If you want to study a single section of a list, you can do one of two things:

1) Do it on the website, where single section study lives.

2) Copy the section content into a new, single-section list, then study that list by itself on the iOS app.

We aren't going to implement single-section study in the iOS app after seeing what happened with it on the web (not many people used it, and those that did mostly did so out of confusion and then emailed us all the time until we made it hard to find), but it is still there on the web, at least.

Not sure if this has been previously posted, but when studying specific lists in advanced mode, I would like to suggest that the program remember what advanced settings were made so that I do not have to go in and recheck which lists are to be studied. Right now, every time that I go in advanced mode, I need to re-enter which lists are to be studied.

Associated with this, If I was in a study session and totally bailed out of the program, when I start the program again, I would like to be placed back into the session on which I was last in the middle of studying, without having to press any other keys.

In this way, I am maximizing forcing myself through a session.

No, the scheduling will handle it properly. If you study something multiple times in short order, it won't be pushed back very much, because you didn't actually learn it or prove that you knew it much better than before, having just seen it recently. So even though the reviews will be counted, if you grade honestly, the SRS will handle it just fine.

radiator, Advanced Study setting saving is indeed something I'm considering for the next version. Skritter will put you back exactly where you left it unless it had to close in the meantime, which often happens because it takes a lot of memory and when you go use other apps, it often can't survive on the small memory rations it gets. But restoring you exactly where you were in your study session is too complicated a state to save, so you get back to the home screen instead--just how it's gotta be. Devices with more memory will be more likely to persist Skritter while you do other things.

I can imagine this feature is not used much if people use it for concentrated review, just before a test. Hopefully, you don't have tests every single day or week! See, I am following a course using NPCR, and every three weeks we are doing a 听写 about the last lesson, a perfect moment to use study-per-section. So I use this feature only once every three weeks. But it is still very useful this way!

I will copy it to a separate list, as you suggested, but it seems to me that for people using big lists (most textbooks) the advanced study as it is now is not very helpful.

How are other people using this feature?

I am using it mainly to specify which list I want to add words from, and to concentrate on writing on iOS so I can get the writing prompts out of the way.

I've been searching for this feature on iOS after seeing it on the website FAQ. I'm very disappointed that it won't be an option.

While I'm not taking a class and do not have to worry about tests, I find it very handy to drill new things that I'm learning. The repetition is how I best learn initially. I will try making a new list, but it does seem like a hassle when I intend to only use iOS and not the website.

I too would love the option to select specific chapters from a list.

The textbooks I use (PAV) usually have 14 chapters or more, so not being able to select specific chapters isn't very useful.

I wouldn't consider "Study A Single Vocab List" to mean studying an entire book of say 1,200 words!

If at all possible, there should definitely be a way to narrow it down to chapters (aside from getting on a computer and manually copying a chapter into a single list, which seems to be an unnecessary step).

Skritter, please reconsider this :)

It looks like chapters (or sub-lists) can be studied online:

Study....Study A Single Vocab List....(click list, select sub-list)....Study Section

Is this possible on iOS?

Could anyone answer my last question, about it being possible on iOS? Many thanks.

高君睿, your question is the same as the original posting and the answer is above: No, you cannot study single sections on iOS.

Thanks, I just wanted to confirm with Skritter since this thread is a couple months old and it looks there's interest in an iOS feature that does the same as the web study section feature.

We still aren't planning on adding single-section study to the iOS app.

Nick, thanks for the response. Can I ask why you don't plan on adding it to iOS? It seems as if a lot of users would find it useful. Just my opinion, but the way it is right now isn't very useful. I know you said users were getting confused by it on the web, but if it's presented clearly I can't see how it would be that confusing.

I have never used the web version and most likely never will. I'm sure there are many users who do not use the web version. Why have this feature on the website but not on the mobile version?

Again, just my opinion, but I can't see the benefit of studying lists if they can't be broken down to the smallest list, chapter, or whatever you want to call it.

Nick,

How do we convince you to change your opinion?

Your past experience is obviously, in the past. "We" feel strongly, that this great feature, if presented clearly would be a "BIG" feature, used by many.

Please tell us how we can help you see it the way we do.

It's not just that it risks being complicated and confusing, but also that it's a lot of work to build. We'd rather spend our development efforts on things that will more efficiently benefit more users.

Most of the users we saw using the single section study on the web just ended up using Skritter for cramming each section rather than the SRS for which Skritter is intended. This wouldn't change if we implemented it on iOS with a good interface--we'd have to implement it with a hard-to-find interface like we have on the web so that only people who really want to do it this way will use it, and that's not going to be a lot of users.

In lieu of explaining again why we don't want to do this, let me try an analogy.

You are a hammer manufacturer. Your hammers are great at pounding things, and they also have a claw, which is great at prying things, and in a pinch it's decent at stabbing things using the claw.

Some of your hammer-buying customers don't think the hammer is good enough at stabbing, though. They suggest, hey, being able to pierce with two tines of the claw is good, but it would be better sometimes if they could just have one so they could stab more effectively. You're not even using the butt of the hammer, they say, so why not turn that into a spike for more efficient single-tine stabbing?

You probably are not going to try out a spike-handled hammer. It would indeed help the few customers who love your hammers so much that they want to do their stabbing with your hammers, too, but other people who just want to hammer might be more likely to accidentally cut themselves. It takes resources to design and build the spike handle. And to be honest, if people really want to stab things, a knife is going to do a better job than a spike hammer. You decide that your tool should do what it does best.

How could your customers convince you to make a spike-handled hammer for them?

Nick, then why did you make a spike-handled hammer on the web?

The flashcard system on Pleco is well-suited to cramming individual lists/sections/etc. It is not too hard to transfer a list from Pleco to Skritter or vice versa. You could use Skritter for your long-term SRS needs, and Pleco for cramming.

Personally I prefer Skritter's SRS all the way. You either know a word well enough that you don't need to see it, or you don't. If you grade yourself strictly, then Skritter will only stop showing you words once you know them. This is my personal preference; it sounds like you want to augment Skritter with another system (eg Pleco).

Rather than buy a hammer whose handle has been replaced by a double-edged knife (ouch!), you should just get a knife (=Pleco).

DependableSkeleton, I have Pleco and have used it religiously for 5 years. It is without doubt one of the best tools I have for learning Chinese. As you may know, if you've used the "Stroke Order" test flashcards, Pleco is not the best tool for learning how to write Chinese. Skritter is, hands down.

I would like to be able to use Skritter to, periodically, study only a specific chapter from a book. When I say study, I mean practice writing the characters. I don't mean learning vocabulary meanings, as I would do in Pleco. Sure, learning vocabulary in Skritter is useful, but again its biggest strength is learning how to write characters.

I also understand that I could transfer individual sections from Pleco, or copy a section into a new, single-section list as Nick suggests above, but I already have this section in Skritter! Why would I want to take an extra step of copying something that is already there? The whole point of Skritter is to maximize your learning time. I don't want to waste time doing something that could be done with the push of a button (or a few).

Of course, it's Skritter's choice to decide what is best for its customers and its bottom line. However, as a paying customer, I'm certainly going to make suggestions when I see something that could be useful. And I do think that a lot of users (the majority in fact) would use such a feature if they knew it existed. Perhaps it would be helpful to create one of those polls on the homepage that asks users if they would use such a feature (though my gut tells me that most users of iOS never or rarely visit the webpage).

Anyway, I'm not looking for a hammer whose handle has been replaced with a double-edged knife. I'm looking for a Swiss Army Hammer, one that has multiple knives built in that can be easily extracted and used for different situations ;-)

高君睿, I certainly understand what you're saying, and I admit that you have the better side of the hammer analogy now. (You've smashed it completely!) However, just to be clear about the specific suggestion that I had in mind: You can export an entire list from Skritter in one go and import it to Pleco and maintain the subsection structure. In Pleco I was specifically thinking of the "Fill-in-the-blanks" test type in which you're prompted to write the characters and shown the definition only (or defn+pinyin if you prefer). This is similar to a writing test on Skritter, although the inherent hints involved are different than the inherent hints on Skritter. I made the suggestion simply because I remember how powerful and customizable the Pleco flashcard system is. You can be very specific and test only the subsection that you want.

We built the spike-handle (single section study) into the web interface because we didn't know what we were doing. It took a long time and more people got cut than were thrilled to stab with it. That's why we made it hard to find.

I like the Swiss Army Hammer concept! I would use such a hammer for my Chinese study. I shudder to think of building any more flashlight compass toothpick features into Skritter than we already have, though.

Hey thanks DependableSkeleton, I haven't used the fill-in-the-blanks in a while (since using Skritter) and forgot about it. Regarding the lists, I already have the same lists (or books as they are) in Pleco and Skritter. They're broken into chapters in each.

Nick, thanks for the straightforward answer :) I'll leave this alone and just enjoy Skritter in its current amazing form. Promise I'll stop beating this dead horse with the hammer!