I was considering purchasing given I've also started using the movie method and am looking for a way to systematically study the characters and components, however the application is too restrictive in my opinion. The quizzes should be optional and not required to continue on. It's not helpful to me to write B is associated with Bart Simpson. If it is helpful for others that is fine, but if I don't want to I shouldn't have to. As well, the quizzes are based on associations you have determined. For example, the correct answer to the 八 component being fins. If we want to represent this with something else and amend that in the notes for this component, I don't find it valuable to be quizzed on your association. At that point it is just memorizing a data point so we can proceed through the curriculum. Also, considering I am already coming in with knowledge of a few hundred characters and pronunciation, not being able to skip through the curriculum is a significant detriment. It would require a large time sink to just begin actually making progress. As well, I take in person classes which focus on pronunciation and pinyin, and I don't particularly like having pinyin initials, finals, tones etc mixed into the study. I am just looking for purely character study first, and vocab second. Being able to tailor the curriculum to what we want to study specifically and being able to begin at any point of the curriculum would be significant upgrades in my opinion. I hope you receive this constructively. Overall, I do really like the directional approach of the application and the comprehensive nature of the curriculum, however I believe it could be optimized further to make it more flexible and amenable to different Chinese learners. If I was factually incorrect on anything in my assessment let me know.
Yeah this is a common criticism of both HanziHero and WaniKani. Ultimately all study systems exist on a spectrum from complex and flexible to simple and restrictive. I myself don't like using Anki because it is flexible to a fault which does not fit my learning style, while others may not like systems that are too restrictive. It's sort of like iOS vs Android in a way. :) For the components, one can always add their own name which then becomes an accepted answer. So for 八 you can add "eight" or "volcano" or whatever. Of course, this will mean that the character mnemonics that include that component will be a bit less useful, but that is unavoidable. For sounds, I understand the concern. There is no way to skip them or to add an "alternate mnemonic" or an "alternate answer" like there are for components. However, given there are only ~80 or so and that those sounds are referenced in the mnemonics of all characters that contain said sounds, it will be easily learned in no time at all. The initial application actually did not have Sounds at all, but we found that made onboarding WAY more difficult in the end. For skipping, we added a character prioritization feature which I mentioned in the video, which allows one to "skip" in effect. Simply prioritize a large number of characters you don't know and those will take priority over the ones you do know. The issue with skipping is that there is no way to do it precisely, which is why we've held off on it. Additionally, the mnemonics build off of each other, and skipping diminishes that. As an anecdote, I started building/using this when I already "knew" 2k characters and was reading Chinese manga hours a day, but still found going over _thousands_ of characters again to be worth the effort, as I found that many tones I remembered incorrectly. I have some more notes about skipping here: hanzihero.com/docs/skipping-items Thanks for the feedback, though. Much of the improvements in HanziHero comes from criticism like this. Making HanziHero is sort of a balancing act where we have to find how to make it flexible while also streamlined. It's impossible to fit everyone's learning style, unfortunately, but I think we get closer everyday to finding a nice middle ground.
For context, I'm someone who had previously used WaniKani before beginning to learn Chinese and who had some familiarity with characters prior. Anyways, what I find most effective and which is something that both these services lack, is the inability to see these words contextually. I found learning Chinese after learning some Japanese to be easier, despite not having great confidence learning kanji, PARTIALLY because of components, but PRIMARILY for the fact Chinese forces its learners to be using the hanzi repetitively on its own and within context. I think allowing users to see the radicals in words helps- especially for distinguishing between characters, but I don't believe you can really learn the characters nor their meanings as well if they are not provided with how they are used. And I don't necessarily mean within a grammatical context. Because of this, I think these services become more supplementary than intended. To keep it short: I think it would benefit the program (and WaniKani for that matter), if example sentences were also present for learners, even if they weren't required to be memorized like the mnemonics, radicals, or vocabulary. Story learning is effective, even moreso when we can use the same webs in our brain to connect words with other known words. :)
We (and I believe WaniKani) have example sentences for most vocabulary words. But I do think that having some example sentences for characters as well could be beneficial, too. After all, it would be just showing all the example sentences for all words that character is in, which we already have at hand. We may look into doing that. 👍
Looking forward to any solutions on how to accommodate learners that have already begun their journey (for example, somebody at HSK5 looking to try HanziHero), who would to be able to skip, or accelerate to where would be best for them on your system. Maybe a sort of initial character-knowledge assessment test or something.
Right now the main thing we have is the character prioritization function outlined in the video. So if one simply prioritizes all the characters they don't know, it is the same as effectively skipping, as those characters will take priority over all else. We plan to remake some of our UI to make it easier to bulk-prioritize among other things to help make that more useful. As we finish up some other higher priority features we hope to circle back and see how else we can improve this which is deceptively complex to "do right".
How long have you been learning Chinese before moving to Taiwan? Did you start by learning traditional characters or switch to them later? I think it might be more challenging because there aren't as many resources or content available with traditional hanzi.
I self-studied for about a year on and off, but only reading and characters. There are a bit less resources, but enough to get to the point where one can start consuming native media subtitled in traditional characters. For textbooks there is Practical Audio-Visual Chinese and A Course in Contemporary Chinese. Once one starts consuming native media, I find there are actually more things in traditional characters than in simplified, at least for anime/manga.
You are making great videos ❤
I was considering purchasing given I've also started using the movie method and am looking for a way to systematically study the characters and components, however the application is too restrictive in my opinion. The quizzes should be optional and not required to continue on. It's not helpful to me to write B is associated with Bart Simpson. If it is helpful for others that is fine, but if I don't want to I shouldn't have to. As well, the quizzes are based on associations you have determined. For example, the correct answer to the 八 component being fins. If we want to represent this with something else and amend that in the notes for this component, I don't find it valuable to be quizzed on your association. At that point it is just memorizing a data point so we can proceed through the curriculum.
Also, considering I am already coming in with knowledge of a few hundred characters and pronunciation, not being able to skip through the curriculum is a significant detriment. It would require a large time sink to just begin actually making progress. As well, I take in person classes which focus on pronunciation and pinyin, and I don't particularly like having pinyin initials, finals, tones etc mixed into the study. I am just looking for purely character study first, and vocab second. Being able to tailor the curriculum to what we want to study specifically and being able to begin at any point of the curriculum would be significant upgrades in my opinion.
I hope you receive this constructively. Overall, I do really like the directional approach of the application and the comprehensive nature of the curriculum, however I believe it could be optimized further to make it more flexible and amenable to different Chinese learners. If I was factually incorrect on anything in my assessment let me know.
Yeah this is a common criticism of both HanziHero and WaniKani. Ultimately all study systems exist on a spectrum from complex and flexible to simple and restrictive. I myself don't like using Anki because it is flexible to a fault which does not fit my learning style, while others may not like systems that are too restrictive. It's sort of like iOS vs Android in a way. :)
For the components, one can always add their own name which then becomes an accepted answer. So for 八 you can add "eight" or "volcano" or whatever. Of course, this will mean that the character mnemonics that include that component will be a bit less useful, but that is unavoidable.
For sounds, I understand the concern. There is no way to skip them or to add an "alternate mnemonic" or an "alternate answer" like there are for components. However, given there are only ~80 or so and that those sounds are referenced in the mnemonics of all characters that contain said sounds, it will be easily learned in no time at all. The initial application actually did not have Sounds at all, but we found that made onboarding WAY more difficult in the end.
For skipping, we added a character prioritization feature which I mentioned in the video, which allows one to "skip" in effect. Simply prioritize a large number of characters you don't know and those will take priority over the ones you do know.
The issue with skipping is that there is no way to do it precisely, which is why we've held off on it. Additionally, the mnemonics build off of each other, and skipping diminishes that. As an anecdote, I started building/using this when I already "knew" 2k characters and was reading Chinese manga hours a day, but still found going over _thousands_ of characters again to be worth the effort, as I found that many tones I remembered incorrectly. I have some more notes about skipping here: hanzihero.com/docs/skipping-items
Thanks for the feedback, though. Much of the improvements in HanziHero comes from criticism like this. Making HanziHero is sort of a balancing act where we have to find how to make it flexible while also streamlined. It's impossible to fit everyone's learning style, unfortunately, but I think we get closer everyday to finding a nice middle ground.
For context, I'm someone who had previously used WaniKani before beginning to learn Chinese and who had some familiarity with characters prior. Anyways, what I find most effective and which is something that both these services lack, is the inability to see these words contextually. I found learning Chinese after learning some Japanese to be easier, despite not having great confidence learning kanji, PARTIALLY because of components, but PRIMARILY for the fact Chinese forces its learners to be using the hanzi repetitively on its own and within context.
I think allowing users to see the radicals in words helps- especially for distinguishing between characters, but I don't believe you can really learn the characters nor their meanings as well if they are not provided with how they are used. And I don't necessarily mean within a grammatical context. Because of this, I think these services become more supplementary than intended.
To keep it short: I think it would benefit the program (and WaniKani for that matter), if example sentences were also present for learners, even if they weren't required to be memorized like the mnemonics, radicals, or vocabulary. Story learning is effective, even moreso when we can use the same webs in our brain to connect words with other known words. :)
side note though: the prioritization system is a massive benefit to HanziHero in comparison to WaniKani. 👍
We (and I believe WaniKani) have example sentences for most vocabulary words. But I do think that having some example sentences for characters as well could be beneficial, too. After all, it would be just showing all the example sentences for all words that character is in, which we already have at hand. We may look into doing that. 👍
Looking forward to any solutions on how to accommodate learners that have already begun their journey (for example, somebody at HSK5 looking to try HanziHero), who would to be able to skip, or accelerate to where would be best for them on your system. Maybe a sort of initial character-knowledge assessment test or something.
Right now the main thing we have is the character prioritization function outlined in the video. So if one simply prioritizes all the characters they don't know, it is the same as effectively skipping, as those characters will take priority over all else. We plan to remake some of our UI to make it easier to bulk-prioritize among other things to help make that more useful. As we finish up some other higher priority features we hope to circle back and see how else we can improve this which is deceptively complex to "do right".
How long have you been learning Chinese before moving to Taiwan? Did you start by learning traditional characters or switch to them later? I think it might be more challenging because there aren't as many resources or content available with traditional hanzi.
I self-studied for about a year on and off, but only reading and characters. There are a bit less resources, but enough to get to the point where one can start consuming native media subtitled in traditional characters. For textbooks there is Practical Audio-Visual Chinese and A Course in Contemporary Chinese. Once one starts consuming native media, I find there are actually more things in traditional characters than in simplified, at least for anime/manga.