I just started using Skritter yesterday and wanted to give my early impressions.

First of all, amazing web app. Very well executed ... however ...

not exactly friendly for new users.

Here's what I have problems with:

- Difficult to know where to start. Learning to write Chinese is daunting enough, so it would have been nice to be presented at the start with the option of trying an ultra simple list of ~5-10 easy characters. This would allow a new user to get their feet wet. Instead, I was presented with a blinding array of textbooks and users lists. I really felt totally overwhelmed and didn't know where to begin. I suppose it would have been fine if I was using one of the textbooks but I'm not.

- It would also be nice if some obvious paths were highlighted such as learning radicals or learning the most common characters. They are there but I had to wade through far too much information to find them.

- Words seem to be added to my list without my control and without any obvious rationale. I'm used to SRS apps where things get added because I explicitly made some action.

- There doesn't seem to be a way to end a session without logging out.

- The items to review seems to get bigger and smaller for no obvious reason. I feel trapped in a review session that just goes on and on.

Sorry if that sounds like a lot of criticism. As I said at the beginning, I do love the app and think it's really groundbreaking. But there are definitely some usability issues.

I'm also a new user, however I haven't had the same problems you've been having.... are you learning Chinese outside of Skritter?

This site was designed as an auxiliary tool to learn characters, not for someone to start out learning Chinese. I had no problems just going into my college textbook and inputting all the characters I already learned. If you haven't already learned Chinese somewhere else, you should probably hold off from Skritter until you do since I don't think it's designed to be used without other forms of instruction.

Actually I've been learning Chinese for 3 and a half years and I have about 2500 words in my Pleco flashcards but I haven't been using textbooks and I haven't done any writing at all. Much of my learning has been through audio and private tutor.

Ah I see, sorry I assumed you were just starting out, if I were you I would start inputting the characters of the words you have in your pleco flashcard list.

Or, even better, get a beginners textbook just for characters... you'd be able to get through it super fast since you already have experience, and then you wouldn't be so overwhelmed with Skritter. Maybe it is possible to use Skritter to actually start out learning characters, but I'm convinced that textbooks are the way to go for just starting out. Normally I'd recommend using the deFrancis series, but Skritter doesn't have the lists for that. :/

Regardless of my learning level, there's still a lot of ambiguity in the interface. I'm used to SRS programs that operate on a daily model (i.e. you work through today's words, then review the problem words and boom, you're done) but Skritter seems to be expecting me to work 24/7. In fact, earlier today I thought I'd "done" Monday's work but now there's another 7 items (oops, make that 8 now, yet another just got added a moment ago.). I find this exasperating and confusing. Will there be 9 items to review an hour from now? There doesn't seem to be a predictable amount of study per day. :(

(deleted)

LeeHunter, basically: relax :) Solution to most of your problems is not to do anything about it.

Skritter isn't designed to be something that needs some daily routine; it's a tool you can use any time of day or night. It doesn't expect you to work 24/7, it allows you to. So don't treat the review bar as something you need to complete; as for me it never goes down to zero. Scritter works continuously, as time passes more words get ripe for review. Also new words are being added for you to study, so you won't get bored.
You shouldn't feel like not having completed something, just do as much as you feel like.

You can control process of adding words (from lists) by checking "Manual Add Only" in "Add Word Frequency" in "Study Settings". But I suggest not to fear, automatic adding does not go rogue, it turns out it's quite reasonable.

As for a choice of words it seems like a good idea to study words you have on the flashcards (you can add words by My Words or by mdgb.net, if you're familiar with that). If this seems too tedious (though as time needed to input a word is nothing compared to time needed to learn to write it, it doesn't seem the problem) you can choose HSK lists - they're lists of most popular characters, by level.

You don't end the session manually - it ends automatically as you go to sleep. ;) (At least it always work that way for me)

If you have any other doubts I'm ready to answer :)

(GOD, that was an awful load of praising)

EDIT:

As for the choice of characters to learn I thought that as you already know Chinese a bit, maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to get a little picky - to start with easy, amicably looking characters, with rather specific meaning, easy to imagine (nouns preferably); this way you can quickly learn the basic building blocks with nice imagination. Radicals are entirely soulless.

A pointer to an introductory list or two is a good idea. I think the reason they haven't, is that they were wanting to focus on promoting textbooks.

To address your points:

"I'm used to SRS apps where things get added because I explicitly made some action. "

If you want to do it that way, on the study page click 'automatically' (blue text), and select 'manually'. You can then click the green + button when studying to add an item manually. Items will be added from the lists you have selected to study from.

"- There doesn't seem to be a way to end a session without logging out. "

You don't need to log out. Just close the page and stop when you want.

"- The items to review seems to get bigger and smaller for no obvious reason. I feel trapped in a review session that just goes on and on. "

This is a long running bug when practising where numbers jump back at forth. However, the numbers on the study page and main page are accurate. Alternatively you'll note that items have a percentage due. If it's down to 99% all your due items (100% = due) will be done.

"I'm used to SRS programs that operate on a daily model"

Firstly, if you go to the study page and click the 'click to calculate' text, you can see how many items are due to come up in study in the next few days.

Skritter works well, it's just different to what you're used to. One of the other big SRS programs Anki, for example, used to have a 'cards due when they're due' system, like Skritter currently does. So if you go down to 0 at midday, there would likely be some later. Now Anki defaults to a daily basis. I quite like that myself, but I'm not sure if it would work well on Skritter, especially for newbies, when learning a character or word, one might need to be repeat it at intervals shorter than 'immediately' or 'one day'.

I'd start by reiterating what Noqa said which is to relax :)

An application like Anki gives you x new words every day and a review of the previous words that need reviewing so you have a total number of words to review each day and, once you have finished them, you're done for the day.

Skritter works by looking at when a word is due for review so, you may start the day with 10 words due, but as more become due, you may practice many more words during the day. Also, when you first learn words, that word my become due for review several times during the day - that's one reason why the review session gets bigger.

New words are added when Skritter feels that you are ready for new words, it is not just a case of adding 20 words a day and no more. If you practice for several hours a day then you will see many more words added in that day and many more reviews come up - the way that the SRS algorithm works in Skritter is that the more you practice, the more reviews you will have.

I think that one issue with adding a default list would be what words to include in the list - people study different things and so have different requirements. Most people are studying from text books and so can choose the right book for them. Maybe some advice about where to start for anyone not studying a book would be helpful, I would suggest using the HSK lists if you are starting from nothing or not using a text book - that is the recommendation in the FAQ as well

Although not described in detail, there are ways to export a word list from Anki into Skritter so that you can be studying the same list in both apps. In your case, I would suggest that is more appropriate as you know those words and it would be best to start with what you know and add more words once you are happy writing them - does anyone have a link to an FAQ for importing from Anki??

LeeHunter, while Skritter certainly has its flaws, I think you will find the helpful user community to more than make up for any shortcomings. Most of us are pretty die-hard users, to the point we are evangelical about Skritter. Just ask and help is on the way :)

"evangelical about Skritter" heh...guilty :)

I think HappyBlue has the best suggestion if you're not studying from a book. Study from the HSK lists, even if its below your level. That's what I am doing with Japanese. I started out with 4kyu a few months ago, and started 2kyu a couple of weeks ago. Since I don't have the opportunity to use Japanese on a daily, or even weekly basis, Skritter and Japanese media is my way of maintaining my Japanese level.

I tried the HSK option for fun. I notice Chinese words get sentences. I hope Japanese gets the same treatment soon (well, I know there's jisho.org, but that's time consuming :P )

If you're not studying from a book, my suggestion is to add words to Skritter as you come across them. If you hit shift-A you can quick add from anywhere on the site. It's better than adding random words you've never seen before and don't know how to use from the HSK list.

@LeeHunter: Thanks for your insight to how it feels coming into the site for the first time, and what could be improved. That's a good point about not knowing where to start, if you don't have your own game plan already laid out. We assume people coming in already have their own plan or a course laid out from a teacher or book. Some sort of page (or maybe just a link to this forum thread with all its awesome support) orienting people without a specific plan might be good to add.

You might be interested in the iPhone or iPad app when it comes out, if you have one. We'll be trying out new introductory methods, much like what you describe in terms of short lists to get people used to Skritter before jumping in. How that goes will guide us in improving the site as well in this area, and we have ideas for improving the demo as well. Please keep up the feedback! Much of the site's worth comes from the support and ideas from you guys.

@xiaobill: Japanese example sentences, on the way! We're going to overhaul the whole example sentence system so they can be added, edited, and even studied, and ideally hook them up to Tatoeba if we can. But that's a major project for (soon) after the current big project is done: the iPhone/iPad app.

Thanks for all the advice. I've gotten over my problem of what list to use. I picked one that had the 3,000 most common characters and so far that's working well. I also really like the way that the radicals are displayed on the right with the option to add them to the study list.

Unfortunately the more I use the app the more frustrated and, to be frank, downright hostile I am towards Skritter's inscrutable study schedule. One of the reasons I've been putting off learning to write is that I already feel like I devote far too much time every day to learning Chinese. It's totally just a hobby for me without any practical purpose - I'm not even sure I'll ever visit China - I just enjoy the challenge. But the hours of daily study are still quite demanding.

So when I go to Skritter it's really dismaying that the application not only doesn't provide any reliable measure of what has to be done in a day but actually expands and contracts from moment to moment, seemingly independent of what I'm doing and totally without any end point. Apparently, from what people have written I'm supposed to just keep studying until I feel I've done enough. But that just seems utterly wrong. First of all, I haven't the slightest idea whether I've done enough (or too much) and secondly, it seems like chunking the work and providing an end point is the job of the software.

Maybe I'll get used to it, but at this point in time I'm really torn. Although I'm not really keen on learning to write Chinese, I realize that it's the only way to build the vocabulary that will help my conversational ability. Skritter looks like the most palatable option but at this point in time I'm not sure that I can take the aggravation that comes with dealing with what seems like a vague and arbitrary system.

Lee Hunter,

I will try to explain the study scheduling, as I understand it (someone please step in and tell me if I'm wrong).

Let's say you have 100 items due today. You begin to study. But after you have completed 100 items, you now have 50 items due. This is the cause of your frustration, correct?

Other SRS programs measure with "days" as units. An item completed today won't be due again until another day. The more familiar you are with a card, the longer it gets pushed back, measured by days. 1 day, 3 days, 5 days, etc...

Skritter is far more exact: it is measured in minutes. So you have 100 items due. You have just learned about a dozen of these characters, so you get them wrong. The algorithm will push the item back a few hours, or even minutes. Or even say you got all of the prompts right. Since many of them are new, the algorithm wants you to review them again in perhaps 5 or 6 hours.

So even though you cleared the 100 items due at that point, the algorithm re-measures when you need to see them again, using "minutes" as units. After clearing the 100 items, the program believes you need to re-review them in a few hours. This is why later on in the day, you now have 50 items due.

The system isn't arbitrary. It happens to just be more exact than any other SRS sytem that uses a "day" as a unit. For example, you could use Anki and get a card wrong 5 times; on the 6th time you get it right, Anki pushes it back a day. Skritter's algorithm is more precise, and will show you the prompt again in an hour.

But we can't live our lives on the webpage, and constantly battling the number of items due throughout the day isn't feasible. So what I due is wake up, and study until the number due goes down to around 10-20. At night, I open the website again, and do the same process. Sometimes I skip a day, so my morning practice is longer. Just study when you want, battle the number down, and that's it. It will rise throughout the day, but just wait until the next day and battle it down again. Easy peasy.

Alex

Another suggestion: instead of focusing first on the "items due", make a goal of spending a set amount of time per session and or a set amount of time per day. Skritter's progress page graphs that too, so you can get some nice visual feedback.

For the 3,000 most common items, is that a single list? If so, that might be part of why items due come so quickly. Maybe you are very good at short term memory so Skritter is drawing from the list relatively quickly, but when you go back later if you don't remember a word it it gets scheduled to recur in the near future. This is just a guess on my part. I've been using Skritter for a while now, but haven't really bothered trying to figure out exactly how it works. I just know it works for me and I would never be able to get this far with the traditional methods.

I'm afraid I don't see how this supposed accuracy does me any good. I can only study at certain times of the day and even if I had total freedom I wouldn't know when to hit Skritter. More importantly this theoretical accuracy comes at the expense of fundamental information that's absolutely critical to managing my work load: what do I have to do, when am I done, and how did I do?

Lee Hunter, you will feel better with an SRS program that uses "days" as units. I suggest you look into Anki.

podster hit it on the money: just do a certain amount each day. There's a timer above the writing area, set a goal for yourself (I go for 30 minutes on the timer - note that this is actually longer than 30 minutes, because the timer starts and stops with each prompt/response) and study until you reach that goal. If you follow this method, you can safely ignore both the 'items due now' number and the 'left to review' bar.

Skritter already does behind the scenes what you are asking it to spell out for you; it analyzes your correct/incorrect responses and when you last made them and calculates the best time to ask you again (just like any SRS algorithm). The fact that it does this in real-time instead of in 'day units' does not make it arbitary; in fact, it makes it LESS arbitrary, as atdlouis has already mentioned. Using units of a day in length is already an approximation based on the sleeping patterns of humans/rotation of the earth/whatever...but in actuality your brain is continually processing the information that you have studied - there is no certain 'cut off' time each day where everything rolls over and you start learning anew. In this aspect, Skritter is more accurate in its timing than Anki.

Of course, when you say things like "One of the reasons I've been putting off learning to write is that I already feel like I devote far too much time every day to learning Chinese", it almost sounds like you are asking Skritter to determine the optimum amount of time for you personally to spend studying character writing, based on external factors (e.g. your daily schedule) which the program has no way to factor in. If you yourself are unsure how much time you want to devote out of each day to practicing Chinese writing, how do you think Skritter would decide?

I find it puzzling that several people are, on the one hand, saying that the Skritter SRS algorithm is more "accurate" but on the other hand, acknowledging that to actually use the program in the real world they completely ignore this "accuracy" and just try and use it the way they would use Anki (or in my case Pleco).

Those more accurate time periods would only have meaning if I was actually sitting at my desk from morning to night waiting for the next timed event to kick in.

When I use my current flashcards with Pleco I can A) work through my entire deck first thing in the morning [I know exactly what I have to do before I start and I know when I'm finished] then B) wait for a couple of hours before I review. I know my brain a lot better than any software algorithm ever will, so by waiting it's easy to cull out the stronger words (those that fixed my longer term memory but just needed a reminder) and focus on the weaker ones.

So I'm not at all asking Skritter to determine the optimum amount of time to study. Quite the reverse, since I'm quite capable of managing my time myself. It's actually Skritter's blind insistence on continually fussing with my workload that's derailing my study.

I find it telling that everyone basically says "give up on trying to keep up with Skritter or to understand what's happening and just plug away at it for x minutes". This would seem to negate the advantage of Skritter's supposedly better algorithm. What possibly good is it doing to me as a learner that it updates minute by minute unless I'm actually using it constantly throughout the day (so that I'm getting prompted with these optimally timed learning events).

Where the additional accuracy "does you any good" is in the situation atdlouis described, where you've gotten something wrong 5 times, and then on the 6th, you get it right. A less accurate SRS would push it back a whole day, but that's probably not the best way to do it, since you're likely still pretty shaky on that character. Skritter will show it to you again in a few minutes. I know when I'm learning new characters I quite often finally get it right only to forget it after one of these two or three minute intervals. I then drill on it a bit more right then without having to wait until the next day to realize that I've forgotten it, so it's more efficient.

I can see how the terminology can be difficult to get used to, though. School, work, taxes, etc. get you thinking that when something is "due" you need to get it done by then, and when Skritter is constantly moving the goal post, it can be demoralizing. Perhaps it would help to think of these items as not so much "due" as "ripe" or "ready" for study?

I second (or third, actually, I guess) podster's suggestion: pick an amount of time you want to dedicate to it and stick with it and don't worry about clearing all of the reviews that day.

"Where the additional accuracy "does you any good" is ... where you've gotten something wrong 5 times, and then on the 6th, you get it right. A less accurate SRS would push it back a whole day, but that's probably not the best way to do it, since you're likely still pretty shaky on that character. Skritter will show it to you again in a few minutes."

Ok, that part does makes sense to me, at least up to a point. I can certainly see the value of bringing back a character multiple times within a session until I get it right. But when Pleco, for example, adds it to the next day's review, it's not actually pushing it off my plate for an entire day. It's still there in my batch of incorrect answers which I review as time permits throughout the day until I'm satisfied that I'm getting it right. It's really the same thing, except that Pleco gives me more control and transparency.

Lee Hunter,

I'm going to suggest that the switch to Skritter is like going from Windows to Mac. At first you're going to be banging your head against the wall because there's no right click button. But if you give it time and use the 30 day trial period, I think you'll get used to it and appreciate it for what it offers.

I have been using Skritter for a perhaps 14 months. In that time I can now read and write roughly 2,000 characters and 3,400 words, and I can manage my way through young adult books. It really does work. That's after an average of 40 minutes a day - maybe 30 minutes in the morning and 10 at night. Most Skritters manage their sessions either by a time goal (ex: 30 minutes per day), or an Items due goal (ex: every day, sit down one time at the computer and work the items away to 0 or as close to it as possible).

On the other hand, if after the trial period you can't live with the fact that Skritter will continue adding items throughout the day, then by all means look for a different SRS program. You will find one that will suit your particular needs.

Alex

There's some force to the argument that beyond the first few really short intervals, there's not much difference between Skritter's minute-by-minute scheduling system and a coarser day-by-day system that could tell you definitively first thing in the morning how many you've got to do that day. Once the intervals between reviews gets above an hour or so, you're not going to sit there and wait for it to come due so you can practice it right at the appointed time, you'll just get to it the next day. That's functionally the same as if it had just scheduled it the next day.

But don't discount the importance of those first few minute-by-minute intervals. I would really encourage you to give it a try for a bit, because it's an almost physical feeling when you get a hard character right after a bunch of times wrong, and then the same character comes up again 1, or 2, or 4, or 10 minutes later. You can almost feel your brain's short term memory getting caught in the act of deleting the character, only to get a stern "Now don't you forget that, you still need that!" reprimand, and the brain guiltily reassembles the memory.

I know that sounds kind of odd, but I suspect most long term Skritters know the feeling I'm talking about, and it really is an amazingly efficient way to learn stuff.

So I've been with Skritter about a month now and my initial impressions are still the same: overall it's a great application for learning to read and write but the widget that supposedly provides the number of items "to review" and "added" is just dreadful. I've learned to grit my teeth and ignore it since, as far as I can determine, what it shows are completely random numbers that bounce around for no reason whatsoever (just now logging in with my Android phone I see "2" items to review, whereas logging in simultaneously on the web I see "25" items. Huh?).

The developers should either fix it, explain it, or remove it. Otherwise it's just an irritant and a source of confusion.

Thanks for the feedback on the review bar, LeeHunter. I grow more and more eager to fix the darn thing. I'll have to work on it after the iOS app is ready, though.

@ LeeHunter

I agree that the reviews bar's information (and, and time, reviews due, reviews in the coming week, etc) are hard to decipher, both initially and even later on; it's good to hear that this will be looked into after the iOS app launches.

Regarding your issues with Skritter's SRS system (specifically, that it isn't an Anki-style once a day system), I'd suggest what others have, to relax and perhaps be flexible in adjusting your study habits to maximize Skritter's value, as opposed to expecting Skritter match Anki's algorithms.

One advantage of Skritter's system is that it works well with smaller, numerous study sessions in a single day as opposed to a single marathon session. For example, say I'm learning 懿, and I get it wrong. Under Anki I would get it wrong, then see it again and again until I got it correct *within the same session*, and then not see it again until the next day. With Skritter I might get it wrong, see it again a few minutes later (in the same session), get it "so-so" then, and then see it again in a session in the evening; and then I might see it again in a last session before I got to sleep - the point is I have repetitions spaced throughout the day, instead of all back to back within a few minutes (the latter of which is essentially like just using normal paper writing grids/drills everyday for your hard characters). I agree that for easy characters this is irrelevant because they are pushed past the 24 hour mark so quickly, but for hard characters that you don't learn quickly (which, logically, is where you should get the most value from a paid system to learn characters) Skritter's timing works much better.

Perhaps it would be a worthwhile experiment to adjust your studying habits (if possible); when I first started I had similar issues and over the last 5 months I've adjusted towards a schedule that is much more pleasant for myself and seems the utilizing Skritter better also. Personally, I try to do ten minute sessions 3-5 times per day, depending on how busy I am - at the least I can manage one in the morning, lunch and evening, and typically 4 a day will keep me comfortably below 100 pending reviews by the end of each session. This has worked well for me, and if I "had" to hammer the same number of *writing* reviews at a single point of time in the day I would probably spend less total time on Skritter daily, because it would turn into a grind and not a quick and fun (and educational) diversion from whatever else I'm doing. I write "had" because of course in Anki and similar systems I can just leave the program open and go through and stop and my leisure (i.e. not completing the session, or forcing it to stop midway), but the basic format of each system will compel most users to use it in a certain way - after all, some users have already pointed out that if you want an Anki style it is feasible in Skritter - just study once a day and only add X words per day (eliminating both timing and adding algorithms that impact your daily studies).