Hey guys,

I took a long hiatus from Skrittering and am now staring down the barrel of a brutally long list of reviews. However, I want to start Skrittering again lest I lose all the progress that I made. What is the best way to approach this? Should I even bother working through them, or should I begin anew? Anyone with any experience with this sort of thing?

Thanks,
James

Depends on how much you remember from what you studied before I would say. If it is a large part I would just try to go through (maybe give it a week so see if you can knock the review list down a couple hundred or not).

If that does not look very promising starting is the option that gives you more reviews of the same words, which should help to make remembering easier.

There have been many postings like this on the forum so you might want to have a look what others have been writing before.

I had to struggle with long review lists more than once. The only way to avoid them in the long run unfortunately is to practice very regularly.

Good luck and happy skrittering!

I actually was in the same boat this week. I had about 4000 reviews do.

I decided to start easy, which for me means just reviewing tones. At about 15 minutes a day for the past four days, I've got that number down to about 2400.

I'll probably do definitions next, and save writings for last.

Writings take a long time compared to tones and definitions, and tend to be forgotten more easily, so I find after a long break if I try to just power through I can get discouraged when the number doesn't go down very quickly. By starting with tones, which just require a single button push, I can get the number of reviews down to a smaller and (mentally) more manageable number.

Also, reviewing seems to go faster when just focusing on a single type of information (tone, pinyin, writing, what have you) rather than all mixed up. Of course, during regular practice it's better to do it that way, but after a long break I find it good to focus on one thing at a time.

That's just my technique, though.

I had a month holiday and last week came back to 2000 reviews. I think it's best to just power through and you'll be surprised how quickly everything comes back... after a depressing few days of skritter telling you just how much you forgot.

I would go through the list and not start again. It will happen again in the future that you have no time to practice and your reviews build up. If you worked through the backlog once you mentally know you can do it again. I am currently in the same boat, going through a 4000+ list due to my holiday break. I cannot believe how much i have forgotten!

I am currently working off 4000+ reviews. I took a 5 week vacation. I worked it down to about 1200+ over a week, but now it's creeping up again because I'm traveling again.

It helps that I go through reviews very fast. I write on paper with my right hand; I use the keyboard with my left hand to click through. Most of the time I'm just hitting space-bar, which is the key-short cut for "correct." Sometime's I'm typing "s" to show; "v" to mark where I've gotten a review wrong. Left hand on the keyboard, right hand writing on paper can make your review go so so fast.

However, when I get to a word that I've forgotten, I diligently have been writing a "hint" for each one. This slows me down a bit, but I'm remembering the words now that I had forgotten; things are starting to "stick" a lot more.

Thanks, these responses have been helpful and encouraging! Looking forward to getting back into it.

mine is up to 5070 reviews, kinds scares the crap out of me, but hopefully will get it down over the coming weeks. Summer holidays are a bad idea :-)

I was up over 6000 and I decided to just click the "save me" button and spread the reviews out over the next few weeks.

I'm in a similar boat with my Chinese after my trip to Japan. I think the best way to think about it is to chip away at it day after day - don't worry too much about how long it takes to get to 0, just try to make it so every day you have fewer reviews. For my part, I'm going to try to get caught up in 10 days!