Hi all, this is my first week on skritter, I've just completed my first 30 hours of fun. I just have to say, I love the site, and it has ignited a Chinese flame in me I'd forgotten I had. In the 18 months so far of studying Chinese at university, I probably wouldn't have spent much more than 30 hours on characters. The spaced repitition algorithm is working well for my level too, except when I'm drunk.

However, I am a little concerned that I haven't seen any of the first characters I wrote. When I started, I had raw skrigs disabled (didn't know it existed, and it took me a while to find it), the generous handwriting recognition accepted a few dubious guesses, and the rearranging of the strokes gave huge hints where I wouldn't actually have been able to remember the squiggle raw. I never bothered challenging the correct marking, even when I didn't know the character.

Do characters correctly written on the first attempt ever resurface? How long will they take? Have I screwed myself? I think it would be useful/fun to be able to force a test of all characters. It would catch any older characters that have slipped out of memory, and provide a truer count of actually known characters at any point in time. If there's any way of doing this already please let me know. Cheers.

~
Amitabha

If you always skritter while drunk, you'll remember characters better when you drink.

You'll start seeing the first characters soon.

It's unlikely that you've damaged your SRS for many words or characters in just a week of studying (but 30 hours? Dang...). You can't have pushed them back too far on the algorithm in a week, so just wait until you see them again and self-grade if necessary.

Welcome to Skritter! 加油!

If you get something right the first time, it comes up in about a week, give or take. If you then never get it wrong, it gets pushed very far back, very fast. But if you get it wrong at some point, it's back to normal and you can go about learning it.

We do this so that you don't have to worry too much about adding words you already know--they won't take much time. If you hit something with a 4 grade when you first see it, too, it'll really go a long way into the future.

We don't have a force test feature, though.

I have watched the clock on Skritter as compared to the actual time passed while working on the computer. It is usually a 2 to 1 ratio. Is that 30 hours per the clock on the wall or Skritter's clock?

Either way, very impressive.

I'm also new. Third day. I wonder how I make it start with a big list of words. It only lists less than a hundred in the green "add" bar. I tried adding some things, but it seems you need to add each set of lessons from each book separately, which is too tedious.

I get bored repeating the same words and would rather keep getting fresh ones instead of attempting the same one again several times, even if I don't always get them right. I figure that will come over several days, not in one day.

I'd like to start with maybe a thousand and just have them come up at random.

Also, I read on another post regarding using the words in contextual sentences. I would love to turn that feature on.

Hi brucejackson!

What you'll want to do is click the "Everything" button on the practice nav page. Then you'll study all the words from all your lists, instead of just one section or list at a time. When you want new words while studying "Everything", then, you just press the "+" button next to the green added bar and it'll give you a new word (if it's not doing it fast enough automatically).

If words are coming up too frequently, you can try lowering your retention rate in your account settings - language settings.

I'll add you to the sentence testers soon. The sentences are still pretty rough right now!

thanks for that Nick. I had used the "+" button, but I will change the retention rate as suggested. I have initially learnt many characters over the past 3 years, but tend to forget them due to lack of familiarity and regular use.

I appreciate the sentences. It's helpful to read the less familiar characters in context. It helps in understanding their correct grammatical place.

Another major benefit of your system is linking a tone to a character. I find learning tones is the most elusive part of learning Chinese.