is very useful in helping you learn to write
Chinese, because it uses the same convention as writing Chinese. The only
difference is you choose strokes with a mouse instead of paper and pen.
JKL gives you several advantages over paper and pen:
- Handholding
When you write in Chinese, you’ll frequently be stuck trying to remember
how to write some character. Without JKL, it means looking up a book or
dictionary to find out how to write it.
With JKL, it’s as if you have a teacher sitting right next to you to give
you hints as you write.
For example, you may not remember exactly how to write the character “岸”, but
as soon as you select its first component ,
“岸”already
appears in the candidate list. So you can glance at it to remind yourself
how to write it.
As you continue to specify the next components of this character, you can
see that it stays in the candidate list as long as you continue to “write”
its components correctly. The minute you select the wrong component, it
will disappear from the candidate list, because it no longer fits the
components you specified. So you can immediately backspace out of the
incorrect stroke and re-select the right stroke. This is like having a
teacher next to you to correct you immediately if you make a mistake.
- Difficult
Characters
When you forgot how to write a character, JKL can help you quickly find it
by using the “skip” button .
Suppose you try to write the character“港”. You know it starts with“氵”, ends with “乚”, but in between you
forgot how it goes. You can click ,,, which means select all
characters that begin with“氵”,
skip over everything else, and end with “乚”. You’ll immediately
see“港”appear
in the candidate list.
- Wrong
Writing
Students learning Chinese will always have some characters which they
are writing incorrectly; may be missing a stroke, or substituted a stroke
with an incorrect one. Using pen and paper, this type of mistake can go
unnoticed forever.
With JKL, mistakes like these will be caught immediately!
Because JKL follows the rules of Chinese writing, when you write a
character with the wrong strokes, you will not see it in the candidate
list. So you’ll know right away there’s something wrong with the way you
are writing the character.
The skip button can help you locate your error. Suppose
you have been mistakenly writing one less stroke in the character “修”. This
will cause you to fail to get this character in JKL. Now click ,
,
,
which means select all characters that start with “亻”, skip everything in
between, and end with “丿”.
You’ll see “修”
in the candidate list. Now you look at the character carefully to see
where your strokes went wrong.
Traditional/Simplified
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