Hi, I'm just starting and confused about some basic things that I don't find in the FAQ.

Can someone give me specific definitions for these terms? I have only 75 words added but 681 reviews. I don't get it.
Added
Learned
Reviews
Retention

And when I am studying I don't understand the bar at the upper right corner for Added versus Reviews. I don't know how to read that bar or understand what it is saying.

Thanks!

Also waht does "Items Due Now" mean?

I keep thinking of more questions. What does the retention rate mean to me?

If the average retention is 95% but mine is only 82%, does that mean I am not picking it up as fast as everyone else or my memory is not as good?

Should I work to making my retention rate go up? Will spending more time studying make my retention rate go up?

Hi, I can't answer all your questions, but I think I can help a bit...

You have 75 words but 681 reviews. There are two likely reasons for the difference.
1. When you add a single word, you are asking Skritter to test you on Tone, Writing, Reading and Definition, so for each word you get Four kinds of question about it. (You can turn some of these off if you want to).
2. When you start learning a new word, Skritter will guess that you will need to practice it many times, so Skritter will schedule repeat questions for the same word.

So, you might have something like 4 x 75 = 300 possible questions, each ready to come up twice, (= 600) and whenever you get one wrong Skritter will schedule more practice, so perhaps you got 20 wrong and Skritter is giving you 4 extra lots of practice for each. Maybe.

"Added" is about how many new words Skritter has got ready for you to practice
"Review" is about how many questions Skritter has got ready for you to do on words that you have already attempted at least once.

Mostly you want to ignore "Added" to begin with, and let Skritter work it out. Later you might want to control the rate at which Skritter adds new words yourself, which you do by setting your lists to "manually" instead of "automatically".

"Reviews" just shows you how much work Skritter is expecting you to do: the most efficient way to use Skritter is to aim to reduce your reviews count to zero each day. So, Skritter thinks you should do 681 questions today. If that is too much for you, you can either ignore it, and Skritter will eventually realise that you are not keeping up and back off a bit, or you can delete some of your words. (You can always add them again later).

Skritter thinks you have "Learned" a word when you get it right several times, including right first time in a day (obviously you are much more likely to get it right if you saw it just 10 minutes ago). I don't know how many times you have to get it wrong before Skritter notices and takes it off your "Learned" list - it does happen.

"Retention" is about how sure you want to be that you have really learned something thoroughly. If you aim for 99%, Skritter will give you lots and lots of reviews, so you will get bored of them before they count as Learned. If you go for 80% you will get through things quicker, but about a fifth of them will not stick long term. I think 95% is the recommended value.

So far as I can tell, "Items due now" is the same thing as ["Reviews" + "Added"].

You tell Skritter what you want to study using a List. Skritter then gradually adds things from your list to your Reviews. There is also a set of words called "My Words", which is all the things you have had at least once.

Hope this helps.
Rachael.

Don't worry about not getting to a 95% retention rate right away. Everyone learns differently, and I would just view it as a goal not a normative standard.

Hello again, just seen your further questions.

Simply studying for longer will not improve your retention rate. If you are bothered by it, you need to spend longer on each task, and I reckon the best way to do that is by inventing mnemonics for yourself (or learning someone else's if it works for you.)

It's a trade-off though. Obviously, if you spent 30 minutes on every new word the first time Skritter brought it up, you would be pretty likely to remember them forever, never get any wrong, and score 100% retention rate. The point of Skritter is to not have to spend 30 minutes on every character.

Rachael.

Also a 85% retention rate is still much higher than the average Chinese student (I think Nick said it was at about 40%).

I agree with joshwhitson13 that you shouldn't sweat about it to much, but you can also use it to help determine how to study.

If your retention rate decreases continuously over time you might be adding to many words too quickly and should think about that.

But the retention rate is not the ultimate gauge to see how you're doing at Chinese.

Thank you for taking the time to clarify things for me.

I am still a little hazy about words that are Added. How is an Added word different than a word that is in my vocab list? Are Learned words included in the Added words? Or once they are Learned are they subtracted from the Added list?

I'm am not sure what the progress bar is telling me when I am studying. If the review words get down to zero does that mean I've reviewed all the words that Skritter thinks I should review in this session? Is that a good stopping point? Or am i sjupposed to keep going so more new words can get added?

I can answer one thing, have no more time, first words from your vocab lists are added words, then they become review words. Try reading Help carefully once more, some of your questions are explained in Help though it's a lot of info to read and remember, I know :-) time will make everything clear though

suling, you're still talking about the reviews/added bar (the blue/green one) right?

In Skritter there are two main blocks of stuff. The first is what you see on the 'my words' page. This is stuff you've seen before, that you've studied before (there is one small exception, but that's not important). If Skritter thinks it's time to study any of these words, then that's the number on the front page of Skritter, and also one of the numbers that appears on the bar at the top when practising. The one in blue.

So yes, if the reviews get down to zero, that's a good place to stop. It wont matter if you go over, but 0, or close to 0 is my target anyway. Or stop when you start seeing lots of words that are 99% due.

The other main block of stuff is things you haven't added yet. That is, words in vocab lists, or words in the queue (the queue allows you to easily put words into Skritter without making a list). As you practice, Skritter will add words from the queue and vocab lists. This is what appears on the green side of the bar. The progress page only cover words that have been added, they don't include words in lists you haven't studied yet or words sitting in the queue.