[Feature request] Listening mode

General
1

Hello,
sorry for opening another topic again. I thought i asked for this before but apparently not.

I would like to have another learning mode on the website (idgaf about app): Listening. You only hear the audio recording of the hanzi pronunciation and are then presented with the hanzi and the meaning.

I know there are some things that would need to be accounted for:

  1. vocabulary with same pronunciation: just display all alternatives as well
  2. multiple pronunciations, there should be a distinction for multiple pronunciations and a word consisting out of the same pronunciation but concatenated: i would do this visually by displaying multiple speaker symbols.

Currently i am doing this by using the meaning cards and just look away so i dont see the hanzi. This is not working really well and also really slowing the workflow as i now also have to actively manage my gaze. However, i do notice that this kind of practise really really strongly accelerated my improvements in listening comprehension.

I would hope that this is added really fast. even if its quick and dirty for now, only available on the website and only though a setting that enables it as beta content. I am even willing to pay a bit extra for it. I would like to know a time span tho in which this would be added instead of a “we will consider it”

In case this will take time to add, I would like to have an automated way to download the pronunciations, so that I can anki it instead.

Cheers

Ps: i posted this in Chinese instead of Skritter website, because i want to avoid the topic from auto closing, just because i dont spam the forum by pushing this every 25 days

pps: if you were to open-sourcing the website front end while keeping IP private in a separate package, i would be happy contribute

2

I’ve been here for four years or so and have seen a million improvements, so I don’t agree with the last part. And the bug fixes are usually done reasonably fast too.

3

It happens that my post was hidden by community after being flagged as inappropriate. I do not know how this exactly works, i did edit the only part of it that i can fathom might be offensive. I admit that my language can be harsh, but I always try to avoid being offensive or calling words. So i edited out that part of the message, it being somewhat offtopic anyway

I will keep this out of this out of here, but at least as a response to your message, i am going to open a new topic and link this here. [todo insert link]

4

I removed the auto-close on this topic, and you’re welcome to flush the idea out more if you’d like and others are welcome to dream about what a listening mode could be on Skritter. Maybe move to General so it can be inclusive to Japanese as well?

We’re not opposed to a listening mode. Actually, @SkritterOlle has dreamed about some kind of listening mode (and other study modes) for Skritter for a while now, but integrating new study modes into the website review system not easy, and not something we want to hack on. If we add something like this to Skritter it’ll be in a “LABS” capacity, to test usage and gauge interest, before trying to integrate it into the review and scheduling system after that.

This is something that we’d like to explore more after the unification of mobile and website (more on that in your other thread). Sorry, not the answer you’re looking for, I know. But it is the reality right now.

Sorry, we have no intention of allowing our Skritter audio to be downloadable or accessible outside of Skritter at this time. Making and supporting high-quality audio is incredibly expensive and time-consuming. Worth every penny, in my opinion, but not something we’re going to have on Anki or other platforms at this time.

Speaking of audio, our library will continue to grow and expand. We’ve got another huge batch of Japanese and Chinese audio uploading soon! We will have a Glossika-style way to study Skritter-official sentences in the future, and we’ve got big ideas and plans for new ways to study and interact with data on Skritter after we’ve unified the codebase.

-Jake

P.S. Regardless of my stance on this feature… if you’re looking to accelerate and improve your listening comprehension, I would recommend spending more time listening to Podcasts, enrolling in the [Hacking Chinese listening challenge] (Chinese listening challenge, January 2024 | Hacking Chinese | Hacking Chinese) and exploring other non-Skritter resources actually designed for what you’re trying to focus on. Give the language context. Expose yourself to a variety of accents, topics. themes, etc, and take the new words/trouble words, and add them into Skritter for focus on definition, tone, reading, and writing in the meantime. Skritter is a great review tool, but actually spending time listening to stuff in context will help unlock your listening skills WAAAAAAYYYY faster.

P.P.S Appreciate the edits you made. I can imaging that being a dev you’re brimming with ideas for ways that Skritter could be made better. It’s the same reason that all of us on the team started working on Skritter. We’re with ya, and wanna make Skritter better, too!

1 Like
5

please go ahead.

I am happy with that as long as it still has SRS, even if completely separate from the main SRS.

That is amazing actually. My main problem with Glossika always was that it does not allow you to study the individual vocab beforehand. So if you could make this dependent on that all sentence vocab has already studied this would be amazing.

1 Like
6

I agree the best listening practice is contextual: full sentences and paragraphs and natural speech with all of its modulations.

However a listening mode on Skritter would not be unappreciated!

I am curious though, how would you be able to review/mark homonyms?

Even a listening mode limited to test mode (rather than review) would be useful.

Looking forward to the new audio. Adding new words just about every week, hope to hear them soon.

When are we going to get audio for individual characters within multi-syllabic words, in review? You’ve been promising/I’ve been asking for that for years now.

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I think so as well. But you can have both. Words and well as audio of example sentences. Its a step by step process to get to fluency and until you achieved that i believe that word based listening tests help.

My idea would be to also show the homonyms after the card flip and there is one that you are actively prompted for. If you got the one prompted great. If you got a homonym, select a fifth option homonym and then select the homonym you thought of. This way the request can be counted as if it never happened for that word and instead will be counted for the SRS of the word you thought of. Contrary, the prompted card will be rescheduled.

8

Phase 1 of getting this enabled as a setting happening as we speak. It doesn’t address this issue in particular, but it will make this feature better overall. We’re currently doing a batch of recordings for low-third tones and neutral tones so we have all sounds in Skritter database.

After that, we’ll be deploying a more global “Skritter TTS” system so that all words on Chinese side have audio support, even if we haven’t recorded an actual audio file for it. Basically, no more “missing audio” on Skritter. We’ll still add native recordings for items, but it’ll fill a huge gap in the lag or recording, editing, and uploading native audio for the 600,000+ items in the Skritter database for Chinese.

Once that’s done, adding the option for play individual character readings similar to legacy iOS can be worked into the settings menu for anyone looking for the Skritter Chinese experience.

Sorry this isn’t happening faster. Very much on the list, but we wanna get this core audio update done first!

1 Like
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@SkritterJake

Wonderful! Really looking forward to it.

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