I think this may have been mentioned some time before. Basically, I think that being able to peek at the English is a way to recall what a word is before even looking at the Chinese character. This is essentially cheating, and totally comprimises the whole exercise.

I realize some people will disagree, but I think a good number of people would also agree. So, I think there should be an option for this, just as there is one for hiding pinyin when practicing writing.

I completely agree - plus one.

+1

I've wanted this for a while

i vote for this one

Thanks for the support, guys. Any others interested?

I've only just noticed this. Covering the English with my hand, I find I can proceed much faster and more accurately perhaps because I am only working in Chinese - so I would opt to have the English hide-able.

Yes, I would also like to hide definitions at tone prompts. I suggested this feature privately a few months ago and was told at the time that there wasn't a lot of user interest in it, so if you would like this feature, please post.

Would like this on an optional basis. I do like getting the extra "exposure" to the English definition in between definition prompts, just as the extra exposure to the character for tone prompts helps me later when writing prompts come up. Although if we get example sentences in iOS I think I could get rid of definition in tone prompts entirely.

Definitely + 1. Good suggestion Bohan.

cool, thanks a lot everyone!

Any other takers?

+1 from me!

+1 from me as well

I also support this.

Yes - so long as it was a choice, rather than having to.

what do you say, Nick/Scott/George?

Not wanting to appear melodramatic at all...but it is time to be on the right side of history!

Wow, this is a totally different response than we've gotten the last several times this has come up. We'll discuss it tonight.

Agree with CC

Okay, here's what I'm thinking. As part of the example sentences upgrade, we might try out an option on beta that will let you "hide definitions". When there's a really good example sentence, then for writing and tone prompts, instead of giving you the definition, it will just show the example sentence, cloze-deleted. Or, if you have hidden reading off, it will show the definition instead of the reading.

Does that do what y'all are thinking, or would you have it work a different way?

I also support this idea. My preference when studying tones would be an option to only see the character until I have entered the tone, then to be given the pin yin, definition etc. I currently do this with my thumb across the top of the screen.

@Nick I would like to do tone practice without being able to see English

I would also be interested in hiding the English. I don't really see how it is related to example sentences. Why not just have a tap-to-reveal-English button just like the tap-to-reveal-pinyin button currently on the website?

I agree with Dependable Skeleton. Nice try Nick, haha

+1 for Nick's suggestion

I agree with CC: Yes - so long as it was a choice, rather than having to.

It occurs to me that perhaps people not thinking about hidden definitions do writing work with hidden pinyin - I certainly do. Maybe revealed pinyin and hidden definitions (with example sentences) would indeed be a useful alternative way to work? Its almost worth having it as a completely separate drill.

Yes, the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Apart from tones, which are really part of pinyin, there are 3 main bits of info - characters, pinyin and definition. So a complete set of drills ought to provide six things to do, and we have only 4 of them already, (by using hidden pinyin on writing prompt) The ones starting from just pinyin are missing.

This doesn't change that I want to be able to start with just one thing, not two in the drills I use, so want the hiding of definition in reading/tones. (And in fact I'm a dinosaur and don't do reading drills, just tone ones, marking them as reading)

I regard tones, pinyin and reading as pretty much the same - read the character and say it in my head or aloud. I try to write characters without the pinyin prompts but often I can't generate the word and need to click on the pinyin, then writing the character is easy so I get the green tick and away it goes. I wonder if Scrittering as it is now is in part the reason for my weakness in generating the word. I would like Scritter to recognise that I have pinyin prompts turned off and record when I click on the pinyin and offer me those words more frequently for just word generation.

+1, think i would like it

@ali - You can always go back and manually mark it wrong. I do that with hidden pinyin if I need to reveal and the revealed one wasn't one of my reasonable options.

@wispfrog: "The ones starting from just pinyin are missing."

That's not quite a practical starting point. What is the correct answer for "ren2"? probably has over 10 choices. Even 2-character words will often have homonyms.
I do the pinyin study when I do flashcards on K-T Dict (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ktdict-c-e-chinese-english/id291179703?mt=8) [great program, by the way, but flash-cards are $5 add-on.] But that only works while your vocabulary is limited. Currently I only have 1 'ren2' in my lists, but that will change.

Am I missing something or did we never get the option to hide English during tone prompts?

It's been about 5 months since we all said we requested this.

How about it? I think seeing the English messes up the whole practice. Can we get a choice in hiding the English?

Yeah let's get some response on this.

Gotta get the example sentence bugs worked out first, get them enabled for Japanese, and get them into the iOS apps. Then we can think about prompting with example sentences with a hidden definition option. Planning to work on this stuff next week--will see if I get to the hidden definition test.

so no hidden English while just going through individual words and characters?

The goal will be to experiment with it and see what provides value to a lot of users (within our constraints), but the first thing I'm thinking of is as I described above, with a few variations to make sense given each type of prompt.

Okay, try it out on beta and let me know how it goes. It affects writing and tone prompts. It won't affect a writing prompt if you also have hidden reading mode on unless there is an example sentence for the word.

@Nick I just tried it. It's great! Thanks for that.Just to give you a heads-up, I went to Beta and switched it on, but the hidden English definitions seem to also be in place when Beta is turned off.

@Nick Do you have any idea how long it will take to get this new feature on the IOS app?

Bohan, for your account I had some of the English definitions hidden (for certain prompt types) as a special case since around when this thread was posted, which is why you are still seeing a few hidden definitions on non-beta.

I'm not convinced that I will keep this option yet--I want to see how useful it is to how many people. It's not cheap to maintain an extra preference. So if you like it, speak up.

@Nick I like it, but I usually use the app. I definitely think being able to hide the English should be an available preference

I like it and would like it to stay around