Scripts: Learn Chinese writing Reviews

by Inkling2

I understand Scripts is for beginning stage Chinese learners, but as someone who has learned how to write Chinese, I can say that these characters are not really accurate. Scripts is using a strictly computer based writing format for Chinese. It is similar to how English writers would almost never write the letter “a” how it looks when you type it. The Chinese character “人” was the first character that I “learned” on Scripts. I’m not sure why, unlike other apps, this computer based version of the word “人” is exactly how it appeared on the screen. Anyone who knows Chinese knows that it should look more slanted to the side when you handwrite it. Just search on Wikipedia for “radical 9” and scroll down to the gif of a stroke order animation to see the difference in how the character “人” looks when you write it by hand. I checked the English handwriting section, and it looks like how the handwriting practice books give it, so why are the Chinese characters not given the same way? I am very disappointed that an app that is supposed to teach you how to write would teach in this fashion. It’s almost as if Scripts was coded without ANY input from someone who knows how to write Chinese.

by R So Low And Unhappy

First use interesting trying the ASL language until I get redirected to rate Scripts before the up-sell how cheesy and short sighted. Especially the immediate up sell barrage. I was interested and again some kind of ridiculous come back pops up to tell you that you cannot keep going when it is just getting interesting. What a complete turn off /:(,

Still being rejected, just found a slew of other language apps Thanks So Much for not letting me play, Mango is really cool.
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I appreciated your response however, you missed the point, I am a paying customer of the other language apps. I am looking for specific features. Duolingo and Mango attend to some of those which we discovered through introductory use. The thought was your app may attend to the missing pieces but the rushed, time limited short use, and long stay away times make it difficult.

by Small Hobbit

I don’t know if it’s because I’m on an iPod touch, but sometimes it won’t accept drawing a character even if I do it EXACTLY the same. This makes Scripts feel a lot less quality than its trying to be (for clarity, I’m going through Japanese which I know most of the kana characters already but thought it would be good to practice them again, anyway. When it keeps telling me that something went wrong it doesn’t come off as great for Scripts . One of the biggest issues I’ve come across so far is with あ where it seems to have a problem detecting the second stroke properly, and え where it won’t properly detect the second stroke at all. Because these are “simper” characters I really can’t imagine how well the detection is with kanji, or really any of the more complex writing systems.)

by Wbrexaidfdmsk

Using the free version for about five weeks to try learning hanzi. I want to like it. I like that it’s tactile as well as visual and auditory. The interactions for progressively drawing the characters/words, learning the strokes and their order, are fun and strike me as quite cool. The trouble is that I’m not learning. The program isn’t using spaced repetition so far as I can tell. It introduces too many new words, too fast, and stops showing words before I really know them. It’s not clear to me either what governs the choice of new words. Words like “cliff” and “strike” and “cadaver” don’t feel like commonly used words. There must be some other logic. In any case, after five weeks, I think I’ll stop playing with this and try an Anki deck. Regrettably. The drawing interaction was fun.

by HappieGirlie

This is an app I used for about ten days and ultimately decided to delete.

1. I like that it brings back old characters I did several sessions ago.

2. I like that it gives me several versions of “writing”, though it was frustrating to get a stroke wrong because I was still trying to get the last stroke correct but the game had moved on without my knowing. Be aware there is a bit of a learning curve.

3. I do not like that I cannot choose what words it present me with. So far they’ve all been kind of weird words that I probably wouldn’t use very often and I don’t generally see how they’re related, so it doesn’t make much sense. I feel like it would be a much more useful app if I could put in the vocabulary I’m learning outside Scripts .

4. The notifications. Jeez! The notifications. I made the mistake of letting Scripts remind me—after being prompted to set a specific time for reminders. A specific time for a reminder is a fantastic idea! But Scripts notifies me every freaking hour. It’s not worth the aggravation of all those tiny red circles for a five minute free learning game.

by Qwertbot

It’s more frequent in their other app Drops. If I could hear it in a couple different ways, or hear it in a sentence, it would help distinguish what’s just someone’s voice and what’s the correct pronunciation. Also, I have romanization turned on not just the adaptive, so it should be giving me the proper written tone; I’d like to not sound like an idiot if I try to say “cao” to say grass and actually heard “cào” when I was learning it (something you don’t want to say.) That isn’t really the word for grass anyway and it’d be nice if that was clarified since some of the radicals are and some aren’t. It’s teaching you from nothing which is nice, but it would be helpful if Scripts explained what radicals are and how their meanings change. I dunno, I’ve only used it three days so maybe there’s a master plan I don’t understand. I’ll update this review when I get more information/ the audible portion is updated to be more varied and more like the speech I’m used to hearing.

by :PxD:)•,•

I downloaded Scripts thinking “oh! It’ll be fun to learn some Chinese out of class.. and the way Duolingo does it is getting a bit boring..” I’m learning Mandarin in class, and I was like “what? There’s no Mandarin?” I did my first five minute session and it told me what man was and I’m like “no man is nan but whatever I’ll let it slide” and then I checked.. you had to pay to get mandarin. I would honestly rather get ads. Like a lot of em. I prefer most of your content being free. I can stand ads. I can’t stand certain and valuable content not being free. I’m deleting this, but I’m hoping if you are reading this and wanting to learn Mandarin, i’m just gonna say that Duolingo is probably a better option unless you feel like paying. 再见！

by Bch Yfbgfhf

Personally, i am a very fast learner. I downloaded this to learn asl and while it was extremely helpful, it took quite a bit of time to get through each sign. I think it would be nice if they would add a little ‘learning speed’ type thing, since some people are fast learners and others aren’t as fast. The only other thing i found disappointing was that Scripts only lets you learn 5 minutes a day unless you pay for a subscription. While i understand a company needs to get as much money as they can, it is dumb to basically have to pay to be able to communicate with foreigners. Because of these two things, i give Scripts 4 stars. But aside from these few things, this IS a fantastic app and would definitely teach you what you want to learn.

by Aaaaakkhh

I have already learnt Hindi, but I felt the need to do some revision, so I tried out this cool app that I saw on the front page of the day. I’ve already tried Drops, so I guessed this would be good. While I admit this is a good app, there are some improvements necessary.

In Hindi, you should add a skill where you use a few examples to teach vowel markers. Without them a course on Hindi writing is basically incomplete.

The insertion of a few test words would also be very useful to the course, as it would teach learners how to join up letters and develop neat handwriting.

Thirdly, the addition of a few common consonant clusters (the joined-up letters like “kya” क्य) would be handy.

Also, I only gave four stars due to the high price for premium.

I hope that you read and consider all of my suggestions! Thanks a lot for reading!

(To any potential learners, I highly recommend Scripts , and even without premium it is a fully worth it experience. Premium is only $3.33/month, so the price is not that high. Highly recommend, great experience!) :)

by MikeBeauchamp

This is a great way of learning the letters in a new language. I have gone through all the Chinese Hanzi, and I’m continuing on Drops as a subscriber. But now there’s no drawing practice anymore past the initial 200 or so radicals, and memorizing the characters is much harder. Besides that, many Hanzi change in a word, like 火, fire, moves into 灰色, gray, pretty well without changing form, but you wouldn’t easily guess that 水, water, forms the leftmost part of 洗, wash (verb).

I wouldn’t know any of the above if I didn’t do my research outside of Scripts . So I know how to write the initial radicals very well, but I’d really like for Scripts to expand and include writing practice for the characters used in the actual words taught later in Drops, and possibly also include alternate forms of the radicals when they are included as part of a larger character.

by Gsmith119

I’ve been using another app ‘Drops’ for about a week and though really enjoying it, finding it hard to remember the Japanese letters. So when I saw Scripts featured in me of their emails I was excited to try it.

Great potential, but ran into two immediate challenges. Scripts is pretty unforgiving when trying to write the characters without the outline or trace patterns. And I appreciate how tricky it must be to program characters that trace back on themselves like the character for ‘e’.

Everyone learns at a different pace, yet this seemed more rushed to move away from the guides to help learn stroke order and patterns and I found it frustrating especially with ‘e’ and ‘a’. I looked for a settings menu that might adjust speed, or always on feature that provides more time to develop pattern memory and order.

by Foldedlotus

[Learning Korean] Very interactive and words are organized in categories. I like that I can see the romanization of the word along with the Hangeul and it has repetition. This was just 5 minutes of the trial! I usually don’t leave feedback for an app; Scripts is way better than Duolingo and cost less than them. I actually downloaded Drops because I saw it had writing instruction built in Scripts , whereas Duolingo doesn’t offer learning how to write characters (for languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean). Wish I could take the money I spent on Duolingo and put it on this.

by Reviewer Of Stuff And Things

In the case of Cyrillic I must say I don’t know a single Russian who pronounces the letters that way. It’s fine because you’re just making a basic noice for the letter and that is probably the closest you’ll get at this point but it’s just a fact that the noises sound strange in comparison to how native speakers and even learners pronounce the letters in most Cyrillic languages such as Russian or Ukrainian.

Essentially, when the letter is pronounced it sound like a very different language than any Cyrillic languages, such as Russian or Ukrainian. Doesn’t need to be fixed, but it can be.

Have a nice day!

by Olive Peebles

Scripts is honestly amazing. I struggled with learning languages until I started using Drops. Scripts keeps you focused on the session and makes you feel passionate to learn more. Another thing about Scripts that really helps is the simple 5 min a day. While you can always pay more for longer sessions , 5 min a day can really help teach you. I’m so happy I found Scripts and I hope that anyone that reads this review will take my advice and focus a short amount of time to become more educated; I hope you download Drops soon!

by Moba-burned

Coming from learning languages as a hobby, I was surprised and excited when I discovered an app that focused more on the writing than speech. My memory was bogged down by strokes and slashes; There was something missing in my own methods, something that this app provided. For five minutes a day you can learn to your hearts content- truly a masterstroke in design, when time is so readily discarded by distractions and engagements. I recommend Scripts to anyone looking for a new way to learn a language, but don’t have enough time in the day to sit down and learn one. You won’t be disappointed.

by The._.Asian._.

So I was given a challenge by my friends to try Scripts. I speak fluent Chinese so they wanted me to authenticate it. When i tried it it was great. You don’t even need to sign up for anything to. It starts you off at the basics and then progressively gets more harder. I also like how they teach you how to write the Kangxi. That is the one part of these apps that they miss out on. Speaking is one part and then writing and understanding what it says is the other. Great app would recommend to anyone looking to learn Chinese or any other language for that matter.

by HatesEverthing101234

Being someone who has struggled to learn languages, from Japanese to ASL, Scripts has helped me so much! I’m currently using it to learn ASL.
It’s so much fun you almost forget you’re learning and not playing a game. You can learn so much in five minutes.
I do wish they’d allow more than Five minutes for those who can’t pay the monthly fee but I understand an amazing app like this needs money.
I really recommend this to everyone trying to learn a new language.
I believe it’s better than other apps like Duolingo, this is much more interactive and interesting.

by SpanishTutorJosh

I took a Mandarin Chinese class in college and found writing the pictographs to be the hardest part. This makes it fun and provides the necessary repetition needed to learn the words. I also like that it provides pronunciation practice as well. As a teacher of Indo-European languages, Scripts tracks with everything I know about what it takes to master the basics of a language. My one drawback is that we don’t write using our index fingers so I hope it can interface with a stylus. If so I would advise users to go that route. I’ll update my review after trying one out.

by Miamirn

Interesting and fun language learning preview. I chose Chinese, but after I master it I would like to learn ASL I’m a visual learner so seeing and writing with guidance, plus hearing the sound of a letter (or word) really helps me to remember what I practice. The lesson was only 5 min, 3 words with really good reinforcement practice sessions. Very kinesthetic. The only missing piece is if I could input my voice and get correction. Other than that I will give 4 starts with 1 reserved for reviewing the price and what features are offered in premium. Thanks to the developers for a really good language learning app!

by Ganahjw

I used the standard drops app to help with French and it was amazing. Nice design, learned a lot, but (like every other language app) verbs aren’t as helpful with Scripts . Still over all the original was great.

The new one I wanted to try something new. Russian. In under a week I know now the Cyrillic alphabet pretty well. The only problem is that I wanted more. Greek was my first choice but it isn’t there yet, and I think Arabic and Thai would be nice additions.

Overall pretty helpful.