This is the course forum for the Mandarin Reading Survival course.
@BenWhately, @Lien, @Joshua, or @MemriseMatty, could you please add me as a contributor to this course? I noticed that this course still uses commas instead of semicolons, and I’d like to fix that issue.
Hi @neoncube, you have been added as a contributor.
@Danny1 also expressed an interest in updating comma’s to semi-columns and was recently added as a contributor, so it may be good to communicate your plans with him.
@Arete_Hime, looks like even with the post as a wiki, I can’t edit the title. Any chance you could add “by BenWhately” at the end of this thread’s title and the title of the other thread that I tagged you in a minute ago?
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Hey. I enjoy this course a lot, but I have a question. Dry (干) and to do (干) seem to share the exact same character. So whenever, I am practicing and I face this character, how do I know if I am supposed to write “dry” or “to do”?
Excellent course otherwise.
Best regards
Graskian
Hi @Graskian,
I think that if you look under the word, it should say “adjective” when it’s asking for “dry” and “verb” when asking for “to do”.
However, I’ve gone ahead and made it so that “dry” and “to do” should both be accepted for either character, so that people won’t be counted wrong if they type the “wrong” answer.
Thanks for the report, and I’m glad you’re enjoying the course (although I’m just a maintainer) 
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That was a lightning fast response!
I think it would be fine that people get the answer wrong. If they do - maybe just highlight/make it very clear that they should check for whether a verb or adjective is desired beforehand. I don’t know if that is an option though (if person gives answer A to question B then report C, otherwise report D). Does this makes sense? 
Also, I seem to have the same problem with “mouth” and “surrounded”, although according to the Google Translate, surrounded character is a little taller. Not sure if this difference is visible in this course though.
Hey
I don’t think your suggestion is a bad one, but at the moment, the only way that I know how to accomplish it is a hacky one that I’d rather not do.
Actually, there are quite a few courses that have problems like this, I think. There’s a discussion here if you’re really interested
Yes, the characters for “mouth” and “surrounded” (口 and 囗, respectively) look very similar (generally the same except for their size, I believe). The good news is that, at least in my experience, one essentially never encounters the character for “surrounded” in Modern Chinese; nowadays it’s just used as a component in other characters. That may not help you much in this course, but feel free to ignore one of “mouth” or “surrounded” if they’re tripping you up too much
@Danny1, I see you’re listed as a contributor for this course, too, so I’m tagging you here as well
Old, probably dead post; replying anyway. The course reviews are giving characters that haven’t yet been learned.