[Course Forum] HSK Level 6 by DrewSSP

That is from the CC-CEDICT Dictionary, which can be found here https://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=cedict

This is the dictionary that is used as the source for the Zhongwen Chrome Extension, which was used to bulk-upload alternate answers to the course. While sufficient, I sometimes fear that this dictionary is less effective than most others. I encourage you to remove this definition if you can find any reason to do so.

Okay, thanks :slight_smile:

I’ve gone ahead and removed that definition.

You have probably noticed that, when answering multiple choice questions, some of the incorrect answers are often a list of synonyms separated by semi-colons. This is the result of a bug with Memrise and I believe I found a way to fix it as a course creator.

I applied the fix to this course so you should not be seeing these types of incorrect answers anymore. If you do, I ask that you report it to me right here. Please tell me the word that you were being prompted with when it appeared and I will use it to fix a bug that might be in my script.

Thanks for all of the work and attention that you guys have been putting into my course.

Cool! Is it not too difficult to describe how you fixed it?

It appears in CantoDict and also in Pleco with both defining it to be “rock and roll music”.

This is the thread that focusses on this solution. Deleted/old answers still appearing in tests

It’s easy enough to describe. Each word has multiple columns of information for which you might be asked a question. For this course, these columns are Chinese, Pinyin with numbers, English, audio, Pinyin with tone markings and finally, traditional characters. For each of these columns of information, Memrise creates a list of about 12 possible incorrect answers that it might give when you are asked a question about it. These are updated whenever you change the information in the respective column of a word. Unfortunately, they are only updated at this time. This means that, if you change the information for a word in your database, any words that were using it as an incorrect answer will not know and will stay the same.

As a user, you can fix the problem by simply updating the information for each column for a word and then changing it back to what it was before. This will make memrise look for new words to use as incorrect answers for each column. I simply made a python script that will do this for me.

You’ve always been a big help to me, @neoncube, and I am more than willing to apply this fix to any of your courses.

Ah, I was just getting ready to respond back to you about this proposed solution. I did what you suggested last evening, and it seems to have worked out fine on the web version. I don’t see that phantom entry any longer - or at least I should say I saw the correct answer 5 consecutive times, so I assume that meant the phantom was gone. However, I still see the phantom entry on the app version of the course. I deleted it, and then uploaded it again, but after going though some reviewing, the phantom has appeared twice already, and the correct response has not shown up yet. Maybe I have to wait a little for the iOS app to sync ?

I would guess that you’re right about the app needing more time. I don’t have any control over that but I can fix your problem for the web. If we do that, I image the app will sync up eventually. Would you like me to fix your courses?

I found another issue with this, and it is probably something I did wrong. I added an extra letter to the end of some words, then deleted it, but now the extra letter is showing up as new phantom entries in this course. So where before I had just one phantom entry, now I have many - all with the same last letter appended to them. :head_bandage:

So since I am the only one in this small course, I am adding a new column now with the correct information and will delete the original column that had the changed information. I will also change the course testing to be off this new column. Hopefully that will do the trick and get rid of all the new phantoms. If not, I will just trash the course and create a new one. It only has 33 items so it is pretty easy to replicate. I just don’t want to do this to some of my TOCFL courses that have several thousand items, and many phantoms. It took days to create them.

I don’t know what I may have done wrong. Everything looked great at first, then all of the sudden these new phantoms appeared on the web version. I didn’t even bother to look on the app - it’s kind of irrelevant at this point…

@pdao, you may already know this, but you might want to be careful about adding a new column and deleting the old one. There’s a note somewhere on Memrise that says that when you delete a column, everyone’s progress for the course (or at least that level) is reset.

@neoncube ~ Yes, I was aware of that, that’s why I chose this particular course as my test case since I am the only one on it. The others are clearly verbotten because of the number of users involved. I had to re-learn the 33 items, but it was not a big deal. Others would have squawked if I suggested they re-learn anything.

It appears that there are no phantoms now in either the web or iOS version so now I am going to make a simple change to one item in the database to see if I can trigger a phantom. If I can, then I’ll use @DrewSSP’s logic to try to eradicate it. I won’t clutter up this forum with the gory details. I’ll just post once I have some kind of resolution, one way or another.

@DrewSSP ~ Thank you VERY MUCH for your time, assistance and insight. I truly, truly hope this issue will go away, not just for my sake, but for everyone on Memrise who has lived with it for so long. Your fix seems so simple. Why couldn’t Memrise have suggested this ages ago ? Have a good day !

Okay, cool :slight_smile:

Ah, a fellow programmer! :slight_smile:

Thanks for the offer :slight_smile: As far as I know, I don’t think the course that I made or any of the courses that I’m a contributor on have this issue, but if it becomes a problem, I may let you know.

Hey guys,

I have something that I wanted to get feedback on.

The primary definition for 天才 was “talent” and the primary definition for 天赋 was “natural talent”. I think that “talent” and “natural” talent are the same thing, and when I was being tested on 天才 I kept choosing “natural talent”, which got marked as wrong, so I’ve changed the definition for 天赋 from “natural talent” to just “talent”. This means that we have two words that have a primary definition of “talent” now, though.

Does anyone have any feedback on this? Here is the wiktionary page for 天赋 and here is the wiktionary page for 天才

I had to check in with a native chinese for this one. It turns out that 天才 is best described as “a talented person” whereas 天赋 is best translated as “a talent”. As I understand it, you are a 天才 if you have a 天赋.

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I have heard “天才” used sort of like the word “genius” in English, if that helps.

Yeah I heard that as well when it was explained to me. I was lead to believe that it could also be generalised a bit more to the way I described but maybe your translation is a bit more common.

Thanks :slight_smile:

I’ve changed the primary definition of 天才 to “genius” and made “talent” a secondary definition.

@DrewSSP, would you be open to the idea of adding levels to the course that show you an English word and has you type the Chinese characters for the English word? I hear some of the words in this course in conversation in Chinese sometimes, and I can often remember what they mean, which is great, but then when I’m trying to think of how to say one of the English words in Chinese, I can’t think of how to say it.

Hi @neoncube thanks for the suggestion. This course is meant to be a continuation of the other blue HSK courses and it follows the same format as the others as a result. I made it because I don’t like the testing direction for the red HSK courses starting from HSK 4. I believe what you’re looking for is already offered in the most popular HSK 6 course that already exists. It has a light blue picture. Maybe, if you compliment this course with that one, it would work well for you.

It’s worth mentioning also that adding a level in which you must tyoe Chinese will require that you switch between an English and Chinese keyboard repeatedly throughout a session. Of course you can type English with a Chinese keyboard but it’s pretty inconvenient.