Hello again... XD

My school uses the Genki textbooks so I'm trying to study the vocab and kanji from Genki I.

I have "Study all kanji in lists" and "study rare kanji" unchecked.

For some reason, though, the flashcards still display vocabulary using the kanji even in situations where I "shouldn't" know those kanji yet. Sometimes they even say "rare kanji" on the side.

(For example: instead of saying これ　it says 此れ.)

I want to keep practicing my vocabulary but I don't want to have to memorize some of the advanced kanji being displayed, simply because it doesn't follow along well with Remembering the Kanji so I haven't learned the primitives or the clues involved in interpreting them.

Does that make sense? Is there a solution to this?

ETA: I'm also having a serious issue with the kanji for rounded - 丸. It is extremely picky about where I put the down-left dot/dash. I am using scribbles or whatever that's called, and it really seems to want my dash to be in a random place every time. I end up getting the character wrong because I have to wait for it to tell me where to put it. :\

A kind of messy way to do it is whenever one of those ones you don't wanna practice come up, simply click the magnifying glass button and push the little minus next to "reading." That way you will still get definition practice, but you won't have to worry about the kanji reading anymore. Sometimes it's finicky and it will take a few times before it actually works though.

I recommend also using normal flash cards, or electronic "normal" flash cards, like Anki, in addition to Skritter. Skritter doesn't exactly function as an all purpose study tool. For instance, I don't think it ever quizzes you backwards on vocabulary, except for with katakana words. Not to mention flash cards work best when you can do them all the time, not just when you're sitting at your PC.

I have been thinking about checking out Anki. Now I definitely will. Thanks for the recommendation! =)

I checked and it looks like you're not studying writing for those words. Is it that when studying readings or definitions, you're prompted with the kanji? Whether you're studying writing or not, the kanji are shown when studying those words, as part of the prompt for the answer. But the other information you need to study should be shown on the screen as well. As long as you're not actively writing out the characters for those words, you're not studying the kanji for them, is the general idea.

Hope that makes sense!

I actually turned it off so it's only giving me writing practice now because I didn't want to have to delete/skip all of those words.

And yeah, what you say makes sense. But I'd like to memorize the hiragana for those words which contain kanji I'm not ready to learn yet. The flashcards prompt me with the kanji instead of the hiragana (or I don't remember correctly, which is totally possible.)

But thank you for explaining it, because it makes sense why the program works this way now. ^_^; As for memorizing the hiragana spellings, I may look into using Anki. I'm actually way too addicted to Skritter and have serious English papers to write so I should probably not even think about Anki yet... >_<

I'm not sure if this thought is totally related or not, but it seems to me that skritter isn't really a good tool for beginning learners of Japanese. If you haven't mastered hiragana and katakana it makes it really hard to learn kanji (this is the case outside of skritter too of course), especially since all the readings are in hiragana instead of romanji (as they should be).

That's why I look forward to when skritter can allow learners to do writing practice for hiragana and katakana, which I feel can't come soon enough. Also, I'd like to be able to write okurigana. If skritter could do that I'd be in love! In case some don't know, okurigana is when adjectives, verbs, and other conjugated words are written with kanji and hiragana (i.e. 行く &　行かない). Now I don't need to be able to conjugate any words, but being able to write the word stems, such as with iku, would be amazingly useful since it's easy to forget that some kanji are used with hiragana when you're writing outside of skritter.

I'm pretty solid on hiragana and katakana, though I occasionally get my ル and　レ, and　ワ and　フ mixed up. ;P

But yeah, I would say people should have already gotten a handle on hiragana and katakana before working with Skritter.

I hadn't even heard of okurigana though! D:

I just completed second-semester Japanese, which covered the second half of Genki I. Comparing our progress to other schools, I think our progress is somewhat slow. So I would consider myself a novice of Japanese. XD

Hiragana and Katakana writing practice are coming, we hope sometime this year.

Ah I see what you mean. Though, in reading practice you can click the definition to see it on the right side, it just isn't shown by default. You might also try definition practice, that shows the reading by default.

@ace27227: So you want to write out the kana as well as the kanji in writing practice? We might do that once we've got a system for learning the kana built. Will see how many people want to spend the extra time writing those out, if it proves helpful.

Thanks for the tip Scott! I will use the definition practice and see how that goes. I hadn't really given either reading or definition mode a really good chance. =)

@scott: I look forward to seeing the hiragana and katakana writing practice this year Scott! :) Yeah, I would like to write out the kana as well as the kanji once the kana system is built. Before I started Skritter I made sure to practice that every time when writing out words because it's essential for being able to write in Japanese, especially in full sentences and paragraphs as well as reading. Actually one of my Japanese friends who was helping me with kanji always got after me about the okurigana because she thought it was essential in writing practice. If some people don't want to spend the time writing those out maybe it could be added as an option in the study preferences that can be turned on and off?? If so, I'd appreciate it. I know it'd help my studying a lot!

@jhaz; Oh sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you hadn't studied hiragana or katakana. Your post somehow just reminded me of when I began writing in Japanese (kanji and otherwise). But okurigana, yes! It's great! (Much easier than Chinese I think)