exception that those tone reviews that needs extra attention would get them, without unnecessary reading practice attached to them.

You would do your normal reading practice. As soon as the algorithm recognize that you have a problem with ONLY a specific tone, you would get a seperate tone practice, till you solved the tone problem, then it would give you a reading practice again to see if you get the whole picture.

Excuse this metaphor: You get up in the morning: a)wash
b)do your makeup
c)do your hair.

If you do not get your hair right the first time, do you start with a again? No you just fix the one problem and then check the mirror if everything is fine.

Why then do it with skritter?

Here is 2 theoretical examples to illustrate the difference.

Say;
1 tone practice = 1sec
1 reading practice = 2 sec.

Your way:

Practice reading (2 sec). Get the tone wrong, practice reading again and get the tone wrong again (2+2). Get reading right (2+2+2 = 6 sec).

My way:

Practice reading (2 sec). Get the tone wrong, practice tone and get the tone wrong again (2+1). Practice tone again and get it right (2+1+1).Get reading right (2+1+1+2 = 6 sec).

That is if you only do 2 tone practices per reading. I strongly believe it is more since when studying reading you clutter the tone practice with unnecessary information (the pinyin, that got nothing to do with tone).

In the optimal scenario your way takes the same amount of time. We rarely study in optimal scenarios.

I guess I don't see the point in separating the two, because for me the purpose of the reading reviews is to learn how to pronounce the word correctly. Being able to write lianxi in pinyin doesn't do me much good if I don't know the difference between the pronunciation of 练习 and 联系.

I still believe leaving out tone reviews is faster in my case, but I don't care to argue the point any further and I don't think it really matters. We all have our own individual ways of using Skritter, as becomes abundantly clear whenever changes are made as they inevitably mess up the routine for some people who are using it in a way the Skritter team never imagined.

But the boys always work hard to accommodate all of us, which I appreciate. In this case, I would very much like answers with wrong tones to be marked wrong in reading, which Nick has said he will do, so thanks Nick.

It's active now, junglegirl, so you should be good to go.

Cool, thanks Nick

Hi,
So does this change only affect people who have the tones disabled, or is it everyone?

Only with tones disabled. If you have tones enabled, it still differentiates between missing just the tone and missing part of the pinyin itself.

Ok, great, thanks :)