Skritter just isn't working for me :(

[josh489]

I've been studying Mandarin for 4 months as a combination of both personal interest, and doing  business with China.  I never enjoyed school, and I'm not a fan of reading, so what really got me into it was completing listening courses such as the Michel Thomas series which I enjoyed immensely.

 

Whilst being able to speak (albeit very basic) Chinese, it is useless without knowing how to read, so there began my path to finding a learning tool for character recognition.  I stumbled across Skritter and took out a subscription, but after 2 months, I have found it just doesn't work for me..

 

Why?  I find that I'm spending too long trying to write characters when I have ZERO interest in writing Chinese.  My goal is to be able to read Chinese websites and newspapers with no need to write.  I know that writing helps in the learning of a character, and I'm happy to do SOME writing, however I felt Skritter was far TOO focused on writing, and it gave me no motivation to continue.  The only time I need to write Chinese is through the computer, and this requires pinyin, not handwriting.

 

I'm hoping you may be able to recommend some resources or applications that may help me on my quest to learning the fundamental Chinese characters so I can begin to enjoy Chinese websites and publications?

 

Thank you.

Josh

[roddy]

Look at either Pleco (with the flashcard module) or Anki - plenty of information on here on both. This guy was in a very similar situation. 

[josh489]

Thank you.  I actually purchased the Pleco Flashcard Add-on a while ago, but perhaps haven't discovered the most efficient way of using it.

 

The issue is from what I've seen, I must look for a word in a dictionary and then add it to the flashcard - The problem is that as a beginner I don't know WHAT to add!  Is there a way to add pre-made lists such as HSK1 etc?

 

Thanks

[roddy]

Yes, there's an import function - spend a bit of time with the manual and playing about with it, it's incredibly powerful* when you know how to use it. On my iPhone if you open the flashcards module, you've got Study, Organise, then Share - hit Import Cards and take it from there. 

 

*also incurs incredible responsibility. 

[josh489]

This import function looks cool! Many thanks for that.  Do you know if it's possible to find HSK1, or even small parts of HSK1 so I can do it whilst simultaneously reading "Remembering the Hanzi" which I've just bought? 

[imron]

The problem is that as a beginner I don't know WHAT to add!  Is there a way to add pre-made lists such as HSK1 etc?

You can add pre-made word lists, but personally I would recommend against this as it will kill context, and also make the learning dry.

 

As for what words to add, what words are you learning?  Where are you learning your new words from?  Add those words.

 

If you don't have any where to learn words from, then my suggestion would be to find a good textbook and work through that.  You might not want to do that, but if you are really serious about learning Chinese well you're going to have to do things you don't want to do, and a good textbook series will give you a good grounding in the basics.

[tysond]

One of Skritters good features is the textbook and other word lists.  

 

So, if you are ok with the pricing, you could just turn off the writing practice in Skritter and use it for flashcarding. 

[tysond]

Oh, you just bought Heisig.  Please note that Heisig is focused on writing.  Production of characters from meaning is the core of the technique.

 

"How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Chinese Characters".

 

When I used it I actually turned off everything in Skritter except writing.

[josh489]

It's interesting you say that Tysond, because in the introduction of Heisig's book, it specifically says that you don't NEED to write the characters, but writing will help reinforce learning.  I completely agree with that, and as I said I am happy to do some writing in order to help reinforce my understanding of characters.  What I don't want however, is a resource that's premise is to learn how to write (i.e. Skritter).  I find the progress too slow + uninteresting.

 

I went through the first few levels of Heisig yesterday (albeit it's very easy to start), and wrote each character down only a couple of times whilst reinforcing the stories in my head, and I can remember all I have learnt so far with minimal writing.

[tysond]

It says you don't need to drill (when I was at high school the only technique we had for memorizing characters was to write them a hundred times).

 

But yes, the writing is fairly minimal.  After a few hundred characters it will introduce the revision technique which is basically SRS.

 

More importantly, I think the progress of component + mnemonics is fairly quick -- especially compared with just flashcarding characters and hoping that they stick.