Earlier this evening we launched a big wad of much-awaited features! Skritter now displays character decompositions, allows you to add personalized mnemonics, lets you build lists on the fly, sports a new list editor, and supports a bunch of world languages. You can read a bit more about these features in this month’s newsletter. However, because each new feature is fairly complex and bears some explaining, I’m going to be writing a blog post for each of the features over the next couple of days.
So the first, and perhaps easiest to explain is what we call the “Starred Words” system. As you are practicing, it allows you to mark words for later, more focused review. Starring words does not affect how Skritter grades them, it simply allows you to better learn words or characters that are giving you problems.
You have to star several words before you can use the feature otherwise the list isn’t long enough for Skritter to schedule anything. Once you’ve marked a few, you’ll see a “Starred Words” section appear at the bottom of the Practice Nav that allows you to study just those words.
I have been helping to test the system for a little while and think it’s going to really help me pull apart those pesky homonyms that I have so much trouble with!