Sienna and her new Skritter, getting some photos taken

She was excited and smudged the writing a bit, cant wait to spoil her pet

Hey!

Excellent - first of all, I encourage anyone else to ask me things today because I am currently sitting in quarantine with patchy WiFi and very bored so you'll be guaranteed a long answer!

Ah, Skritter: all learners of Chinese and Japanese shake their heads fondly. Skritter is like other flashcard apps in that it has 'decks' that you can start learning from - these can be folk-generated (so other people's lists of vocab) or official, so textbooks, Skritter's own decks and so on. There's no restriction on how many decks you learn from, but you'll quickly find that you shouldn't go above a certain amount per day. Like all flashcard apps, it's built on the principles of spaced repetition to remind you when you are most likely to forget to strengthen memories for ease of access. So if you try learning too much, what you have to review the next day is pretty substantial, quite taxing, and you may have to scale it down. With handwriting, unlike character recognition, I'd emphasise quality over quantity. So if you find that you're only remembering around 80%, you may need to add new words more slowly.

Before you use it, you should also keep in mind a few things. Firstly, that if you're relatively new to writing characters (regardless of your experience reading them), it's going to be a frustratingly slow experience. I find that where I can easily remember 20+ characters a day if I know the pinyin well, there's no way I remember how to WRITE the same number. So don't be surprised if it's slower going than memorising pinyin, and on that note, don't feel bad if you know more pinyin than you can recognise characters, and recognise more characters than you can write. In an ideal world, you'd be able to do everything, but that's just the reality of learning hanzi - different parts take different amounts of effort. So you may find yourself using Skritter just for writing characters and another app for recognising them. Next, bear in mind that you don't NEED to be able to handwrite that many characters at all for basic daily communication unless you're going to a Chinese speaking university or, idk, want to be able to write sexy coffeeshop napkin diaries or something. So while it's a good idea for everyone to get the first 300 or so handwritten, don't worry if you tail off after this. I personally don't use Skritter any more just because I don't need to handwrite, and the limited time I have for studying Chinese I spend on character recognition. This will change next year, when I have to start learning to handwrite again! But I would recommend everybody to learn to handwrite at least the basics, because it means that you can copy characters or draw them into Pleco much easier, as well as laying a good foundation for if you do decide to take up handwriting later down the line.

So with all this in mind, where should you start?

Somewhat boringly, it depends where exactly in your studies you are. For beginners, I would recommend starting not with HSK1 words, but with their 100 radicals deck. If you're a false beginner, too, these radicals help massively making mnemonics for characters and, later, understanding how phonetic and semantic components come together. It also means you're not just memorising arbitrary lines, and teaches you stroke order. If you get the stroke order wrong, Skritter doesn't accept it - this is great training.

In every Skritter deck, you have the option of testing for various things. These include tone, pronunciation, and of course the handwriting. Personally I only usually test for handwriting, since I know the words in pinyin very well, I just don't know how to write them. But for many people this is a very important feature, especially if they're just starting and tones are new. For heritage speakers or anyone else who already knows the pinyin, I'd recommend turning off everything apart from the writing - that way you can focus on what you really need.

After you've finished the 100 radicals course, you can start on Skritter's basic chinese course. If the 100 radicals course is really boring, you can do these two alongside each other. Whenever you learn a new word, I'd encourage you to use Skritter's information bar to add a mnemonic, a note, and look up information about the components of the character. This creates more meaningful engagement and hopefully better memories!

After the basics course, you have a few options. There's nothing wrong with just ploughing through HSK1, 2 and 3, and for the most part I'd recommend that. At the same time, though, you can - and should - create your own courses. This is a really cool feature and Skritter automatically adds example sentences to whatever words you have. You can make as many sets as you like, but I'd prefer to keep them with relatively small chapters (the sets have 'chapters' which are groups of words that can be tested together) so that it's easier to test.

I'd say having two or three sets on the go at any one time is more than enough. Some further tips: when you're finished for the day, try to write what you've done on pen and paper. Skritter is great, but if your goal is actual handwriting it's a very different experience. Once you've done HSK1, have a go at just writing short things in Chinese - this can be anything. But it keeps the characters at the front of your mind. If you don't use them, you lose them. If you don't know a word, don't be precious about it - just write it in pinyin and move on. This isn't meant to be pretty or instagram-able, this is your ROUGH PRACTICE. If you struggle to look up the character for every word you don't know, you'll be here a long time and it'll actually hinder your progress. For any important words you can add them to your own personal set. Be CAREFUL with this though - don't add a ridiculous number of words that aren't imminently necessary to be able to handwrite, like 'sneeze' or 'windowpane'. These you can add to your 'characters to recognise' deck on Anki, Memrise or Quizlet - trying to handwrite them if you're still in the early stages will just be frustrating.

If you're a heritage speaker or have in any way a bigger vocabulary than you can write, I'd encourage you to have a seperate Anki or Quizlet or Memrise deck to help you improve your character recognition as well as new spoken vocabulary. That way you won't feel like you're stagnating whilst you're grappling with the basics of characters.

Another trick: when you're testing or reviewing your vocab on Skritter daily (which you NEED to do, otherwise it builds up and up and up...), write it first on pen and paper and THEN on the screen. Why? Because Skritter has a few features (that you can turn off) that 'jump' the stroke into the correct place for you, making your characters look pretty AND giving you hints. This IS good, because it exposes you again and again to what a correct, well-formed character is, so don't think it's cheating. But be aware of how well you can write characters yourself versus what the app suggests you can do - correct stroke order does not good handwriting make!! (etc)

If you're feeling bold, you can turn this off in settings. It's more difficult, but very rewarding. Because of the benefits mentioned above, however, I usually keep it on - but that's just personal preference.

Alright! I think that's about it. Wishing you the best of luck! (and feeling that maybe I should buy a subscription again...!)

While I was learning Japanese, one resource that I relied on A LOT was an app called Skritter. I don’t think I could have passed JLPT N2 and N1 without it. It’s a spaced-repetition flashcard system (like Anki, or so I’ve heard) that allows you to study both pre-made and user-made lists. My favorite things about this app are that

-You can practice writing kanji! It makes great use of touch-screen capabilities. -There’s a desktop version too, so you can use your laptop touchpad or a computer mouse to practice writing.  -Syncs automatically between mobile and desktop  -Also includes flashcards to study reading and meaning of vocabulary words -Supports self-rating how well you know a card, and allows you to go back to a previous card and change your rating -Supports Chinese as well. Learn those characters!! And my most favorite thing, they offer a free trial! AND, if you sign up through my subscription link, we both get two weeks of extra time for free! Think of how many vocab words and characters you could learn in that amount of time.  (link for extra free time below)

~~~  https://www.skritter.com/refer/origami10  ~~~ -Even after your subscription expires, you get to review what you’ve already learned, for free, forever.