Hi everyone,

I just finished my week long trial period with Skritter and I definitely plan on continuing. As people say, it's very addictive! However, I'm frustrated by not being able to remember as well as I'd like. I was wondering if someone could give me some tips on how to better remember. For example, do when you first encounter a new character, do you erase and redo it multiple times? Or do you write it down on a piece of paper, along with the meaning?

Maybe I have some sort of block or something, because it's incredible how many times I go through a character without being able to remember it.

Any tips would be much appreciated.


James

When I first learnt lots of characters I assigned the different parts of it to different images. Certain shapes were people, objects, places etc. Then wrote a one sentence story to link them together.

It's easier to remember this than it is random shapes!

You will find that people have different strategies; play around with different techniques and see what works best for you.

One thing I do with particularly difficult new characters is erase the character, wait a few seconds, and try to draw it. I do this until I can do it correctly and then I mark it wrong and go to the next character. When it comes up again I may repeat the process if I get it wrong.

Another thing which I find very useful is to study the common components of the characters. You can find the component breakdown in MDBG or various other dictionaries. Studying the radicals list is one way to learn many common components. I believe Bodum also has a list of "simple characters" somewhere in the custom list section. Then you can remember 雪 (snow) as "rain falls on pig head" or whatever mnemonic occurs to you.

To learn the meanings of characters in context and really reinforce the hell out of them, I like to add lots of multi-character words and phrases. You can use the Skritter wordlist tool to do this, for example:

http://huygens.functor.nl/skritter/wordlist/

James

You're not alone - welcome to the club! :) I don't know if that feeling will ever go away, but I promise it'll get easier as you start seeing connections in words, their meanings, and their radicals (root meanings). The most difficult thing right now is that EVERYTHING is new, so there's not base, nothing to connect your new knowledge to. Once you get a base, you'll be ripping through 简体字. That's how it was with my first two foreign languages and that's how it is with Chinese.

As for tricks, people do different things. One thing that I did a lot was to look up the words to see what radicals they had included. This added small meanings to the larger characters and compound-character words. Ex: 子 zi3 means child, so 学 xue3 is like a child with a scholar's hat. I also noted that this character shares the same tone as the other, making further connections.

I also did a lot of making up stories with what I saw in the picture. I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I had tons when I first started. :)

Whatever you do, make it work for you. Don't stubbornly stick to one idea just because so-and-so told you it would work. The story and radical thing works for me because I learn with visual cues. It may not work for you.

Good luck!!

Having just recently started I can say that yeah, initially it feels like...WHAT THE STUFF HOW CAN I REMEMBER THIS FFS! But it slowly disappates and it starts coming together. Skritter says I know like over 60 or so now, but I wonder just how many of those I really do remember - but i AM getting better.

One thing i did do is buy a copy of 'Remembering the Hanzi' for simplified Chinese characters and funnily enough, now using it and the wordlist(which skritter has incidentally) i tend to remember the meaning instantly, but i have to keep going back over and over and over the words to then try and remember the pinyin. Was also stumped on a couple, such as Dynasty and Ridicule, which both have the same word (chao i think it was) and the same tone - until I remembered that's why you basically cant solely learn pinyin as tons of words have the same pinyin and same tone.

Like someone else said, I keep writing and re-writing the chars until i can do it without the guide, then generally click next. It can take a while, but after it has come up a bunch of times, you find yourself sitting there thinking, oh man i know this..i know it....then cant get it, but you hit the guide and are like, oh yeah! And the next time it comes up, you generally have it.

Usually once you remember something without the guide once, it's locked in the mind. And like other people say, the key i think is associating it with something. If you can think of ANY little story to describe the char, it makes remembering it a lot more natural.

I've got some stupid ones like - in 'gui xing' for "what if your honorable surname', the 'gui', which means honorable, looks to me like a guy wearing fancy nobility clothes. Or zhi dao for 'know', the first character looks like a guy with a box beside him, he 'knows what's in the box.' Or mang (busy), it looks like a guy standing at a workbench with a light above it.

Dear Jimi02:

I want to share with you a wonderful method created by James W.Heisig, while he has created it for learning japanese kanji, the strategies can be used very well for Traditional Hanzi.

His method is based in very carefully crafted associations, once your brain learns how to figure a character you can learn them very fast, I guarantee it.

In fact, my chinese teacher and chinese acquaitances consider that I am a genius because I learn hanzi very fast and keep them in my mind, but my only luck is to have found Heisig book.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembering_the_Kanji

best wishes

For myself, I found it very, very helpful to study the radicals. There is a list of radicals available in the textbook section. You don't have to go through the complete list, even just studying a part can be very helpful.

As for remembering characters, I always encounter a certain memory performance hit when trying to remember a lot of new characters at the same time. In that situation, I try to create associations for each character, and for me, anything is fair game. If I understand the character through its radicals, that's fine. E.g. 男 (nan2, male) is someone who has the strength (力) to work in the field (田). But if it's anything else, I will just use that. I think Heisig's book works in this way.

My favourite association I came up with a while ago is for 要 (yao4, to want/need). Clearly, this must be a woman (女) longing for a handbag! (Note, the upper part of the character surely has nothing to do with handbags, it just looks like one to me.)

Aside from the great advice above, particularly about making up stories about characters and learning radical meanings, some things to keep in mind with Skritter are:

1. Be very strict with yourself about rating characters - don't mark things above "1" until you really own them.

2. Adjust your settings so you're not adding new vocab too often, and increase your target percentage, so you'll see the same characters in a tighter rotation. When this starts to feel boring, you'll know it's time to increase the frequency of new vocab.

3. Don't overload your list with vocab. Stick to a small list to begin with, or your reviews will become more and more frustrating.

4. Consider using only the reading and pinyin practice for awhile - being able to write a character is the ultimate sign that you know it, but sometimes you just need to see it more often to burn it into your memory.


5. For the stories you make up about the characters, say them out loud, and make them as ridiculous as possible (perverted, offensive, anything unusual). To give a tame example, I used to always forget the right side of 熱 until I would tell myself "It's hot as balls in here!" (丸 can mean "ball") - now I never forget it. Tell your stories to other people, too - the memory of explaining a character to another person creates another useful mental connection.


Above all, be selective about the vocab you're adding. Instead of just choosing a list like HSK 1 and trying to remember it all with no context, find a Chinese song you like or choose a random article (I like using the entertainment section of Yahoo Taiwan: http://tw.news.yahoo.com/showbiz/) and pick out words from it. Print out the text and read it every day until you get sick of it, then pick a new source. Seeing the same words in different contexts will reinforce them beyond what any flashcard program can offer.

Good luck!

Consider just ignoring the feeling that you have to learn stuff 100%. Do your best when you get things wrong, especially when you're frustrated because you know you've got it wrong 20 times, but remember that blind repetition will get you a long way. Putting in the time is just as important if not more than thinking of clever memorisation techniques.

Repeat and repeat until the characters come up and you know you've seen it 20 times already and got it wrong each time. By that time you'll do anything to remember it, and remember it you will.

Keep going for several months, and you'll start to become confident in how well you know the characters.

I would like also contribute to all great advice here, some of my.
1. DO NOT use the lists that are published. Because all of them more or less are tied to some learning material or textbook. Like why the heck you need to learn write Mr. Lin (or something like this from one of lists recommended by Skritter when you sign up);
2. Learning should start by ABC, and then go to higher levels. Beauty of chinese characters - but I am talking more now about traditional ones, are that all of them consists of parts - like you can take any character and break it down in parts. So, to do that of course you should first learn those parts. Otherwise, you will need remember it like a picture, and that is totally wrong, because later when you will need learn to type on keyboard you will need to understand those parts.
3. Great book for that is this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Writing-Chinese-Traditional-Character/dp/0804832064/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268646729&sr=8-1

Reading & Writing Chinese Traditional Character Edition by William McNaughton and Li Ying (Paperback - Sept. 15, 1999)
Buy new: $24.95 $16.47


It it is organized in really great way as this:


Like for example they teach you first - 人 and then later they teach you 匕 and then 者

And only NOW, they will give 老

which then automatically gives you already full word - 老人 - Old people or elderly

If you would just take this word from air, (as any other one), you will end endless times of writing it again and again.

But now, every new character you add based on sequence and logic presented by this (and not only this book), will give you serious advantage.

So, I want to say - SYSTEM first, not just random shots, and say NO for those lists.

5. And I also do not add more than 10 new characters and if new words can be assembled from learned ones already - then no more 10 also. I am overpracticer.

6. I am also honest to my memory. If in a flashcards mode character need's to be said with mmm.... aaa.... that was... and then you finally remember it - I press - I forget it. Same for writing. If I can't write it fast, perfect and correct stroke order, I will press or SO SO, or Forgot even if Skritter makes it Green.
So last advice - bmuch more harsh to you as Skritter does.

Wow...lots of good advice. Perhaps I can offer 2 other alternatives.

1. DVD on characters
Do a google search for this, I really can't recall the title, but if you see an old man who looks like the monkey god and holding a stick, you've gotten the right one. Quite popular with the primary school kids out here to help them associate short stories with the words. E.g. Cloud 云 actually shows a video of 2 clouds floating across the sky and then lightning bolt shoots out below like the bottom part.

2. Components.
I figured each character is easier to recall if there was meaning. E.g. did you notice that all food related words have 口 as part of the word? The NCPR has a nice reference on the character breakdowns that helps with recall. (Had to cram NCPR 1 and 2 in 5 weeks, head still spinning from the effort ;-)

I think that TV program might be this one - http://www.youku.com/playlist_show/id_4193875.html - if its not its probably pretty close.

A lot of the advice here centers around knowing components and creating personal mnemonics, and I cannot support that opinion enough. When I first started learning characters the first things I learned were the radicals. We have radical lists in the textbook section which are a good starting point.

The reason for my post however, is to mention that we are planning to include a mnemonics and radical breakdown system in the near future. It's going to be great for three big reasons. first, it will allow you to see the radical breakdowns of characters and words, making it easier to remember their meanings. second, it will aid our handwriting recognition in fact you will be able to write entire radicals before Skritter recognizes anything, which gives you active, unsupported practice experience. Third, you will be able to store mnemonics for every kind of prompt and share them with others on the site. That means that if someone like shinyspoons or jww comes up with a really good way to remember a specific character (and they choose to share it with the public), then you can simply select to use their mnemonic rather than creating your own for each prompt.

We aren't entirely certain when this feature will go live, but I wanted to make sure that you knew we were thinking about it.

Thanks everyone for the great advice! There is lots of good info here... now that I've processed it all I wonder if I can ask some follow up questions.

First, what is the best list to start with? I've been using HSK 1. I know some people recommended not using a published list at all... what do others think about that?

Second, where can I find a list of radicals to add (it seems like a good idea--using MDBG to break down some characters was very illuminating)? I can't find one on my "Custom Lists".

Third, how many characters do you need to know until you can start making basic sense of basic texts, like kiddy-type stories or simple news articles?

Thanks again for the help and encouragement.


- James

This is a great thread. We should compile these suggestions into a "How to Study" page. Would the Skritter gods be willing to host it?

@shinyspoons That show is great, although the dude is totally creepy. And when they explain 血 they actually kill a chicken (or pretend to) and drain its blood into a bowl, something that would NEVER EVER happen on American kids' TV.

One other suggestion I forgot to mention was to study the same thing in different ways. For example, if you are studying using a certain book which comes with a CD of the dialogues, then you can put the dialogues on repeat and listen to them or use the shadowing technique to work on your pronunciation:

http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/Shadowing

I like active practice techniques myself as they keep me from getting distracted and tuning things out.

You can also use other SRS programs like Anki

http://ichi2.net/anki/

to do this kind of cross training. Since Skritter works the English-to-hanzi, hanzi-to-pinyin, and hanzi-to-English directions, I use Anki to study English-to-pinyin. Also, Skritter isn't really set up to study long phrases and sentences, so I use Anki for those. For example,

合抱之木，生于毫末
九层之台，起于垒土
千里之行，始于足下

which translates roughly to

a huge tree is born as a tiny sprout
a nine-story tower begins by piling dirt
a thousand-li journey begins by putting foot down

- which is good advice for anyone who wants to learn Chinese... ;)

James

@jimi02 - Sorry, didn't see your latest message when I posted just now. The radicals list is this one:

http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=agVza3JpdHIYCxINVm9jYWJMaXN0SW5mbyIFbGlzdDcM

Here's the Heisig list "Remembering the Hanzi 1" - I haven't used it myself, so I don't know if this is useful if you don't have the actual book, but this list is structured so you first learn components, then more complex characters built out of those components.

http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=agVza3JpdHIWCxINVm9jYWJMaXN0SW5mbxi67JMGDA

As for "how many characters", this is hard to answer. If you ONLY study reading and writing characters in isolation I think it will take a long time; I learned about 1,400 and still couldn't really read anything because I was studying the characters in isolation. This is why I recommend using some additional techniques to learn longer phrases and sentences.

James

Thanks again for the help James. What sort of techniques would you recommend for learning phrases / sentences? And is that something you would recommend I start doing right away, or is there a certain amount of characters you should know (500, say) before this becomes useful?

This is a technical question here, but when I'm practicing, how do I switch vocab lists? I added Heisig's "Story Lesson 1" so that it appears along with HSK 1 when I click on "Active lists" from the practice page. How do I make it so that I'm just learning characters from the former? Is it currently set so that characters from the former are being fed into my practice along with ones from HSK 1? I don't want that...

Thanks again.

@jimi02 I'm a huge fan of learning phrases early, as they can give you material for conversations. For example, when you meet a Chinese speaker, you should have some set phrases ready, stuff like "nice to meet you", "where are you from?", "I'm from X country", etc.

I find that, since characters have different meanings in different contexts, it's sometimes actually better to study the phrases first and then study the individual characters.

Are you studying with a teacher? If not, do you have access to any native Chinese speakers? They can help you with pronunciation much better than any computer can. You can only do an OK job using recordings or something like Pimsleur.

We're getting a little off-topic for Skritter. Feel free to send me an email if you want help setting up Anki or anything else. My email address is jww1066, same as my user name here, then gmail.com.

James

I already wanted mention Pimsleur, but I can see jww1066, did that. Yes, Pimsleur is something that really works, and I can say that because I spent hard earned bucks on all 3 parts - I, II and III. What it costs, you can check on amazon. After that 9.99 /mo of Skritter is cheap.
I would even like formulate it like this - Pimsleur + Skritter is a winning combination to start. Pimsleur uses same spaced repetition principle for audio as Skritter does for a writting. Moreover, it really has something more that I can explain - after those CD's, you are shouting out phrases just as it would be your native language. OK, I had a chance to use and practise them in real life in Taiwan, and yes, I got (and still getting) the same problem all foreigners does - tone problems, but still after several cd'S and some chinese class I left (I just can't sit like a schoolchildren and reapeat Wo shi mei guo ren - wo bu shi meigouren) I got Pimsleur.
Pimsleur just installs in your mind (I use exactly this word) a chinese languange STRUCTURE, like how to construct the sentences.
And with that - I call it WINDOWS installed in your mind - you can start up build up your word's and characters database - and you will always be able them use in past present, or whatever you need, because Pimsleur has installed the base bricks of language. Pimsleur itself builds very small word base. After Pimsleur III, somewhere at the end, I were able to talk with my wife sister (which knows in english hi, and byebye only), 1 hour idle chat while driving between cities. Of course not about quantum physics or Immanuile Kant's books, but I could. I even do not mention survival chinese like where is the bus stop. That's just naturally ARE in head forever. Now, with this, Skritter in a certain period of time will finish the rest.

Sory for so long post - if I could have more time, I would make it shorter :/

Thanks James. Don't have a tutor as of now. I do use a bunch of other programs though... I'm going to start a new thread on this.

Pimsleur is really expensive, as is Rosetta Stone. FSI Chinese, on the other hand, is completely free:

http://www.fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php?page=Chinese

You don't learn characters in either Pimsleur or FSI. I forget whether Rosetta Stone teaches characters. In any event you definitely want Skritter for characters plus something to teach you phrases and grammar plus a native speaker to help with pronunciation.

James

Great links from shinyspoons (youku video) and jww1066 (the fsi course). The youku video looks perfect for learning words in context and there's a huge amount of material there.

The fsi course sounds good although the texts don't have characters which is a pity. Probably better for beginners though.

For learning phrases I suggest using dictionary sites like nciku.com or dict.cn and taking the time to translate sentences word by word. It will take a long time, especially at first, but eventually it gets easier and easier. Definitely a long term approach though rather than a phrase book approach.

My day-to-day spoken Chinese isn't great despite a lot of study, maybe something more structured like the pimsleur or fsi would have helped with this.

James did you really start out purely with just reading and writing characters until you knew 1400? That's impressive.

I started out with a second-hand copy of "Teach yourself Chinese", that was a reasonable start for me in terms of basic grammar and sentence construction.

@ximeng I had dabbled with various different techniques, but hadn't learned anything substantial until I started Skritter, no.

By coincidence I'm also studying "Teach Yourself Chinese" and am currently working on putting the vocabulary lists into Skritter. What edition are you using?

James

I will have to investigate FSI.

Pimsleur and Rosetta are indeed expensive, but apparently there are ways of *ahem* "acquiring" these things!

There are some inexpensive short Pimsleur recordings, I think it is called "World Citizen Edition" just aimed at teaching some travel functional ability in a hurry. You might want to buy it first, as it will give you an exact feel for what the Pimsleur methodology is. If I remember correctly I borrowed the complete course Pimsleur Chinese 1 and 2 at the local library and having gotten addicted had to shell out for 3. You may also be able to rent it from Recorded Books.

If you go to the Rosetta Stone web site I think you can test drive a free demo. They used to sell a monthly web based subscription, which would let you use the target language and actually see how well it does for you, but I think they may have done away with the "pay as you go" option. Rosetta Stone is very good, but even though it has the ability to let you practice speaking and give you feedback on your recorded utterances it lacks the benefit of having a live teacher. One other big drawback is it lacks writing practice. I think maybe you can do pinyin on the newer version. If they are not talking to Skritter about a partnership they should be. Skritter is partnered with ChinesePod, and I highly, highly recommend that service (chinesepod.com)

@ Podster,

If chinesePod does not gives any system, like spaced repetition principle or other, what's the main advantage of it? There a bit database, but what else? Because in my understanding spaced repetition does the main job for remembering and not just hours of repeating same again. Or I am wrong. I appreciate your answer in advance

@jww1066 - could only find one edition on Amazon, published in 1991:

http://www.amazon.com/Teach-Yourself-Chinese-Complete-Course/dp/0844237574

@ximeng That's the one. How did you like it?

I thought it was pretty good all in. Pretty easy reading, and doesn't get bogged down in exercises like Practical Chinese Reader. Not 100% practical, but a good overview for what you're letting yourself in for. The literal style translations at the beginning are really helpful: e.g. Bu yong le. Shijian bu zao le, women yinggai hui qu le = Not /use//Time/not/early//we/ought to/return/go//.

Printing is not great, so not ideal for learning characters, but doable.

It's really only the basics, but it was helpful as a basis for early language exchanges. If it would be helpful for anybody, I have mp3 recordings of chapters 1 to 10 made by my language exchange partner from way back when. Contact me if you're interested @dximeng on twitter.

Rolands,
I am not sure what you mean by system, but if somebody wants something really "systematic" then Rosetta Stone might be the way to go, in that it starts you on Unit 1, Lesson 1, and leads you sequentially through a set of carefully planned lessons, with each lesson using spaced repetition adapted to the user's response. Chinese Pod, by contrast, might appear a bit chaotic at first, and the work of creating a "system" from it is partly on the learner. I like it because it allows me to find a lot of content that is at the intersection of my topics of interest and my ability level. I find this very motivating, and even without programmed repetition I find lessons very interesting and will often listen to the same recordings many times. While Rosetta Stone claims to be a "natural" way of learning, I find Chinese Pod to be even more so. That said, I discovered it after I already knew a fair amount of Chinese, so I probably would not recommend that a beginner try to use it as their sole source of instruction. Chinese Pod is a great example of what is sometimes called "info-tainment" or "edutainment" but a serious student can study lessons in a very systematic way, because each lesson has expansion sentences, test exercises, a "Skritter Lite" function embedded to practice that lesson's vocabulary, etc., and well done mobile apps for iPhone/iPod and Android. Most lessons attract a very long set of user comments and questions, which elicit useful responses from both staff and community.

To sum up, I would say Pimsleur is strong for its structure; you are not exposed to that much content for the amount of time on the recordings, but what you are exposed to you will probably learn well. Rosetta Stone adds the visual dimension, and would be fine for someone who can invest the time in sitting in front of a computer. (I have not tried the newer versions that have the audio companion.) Chinese Pod is great for highly topical items, current events, and things that no text book would dare / bother to include but could be immensely practical.
I hope this answered your question.

Podster

Yes, answered fully thank you. System is what I mean most first spaced repetition and then applying words and sentences in logical way, in next conversations, instead of just giving every time new.
Like for example Pimsleur did, they teach you say say, "how about", and then this how about is later integrated in more complex dialogues and repeated in already mentioned spaced repetition time periods.
It seems is a big DOWNSIDE of pimsleur as they plug you in like a drug dealers to their standard, and then later when you finish all 3 parts, everything else then seems like a mess, not systematized ranodm shots.
I was not feeling good with http://www.instantspeakchinese.com

Their speakers after Pimsleur crystal clear voices seems to be mumbling with a full mouth of tofu, and while their style of various themes like in bus, shop etc seems attractive, finally, I found that remembering all at Lesson 4, checking myself for learned in Lesson 1, I forgot 30 - 40 %.
Maybe because my is totally tied to Pimsleur style.
Maybe it makes sense to take a spaced repetition graph, posted somewhere here on Skritter website, and MANUALLY apply it to Chinesepod? Like Set a reminder than in 5 days since now, you need go back to Lesson X and repeat it?

Well with Chinesepod I download podcasts onto itunes. Then use smart folders so all the dialogues go in one place, all lessons (by level) in another etc etc.

So it's quite easy to review the dialogues if I so wish. They also have lesson review clips, but I never bother with those...

Byzanti,
Thanks for the tip. I have been struggling with organizing all the files. I had not heard of smart folders.

Do you grab the vocabulary sets from Chinese Pod lessons for Skritter practice? I tried that once, and I think it helped firm up my learning from the lesson quite a bit, but I am busy working my way through a frequency based text book with Skritter right now so probably won't be doing that much in the near future.

Yep. That's exactly what I do. I also add most of the sentences to anki to review...

And that's 80% of my Chinese study right there!

Still, it would be nice if CP were more structured. How's the frequency text book doing for you?

so-so; its the Yale Mirror Series Read Chinese, Book Two. The format is a bit different from the revision of Book One that I have. It lacks the sentences in simplified characters but includes a separate compound vocabulary for each chapter. Since the original book is some decades old now I rely on ChinesePod for the new stuff that has come up since the 1950s. I always liked the Yale books for the large and aesthetically pleasing renderings of the characters and large type for the readings. Someone has published a list for Book One on Skritter. Strangely the compounds introduced in book two look they were written by an ant with a pen that was running out of ink. Seems my eyesight has deteriorated in recent decades too.

I have to retract my defamatory remark about lack of simplified character sentences in this book; the simplified sentences are in the back of the book (duh!). In Book One they appear at the end of each chapter.