I've been learning Chinese through ChinesePod, which is great, but wanted to really focus on characters for awhile so have just signed up for Skritter. I wondered if there was a recommended time that I should spend studying each day? What do other people do?

I couldn't find anything on the FAQs to answer this, and I tried to look at the forum but it's quite hard to find things, so do forgive me if this has been mentioned before.

i try for an hour a day. usually 30 minutes clearing my list, 30 min new characters.

although theory is always amazing.

Thank you - that's useful as a ballpark. I'm aware that I don't want to lose sight of speaking and listening though, so want to carry on with ChinesePod and Skritter, so maybe 1/2 hour on each would be good (with the best of intentions, as you say!)

My daily goal is 40 minutes. This is usually divided into three sessions - a short one when I arrive at work in the morning and two longer ones at lunch and in the evening. That's 40 minutes of Skritter time as counted by the clock above the drawing area. In real time it's more, because the Skritter clocks stops after 30 seconds for every review, so the extra time you spend writing mnemonics, looking up words, etc. doesn't count.

I made the mistake of focusing exclusively on writing for a long time and at one point could write and say "hot-air balloon" but didn't know how to ask where the bathroom was. If your goals include conversational fluency make sure not to neglect it in your daily routine.

James

I add ten new *words* each morning, and aim to clear my queue once in the morning and once in the evening (12 hours apart). Once I hit zero I stop and forget about it for 12 hours. Typically I Skritter for about 30 minutes total per day, although every once in awhile a big cluster will come up that push that to as much as 60 minutes (rarely more).

I also use ChinesePod, typically about 15 minutes a day for a new lesson and another 15 minutes reviewing recent lessons (dialogues), on all the weekdays, so normally about an hour total on Chinese per day. Not studying ChinesePod lessons on the weekend allows my Skritter adding to catch up with my ChinesePod vocab if there was a particularly dense lesson that week (or otherwise helps clear the queue).

I do two 30 minute (by the skritter clock) sessions per day. In addition to this I do a good deal of speaking and listening with my Chinese roommates.

As much as possible. I only know 385 characters right now and would like to know 500 to 600 before I start to read Chinese graded readers (which come with audio CDs, making them probably more efficient in terms of increasing reading and listening comprehension than podcasts). I reviewed for 2 hours (Skritter time) yesterday and learned only 3 new characters. The number of repetitions of the same characters seemed ridiculously high (often it seems as if you are only doing reviews with the default settings), so I lowered the retention rate to the minimum 87% and set the addition of new words to fast in the Study Settings and learned 3 new characters in less than 15 Skritter minutes today.
Icebear's strategy seems like a good one; he is always guaranteed to learn 10 new words each day. My objective is to learn one New Practical Chinese Reader lesson per week (40-50 new words) and do the Chinese Breeze series of graded readers on the side, so I will tweak the study settings until this becomes a manageable goal.

I've been trying to stick to 10 minutes a day, but have been overshooting lately. Now I've somehow gotten the idea in my head that it would be great to learn 3000 new words in 3 months at 30 minutes a day. I ran the numbers and that's one every 54 seconds. Now, 54 seconds per new item happens to be the site average, but that's just for one part, and I'm doing four: writing, reading, definitions, and tones. So I'd have to go faster than average.

I think it might be possible--I notice I've been going sick fast with the iOS app, and I haven't added too much recently, so I'm way ahead on reviews. I need to pick a good 3000 new words to learn, though.

I kind of feel like an oddball here. I tend to study in the range of 2-3 hours a day. Today, I've studied for two and a half hours and done 220 words. But then again, I'm a student on summer vacation, so I have piles and piles of free time XD

Recently I've cut down my Skritter time. I've been studying for 10 minutes every other day for the past week. I might increase that a bit just to keep the queue clear. My recognition greatly out shines my ability to produce. Before my goal was 30 minutes, but some days it would be 10 minutes and others 1 hour.

The forum does have a lot of hidden gems that have been lost in the archives of Skritter cyberspace.

To me, there is a difference between learning a word on Skritter and learning a word.

On average a little more than an hour/a day, usually 20-30 minutes every morning doing reviews and then a bit more than half an hour in the afternoon adding words. I'm studying full time and I use Skritter as a complement to my other studies. I don't think SRS is enough in itself for you to really remember a word(let alone to develop skills like listening, grammar, speaking et cetera), but I'd wager most people on here are of that opinion. I find that it's a tremendous help though, and it's a great motivator to feel that you are actually expanding your knowledge instead of just replacing old stuff with new.

Thank you all, it's really useful to hear different views. I'm now on day 2, and still getting used to Skritter itself, but I do like the fact that it sometimes gives me just the tone, or the definition rather than the whole characer, and I do feel it's working with me, rather than against me! At least I hope so - I can see if your list just grows and grows then it may not feel quite so supportive!

Thanks again, and good luck with your own studies!

Just set realistic goals, and be aware that every character you study in Skritter will have to be reviewed in the future. I.e don't add 50 words a day for to weeks only to be drowned in reviews. Ten words per day sounds reasonable, but might be to much in the beginning as pretty much every character will be new to you. Start slow, build the Skritter habit, and then expand :)

I learn Japanese as a hobby, not for any sort of class or with anybody else. I also go to school and work, as well as taking care of a garden, so my Skrittering is...sporadic, I guess you could say. I try to hop on and at least clear my reviews every day or two, and once or twice a week add another 20 kanji or so and maybe some associated words. It's a very laid back way to do it, but occasionally I'll have spare time and Skritter for an hour or two!

I have been studying in conjunction with my Penultimate app and practicing the characters as many times as it takes to learn to draw by hand after learning the character on Skritter. Slows down the process but I feel more engaged in the tactile process of drawing with a pen - ahem - stylus, than just with my mouse. This might change when the app comes out but for now the repetition is helpful...

I would recommand reviewing the words before doing skritter. Do some research on the word, find some sentences, try to do your own sentences and be active ! Reading is also very important to learn characters in my opinion.
I think skritter is very good for remembering (after you learned it!) but it can be a bit passive if you only do that.

Just wanted to chime in. I only shoot for about 10 minutes a day and have still managed to make some good progress over the last couple of years! It doesn't have to be a huge time commitment to make a difference, consistency is way more important I think.

jcardenio, it all depends on one's goals. For example, I got married to a Chinese lady and would like to know all of the most commonly used three to four thousand characters and vocabulary that can be made using those characters yesterday. Towards that purpose, I can either build a machine to compress time or study many hours a day. A lot of that time is dedicated to research. According to Skritter, I learned 418 characters in 30 hours in the past 75 days. Considering there have been weeks I spent 40 hours or more doing research, reviews and whatnot, that kind of reporting is laughable.
But you are right: consistency is key.

范博涵 hmmm... interesting. I take the point, but of course, Skritter can only report on what it knows about, and has no idea how much time you're spending away from the screen doing other stuff. I've found the reporting useful (and encouraging!) this week - I like seeing the line move up! But I don't want to get hung up on it, I'm seeing it as an indicator, that's all, and I'm sorry it's not working that way for you.

@ChineseCatherine Agreed about not getting to hung up on the numbers, especially in a short time frame. Skritter should be seen as just one tool in tackling Chinese, and it should be normal to spend at least as much time on other Chinese-study activities as Skrittering each day, such as with native content, a text book, podcasts, etc.

@范博涵 Interesting how you phrase that as very character-centric goal. I would have assumed your goal is to have a good spoken command of the 3000-4000 most common words to facilitate conversation with your wife's family. Not criticizing, just a reminder (to all, myself included) not to lose sight of the forest for the trees!

More generally, I think for most of us studying many hours a day isn't feasible - thus, its more realistic (and less burnout prone) to commit to 30-60 minutes daily which can almost always be accomplished and take a medium/long term view of when to evaluate progress.

@icebear: I did say I want to know all the vocabulary that can be made using those characters. ;) Good conversation skills in Chinese can probably not be obtained without being fully immersed in a Chinese speaking environment for a prolonged period of time. We can attempt to reproduce that environment at home by exposing ourselves to a large amount of Chinese source material, but it is not be the same. To be able to converse, you need vocabulary. I am focussing on building that vocabulary (mainly using Skritter) and will reinforce that with the aforementioned source materials.

I spend roughly about 30 minutes a day on skritter, I don't normally do any study on the weekends so on monday I have alot of reviews due.

I like using skritter to memorise the vocab I need for chinese class, I used to use a pen and paper writing each character 4-5 times, but now I just start a new list on skritter and its much faster.

yay skritter.

Everyday one hour. And also video chat with my Chinese partner from Jollybeijing.com.
She taught me a lot. I believe nothing is better than speak the language!