So was experimenting with the fill-in-the-blank kanji option for my vocab list (idea being that I'll quiz on my phone and use a handwriting keyboard to practice writing by hand as opposed to typing), and quickly noticed the following is an all too common sight:
Given the number of homophones in Japanese I probably should have seen this coming, in retrospect.
Anyway, I was wondering if some sort of counter to this homophone problem could be added? As it stands, certain words with many homophones will need to be written in many times with different kanji (wasting time) or eventually turn into multiple-choice questions (defeating the purpose of handwriting).
A couple of ideas I could come up with to deal with this:
-The "Show hint" is actually really useful here as it gives the definition, which is usually different for homophones. A way to have hints always-on (displayed for all questions without having to get the wrong answer first) for a schedule would pretty much entirely eliminate the problem. Maybe this is already a feature somewhere I'm just unaware of.
-Or maybe displaying a list of homonyms which aren't the desired answer onscreen could help?
The "show hint by default" is not a current setting, but I'll take it into consideration.
I cannot personally say I'm to fond of showing all the answers that are valid, but not the one in question. It feels like it could get out of hand easily.
I'd love to hear what others have to say about this while I'm thinking on it!
While not impossible, it wouldn't be a full solution, since you are going to run into terms without sentences, or ones that are noticeably higher than the user's general comprehension level.
It is an interesting suggestion though! I will keep it in mind for the next time a beta round gets started (November?)
Just throwing random ideas here: what about some other hints regarding the kanji? For example, some of the radicals, the number of strokes, or other readings?
Or maybe it would be easy to show some other words in hiragana where it also appears. For example, if it is asking for the kanji for かえる, some words that could appear are: おかえり、ひがえり、きたく
My reasoning behind these suggestions instead of using the meaning as a hint is that it may help to memorize more aspects of it?
Or maybe it would be easy to show some other words in hiragana where it also appears. For example, if it is asking for the kanji for かえる, some words that could appear are: おかえり、ひがえり、きたく
Just want to say I really like this idea, but it might run into the same 'getting out of hand' problem マイコー brought up with my 'show the undesired kanji' idea since you would need to display a hiragana hint for each kanji of the vocab in question. Thinking especially about some 四字熟語, the screen might get really cluttered.
What if the hints could appear by touching each part of the word?
I'm picturing it the same way as when you touch a word you are not being quizzed on in a sentence: a pop-up box appears with the meaning. That way we would only need to tap on the parts of the word we need help with, and the screen would be cleaner.
Pop ups are, unfortunately, never ideal for mobile users. I do like the idea of additional info - for example, extra meanings for the same kanji. That would not be too long in terms of character length.
