Your Skritter Routine

[mackie1402]

I've been using Skritter since summer.

Have to say it's definitely helped me review vocab from my old books.

With a lot of new vocab every day I'm still struggling to keep on top of it.

My question is: how do you use skritter to study?

Do you just get down to 0 reviews then stop?

0 reviews then continue to just review without adding new cards?

0 reviews then add new cards?

[Michael H]

I review for a few minutes each day during time that would otherwise be wasted, and let it add words automatically. If you want to only review words from a specific book you can use the "Study List" feature.

[lechuan]

• I use Skritter for to practice reading/writing out-of-context single characters. My goal is to reach zero reviews each day, but I let Skritter sit for about a year, so I'm playing catch up now. I still add new characters, even when I haven't reached zero, when I have time to study new characters.
• I use Pleco flashcards to practice reading out-of-context words. When I encounter a new character in new vocab, I add the character (not the word) to Skritter.
• I do exercises in textbooks to practice writing.
• I read graded readers and textbooks to practice reading.

Skritter is an excellent part of a balanced Chinese learning diet, but like any method, you don't want it to take up so much time that you don't have time to work on other aspects of the language.

[mackie1402]

Yeah I completely agree.

 

I studied some Jiaocheng books at Uni this year which I have just reviewing in Skritter. Now I am reviewing NPCR lessons, trying to add one lesson a day. Most of the words are reviews but some new words too. Then every so often I throw in a lesson from Boya to mix it up!

 

Just to make my question a bit clearer, I don't mean to ask "what is your routine for studying and when do you use skritter?"

 

I mean to ask, at what stage when you use skritter are you satisfied with finishing for that day.

 

For example, if you had a word queue of about 300-500, would you just try to get it down to 0 then stop for the day, then repeat the process the next day? Or once you get it down to 0 would you continue to do a lot more reviews (obviously with the queue still staying at 0 the whole time) and then continue this process the next day and so on.

 

As I am reviewing a lot of books for Uni, plus adding one new lesson from NPCR a day, sometimes Boya too, I have quite a big queue every day. I normally just aim to get it to 0 before I sleep then do the same the next day. I'm wondering however if I should try to get it to 0 then continue to review for an extra half hour or so.

[lechuan]

Well, the whole reason for SRS is for efficient study, only showing you the character (hopefully) soon enough so that you don't forget it. I think you'd be better off adding new words, or doing some other sort of studying, rather than continuing to review after hitting zero (also reviewing after zero doesn't do much to the scheduling either).

[mackie1402]

Yeah that's what I've been doing recently. Once I hit 0 I would go to a different resource. Don't want to spend too much time skrittering and waste valuable time. It's already a struggle to find time to fit everything in with two jobs on the go!

[Michael H]

I wouldn't worry too much about trying to achieve certain benchmarks with Skritter, and just use it a bit for review, with the emphasis on other kinds of studying (e.g. reading). And again, if you want to review the latest words and can't because you have a backlog on Skritter, you can use the Study list feature.