Hi folks!

Just wanted to ask for your experience... I am now close to hitting the 1000 characters mark, and have basically concentrated on HSK 1-4 lists until now.

I am facing now the situation that I get shitloads of new reviews every day, yesterday maybe around 200 I think, and each day it's getting worse! With an average of <30 minutes skrittering per day, I feel it more and more difficult to add new characters. For example for the rest of this week, i have every day around 80 reviews.

I'm just wondering where there is the critical mass of characters (for a daily study time of half an hour given), at which all the upcoming reviews will require me to add some extra time to study more chars?

Any experience? :)

Hey mate!

I'm experiencing similar issues here as well. Moved to China two weeks ago and haven't really been able to work on Skritter and within the last couple of days managed to reduce 1000 characters to zero. I have HSK 1-3 plus some other lists currently on review and now on average 150 reviews and I haven't added any new characters so far. Now working full-time, I must also say that I have difficulties adding new characters at the moment but I think we just have to push through it!

Well as far as keeping reviews under control there are really only two options.

1.) Space out the words you want to add over a longer period of time.

or

2.) Study more each day to compensate for the increased reviews.

I can tell you from experience that once you get around the 1000-1500 character/word mark that less than 30 minutes a day is really just maintenance mode. If I do 30 minutes a day for a week straight, then at the end of the week my reviews might be spaced out well enough I can add some new items. Back when I was really ramping up my characters I was doing 45-60 minutes a day. I felt that amount of time is enough to add new things and keep the old ones in balance.

Skritter starts out as a friend - joyfully helping you to almost effortlessly learn scores of characters. But then, when you feel that your relationship has grown to a healthy level, Skritter suddenly starts demanding more and more of your precious time. The problem is the new characters you are adding. If you want to keep the reviews under control, add fewer characters and spend more time reviewing.

There have been times were I have gone up to two weeks without adding a new word just to get the words I am currently reviewing under control. By "under control" I don't mean finishing all of my reviews, but rather just learning all of the words I am currently studying a little better so that they don't come up as often.

It's just something we have to accept. At the beginning we don't know any characters so all characters we learn are new. But afterwards we the amount of reviews increases, especially because every character has to be reviewed with all four ways (tone, writing, etc.)
Skritter knows what's more important for you. When you have that many reviews and no new characters, of course it's sad not to see the nice curve of new characters anymore. But it's a vital part of not forgetting.
The more you review, the farther you push old characters into the future and make new space for new characters, provided that your reviews are correct.

I'm at 800 and made a longer break, so I also had about 2000 reviews. I stopped to add new characters and for about 10 days I was only reviewing in order to push these old character away, until the reviews were only less than 50 a day. Then I felt "free" to add new characters and had the satisfiying feeling back that I had at the beginning of Skritter. And I can now say with more confidence that I really know those 800 characters. It's just a suggestion that worked really well for me. Just don't add any new characters for about 10 days and make a lot of space for new characters while consolidating the old characters.

presently I have 1000 or more reviews every day cause I am a slow learnter.

I spend 2 hours every day on skritter.

for a regular chinese study course this proves to be fatal.
I realized that I cant add new characters as much as I want or I end up in the 3000 plus reviews.

So I have been buggering on on skritter hoping to be one day able to add more...

I understand very much where you're coming from. Half an hour a day may not be enough to reach your goals.

What helps me immensely is to restrict myself to practicing writing only. While doing the writing, I'd pronounce the characters out loud to make the pronunciation stick in. The English meaning of a word is generally not a big problem for me. Studying two times 20 minutes a day may work churn out a better retention for you than 40 minutes once a day.

I also do a lot of handwriting in the air, on paper, or on my knee. That way I can more easily memorize the characters.

Lastly, consider using a flashcard program to create auto-playback slideshows of all characters currently under study. The one I favor the most is Flashcards Deluxe because it's utterly flexible. The developer studies Chinese himself and hence makes sure his app has every possible feature a Chinese learner could wish for. I create slideshows with TTS Chinese and English voices and with tone-colorized pinyin. I have been using the Skritter iPhone app and this one concurrently for about a year now.

I hope these tips are helpful.

I was under the impression that if you reduce your retention rate this should reduce your review load. But you won't learn the characters as well. I have mine on 97% and also struggle a bit with reviews now that I am working a lot. I could handle it at university, but now it's much harder. If I have a day where I don't skritter much it is hard to catch up again.

Lowering the retention rate should reduce your review load after a while.

Thank you all for sharing your opinion! Feels good to know I am not alone ;-)
Concerning the retention rate, I already put it to the minimum of 87%, which I honestly don't reach...
Right now I got
Character Writings 81.5%
Character Definitions 85.2%
Word Writings 69.1%

Would you agree that if I do NOT reach the 87% it's a clear indicator I should not add more characters for the time being? I already disabled the auto-add anyway, but some days when I manage to bring my reviews down to 0, I cannot resist and add 8 or 10 new ones.

Beside this, I start to think that based on your feedback, I just have to free some more time for Skritter... in the beginning it sounded great to spend the 20-something minutes per day during your subway ride skrittering, but maybe some extra effort is required.

Wonder how things will be if I get to 2000 chars one day!

It also depends very much what else you are doing and from where the characters / words are coming. If you just learn from a HSK list, it is more or less without context, then it will be quite hard to memorize it and you very often might have to press the No button on Skritter.
I think, reading helps a lot. There you see the words in context and can see, how they are used. Furthermore, reading let's you review words much faster compared to Skritter (however, no logic behind what to review, I know). I often select reading material, which is below my actual language level, just to read as much and as fast as I can.
Then, you'll remember better and might bring your numbers down as well as getting you faster on the reviews.
So, I think, you have to plan your total time and decide how much to spend on Skritter, reading, listening, etc., because Skritter is only a support tool.
And don't forget, the number of characters, which you've learnt, is only a prerequisite, what counts is the number of words. Otherwise, you are also learning characters in isolation and not in context and in use, which is the hardest thing to do. I think, a good ratio would be, if the number of words would be twice the number of characters.

I wouldn't worry about those figures they are about the same as mine. I don't believe many people can achieve high retention rates. But I guess if your already on the lowest the only thing you can do is put more time in.

in my opinion the most important thing is to skritter REGULARLY and if possible more than 30 minutes a day.

I also have been through all the phases of skritter and I agreen what has been said here: skritter starts out as friend but the more you add the more demanding the system gets.

and dont make the mistake to try to get daily reviews to zero. :)

I am still doing my two hour skrittering (have been doing this over the last 10 month) but there have been times when I have been seriously frustrated because I simple have not been able to add the new characters that were needed in the tests at university.

good luck and take your time :)

zhangyanglu, the rentention rates work in a different way (as least as I understand them).

The retention rate that you set for yourself refers to how many words you would get right if I tested you on all your words.

The retention rate in your 'progress' section refers to how many words you have got right when prompted for them on skritter.

The difference is that skritter only tests you when it's hard for you to remember the word. There are words you know now which you will have forgotten by the time skritter asks you about them.

So how many words you're actually retaining NOW is different from how many words you're retaining the next time skritter tests you.

To keep reviews down, I only keep the reading test on (to test pinyin/tone, and definition), and writing. I also retention percentage to 90%, which is supposed to be more efficient.

I also limit to myself to 10 new words/characters in a given day if I have cleared my reviews.

Also, make sure that you study a character (ie. build a mnemonic, break it down into components, mental picture, etc) once you get it wrong. Trying to "brute-force" by hoping you'll remember it the next time you see it is a sure way to build up a huge amount of characters (if you're always getting them wrong).

@懒虫: I am not sure I get what you mean... the retention rate set in the options, is the target rate, so let's say, if I set it to 90%, chances are higher that skritter will bother me with MORE reviews, in order to obtain a higher retention rate.

The one which is shown in the progress bar is the ACTUAL retention right, the one I currently have, based on the current (or sum of all/last) reviews I have done...

Is this what you meant? Maybe we are talking the same, and I just didn't get it ^-^

@Lechuan: I am mostly trying to hack them in, instead of inventing me mnemonics for each of the new ones. Maybe that's the reason why the retention rate's so low? In any case, I am thinking about changing my addings as well, that is, adding probably one word a day (or three), even if I don't complete the reviews.

I figure it might be more helpful than waiting for finishing my reviews and then only add 10 or 20 in a row, on one single day.

If your aim is to learn as much as you can in 30 minutes a day, adjust your addings as appropriate. If your aim is to learn X words a month or whatever, add them daily come what may, and increase your skritter time to make sure you get through your reviews / clear down at weekends or whatever - then the drowning feeling will mean are in danger of not reaching your goals so need to adjust your time spent or goals. Good luck!

I mean something different, zhangyanglu.

Imagine you knew four characters yesterday: 石, 口, 水 and 火, and remembered them all. If you did skritter yesterday, you would have got 100%. But you didn't study yesterday. You studied today and can only remember three of them. (You forgot one overnight.) So skritter considers your retention rate to be 75%. It doesn't know that you knew everything yesterday.

If you took the test on both days - getting 4/4 yesterday and 3/4 today - then your retention rate would be 87.5%.

If you compare the 75% and 87.5% calculations, you'll see that the number of words you knew on each day hasn't changed. The timing/number of the tests just changed.

But because you DON'T study every word every day, you will always know more at the moment than skritter thinks you know. Unfortunately you will forget some things by the time skritter gets round to testing you.

I try to skritter on my way to and from work, 5 days a week, each day around 30-60 minutes. I do not have any problem with reviews. The "trick" is just to do it every day and not fall behind. At weekends I do not skritter at all, so on Monday I have (depending on how much news words I added and how well I did in the week) between 40 and 130 reviews, easily done on one day.

ps: There was a week where I didnt have any time to Skritter - leading me up to over 300 reviews. A pain in the butt. Thats why I force myself not to fall behind. Even on "bad" days, where I dont feel like doing reviews or learning new words I skritter: just a little bit of skrittering here, a few minutes there and done.

my stats so far: I have learned around 450 Kanji.

@dc1
I think it is dependent on the user. I will have at least 300 reviews if I don't skritter for one day. I try to do an hour a day at least, but at the moment I work some days 9am-10pm and can't skritter these days. Therefore the other days I have to do 2-3 hours to make up. This may be due to previously having time for 2 hours skrittering every day and skritter hasn't adapted. I have barely been able to add any new characters in the last 3 months.

夏普本, 97% is going to be a very inefficient way to go in terms of number of reviews vs. new characters. For some people, the pain of missing reviews or occasionally forgotten characters is so great that they want 97%, but anyone who can psychologically bear a lower retention rate will learn much faster overall with fewer reviews. (This setting takes weeks or months to fully take effect.)

懒虫, the retention rate isn't the ratio of correct answers to prompts--we do the math to approximate how much you know at any given time based on how old the prompts you did miss were. For more information, see this article: http://supermemo.com/help/fi.htm

I have several thousand items and here are some suggestions on how I manage the review overload and continue to add new items.

1) Study only writing and definitions. When doing definitions I grade myself based on the worst of the reading, tone, and definition. a 3 for 1 deal.
2) When adding new words I only study the writing. It is only later when I finish the list do I add the definition to study. Writing forces you to really learn the word. But it creates a perverse situation where I can write the word but can't read it. Studying the definition after I learn to write it is a lot easier and goes faster.
3) Try hard to keep up with the skrittering everyday and get the items due to zero. Once you fall behind it takes a lot more time to catch up. When I do fall behind I do a marathon session to catch up.
4) Once caught up I force skritter to add 70 to 100 items all at one time and then spend the rest of the week letting skritter naturally add more items (which will be very few). By doing this skritter mixes the 70 new items with the review words during the week so I'm guaranteed to learn something new. Psychologically for me I feel I'm making progress every week doing this rather than letting skritter add through out the week. This also motivates me to make sure I keep up during the week so I get the "reward" of adding the next 70 to 100 words. If I cannot catch up then I do not force any new items to be added.
5) When I am really behind I skritter on my laptop instead of on the iPad. Ergonomically it goes a lot faster. Left hand on 1,2,3,4,S. Right hand I use a real pen and paper for writing, or I air write with my index finger. I grade myself on the writing. This works great during boring meetings at work (as long as the sound is off).

Hope this get you skrittering a bit more efficiently.

Hi folks!
Ok, 懒虫 , now I get what you mean. Let's summarize that the retention rate Skritter shows you, is not exactly your real one, but from what I understand also what Nick says, rather an approximation, using some mathematics. Which is fine, at least it's something constant, so even if it's not 100% accurate, by comparing over time you'll still see the progress.

I guess I'll just stick to my target retention rate of 87% and try to improve the actual rate (which is depending on the study mode, between 69% and 85%). I've only left 100 chars to go, from HSK 4 list, so once I finish, I'll probably stop adding new words for some time, until my actual retention rate is at least 85% for everyting.

@goobybear: Now that's interesting to see, how you developed your own "system in a system" ;-) Actually as for the tones, I still didn't touch them; I only do writing and definitions. But I guess the tones will be one of the next fields I have to start with. Just I guess I will activate the tone study mode because I just suppose it's easier to handle (beside also having the statistics I want).
When you do your "3 for 1 deal", is it because you find it faster/easier? Actually I like the mixture of different modes because it get's less monotone.

@zhangyanglu
I use the 3 for 1 because it is more efficient. It is also because they are one and the same thing. If you think about it, when you see a Chinese character and want to say it out loud there is no benefit if you say the right pin-yin but with the wrong tone. Holistically the pin-yin and tone is one item. So if you get the pin-yin right and tone wrong then it is wrong period. Since you are seeing the character and reading it, it is an incremental step to think what it means - much faster than pressing a button to cycle through an item. I find that you have to holistically connect the definition to the pronunciation otherwise how can you talk and listen to people. Practicing Skritter connects pronunciation and definition to a visual cue (either displaying a character or writing the character), but its weakness is that it does not do any testing between definition and sound. So by doing a 3 for 1 I can associate the sound with the definition for free while I learn to read the character.

BTW - Generating the separate statistics for reading, tone, and definition is not interesting to me. Learning as many words in least amount of time is. I either know the word or I don't.