As promised, a new version is now live in the Android Market. This release brings a major new feature: kanji writing quizzes. Now you can not only use the app as a dictionary or input helper, but also test your writing skills.

To start the quiz, press the menu key, then select 'Kanji quiz'. You will be presented with the quiz configuration screen, where you can select the number of kanji in the quiz, the school grade or JLPT level to select kanji from, or even create a quiz from the kanji you marked as favorites. The free version offers quizzes based on elementary school grades 1 and 2 kanji, as well as JLPT level N5 kanji. To get access to all levels, upgrade to the premium version. The difficulty option, changes how your answers are graded: if you select 'Hard', only first recognition candidate is considered ; 'Medium' looks at the first 3 candidates; 'Easy' is the most forgiving and considers a match within the first 5 candidates as correct. If you check 'Show meaning' (the default), English meaning as well as reading (onyomi and kunyomi) will be displayed as the hint, if you uncheck it, only the reading will be presented. Here's how the configuration screen looks like:


After you select the quiz options and press 'OK', you are presented with the familiar writing screen,  with the quiz progress and score displayed at the top, and the kanji hint below. Once you are sure you've written the correct kanji, press 'Recognzie' to check your answer, or press 'Pass' to advance the quiz if you don't know the kanji. You can clear the canvas or undo the last stroke at any time.

After you've gone thorough all questions, you can check your score and the answers on the results screen. Correct answers are marked with a green tick icon, incorrect ones with a red cross.


Checking out the answers is good, but it doesn't really help you see what your errors were and help you improve your writing. That's where my favorite feature comes in: animated stroke order diagrams. Press each kanji to display the details view, with your writing in the top half, and the correct diagram at the bottom. Each has a 'Play' button, so you can re-play what you wrote and compare the stroke order with the proper one. If your answer is correct, it's drawn with green strokes, otherwise with red ones. Here's a sample of how all this looks like:


It's a first release, so I already have a few ideas on how to improve it, but I always appreciate user feedback. So try it out and add your suggestions as comments here or email me (you can find the address in the Android Market entry of the app). And don't forget to rate if you like it!

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