Good day ladies and gentlemen, today is the day that starts the challenge of the year.
At least 100 new words a day till I finish with all the HSK lists, for which I will spend at least 2 hours in skritter per day.
The challenge will finish the 31 of august 2013.

Thank you for your attention.
*Any fellow skritters are welcome to join this lunatic challenge.

湖安马林

==The first day== Rainy day in Beijing

01 AUGUST -212-


Time studied: 2:36:30
Retention Rate: 92.9%
Character writings:
Learned: 51
Added: 49
Retention Rate: 94.5%
Word Writings
Learned: 212
Studied: 209
Retention Rate: 84.4%

I need to improve the word writing retention rate.

02 AUGUST -70-

My first day of the intensive 4 week program in BLCU.
I will be adding words from the following lists:
HSK 4,5,6
Reading Chinese This Way Vol. 4
高级汉语口语-一话题交际
·
Time studied: 1:15:30
Retention Rate: 94.2%
Character writings:
Learned: 8
Added: 14
Retention Rate: 96.2%
Word Writings
Learned: 70
Studied: 77
Retention Rate: 88.4%

It's friday, so my performance went down dramatically... anyways, retention rate went up.

Wow. I wish you the best with that goal. =)

Personally though, I find that going more slowly leads me to retain the vocab better.

I think I would need more than two hours a day to comfortably feel I really "knew" 100 new words. Especially if I were adding 100 more every day. But if you are just cramming for a test maybe the strategy makes sense. I have not taken the HSK, so I cannot advise anyone, but if it involves reading I would think maybe best to keep Skritter as a supplement and try to read material containing the characters.

Best of luck 桓马林 - I can't keep up with that pace, but please keep us posted on progress/tips coming out of it.

How many characters do you need to learn as part of learning those words (can guessestimate given using HSK lists I think)? What is your strategy - seeing them for first time in skritter, or learn outside first?

I want see IF the idea that bombing your head with a bunch of information including new words and reading tons of sentences will improve dramatically my reading abillity in one month OR if I will die trying... with a head concussion.

I'm studying full time chinese in Beijing, already been studying here for 6 months and before coming to china I took an online intensive flashcard program to memorize the definition of 2500 characters.
I know some of the words that pop up in HSK 1-5 (but most don't know how to write), also a bunch of random words because while taking the subway in the mornings I like taking notes of the red propaganda and advertising I see on the street.

PS. By the way, I try to read every new sentence that comes with a new word, my gf(chinese) has been helping me check this sentences and it seems every one that has popped up is gramatically correct, so it's a good source to improve quick reading.

Won't take any HSK exams any time soon.

I think I'm going to join the challenge. I'm going to China in August and until then it would be nice to have a little bit more vocabulary.

Which lists do you use? HSK 1-6?

I would suggest studying slower, and taking your time to properly learn the words. Otherwise in the long run you'll have 3000 words that you a) don't know how to use b) cause you problems when their appear in Skritter as you wont be able to remember what word the prompt is asking for, c) probably wont remember what characters are in the word asked for, d) and potentially may not be able to write the characters if there are too many new ones at once.

ad a) This is a big problem in Skritter anyway. You learn the words from lists not from context.
ad b, c, d) I don't see where this would be a problem. If I remember, I remember, if not I repeat it until I remember. It's the same steps as usually, just that it might take a little longer because I am learning new words.

Additionally, at least for me, there are still a bunch of words that I know, but haven't learned on Skritter yet.

1.朗帝, Welcome you to join the challenge, I will be adding words from HSK 4,5,6 and some textbooks which I'm studying in school.
If you come to Beijing be sure to contact me.
Up to now I have learned 282 words.

2. Byzanti
I will try and do it for one month as an experiment, I will tell you how I feel after I do it. Up to now I feel that learning a bunch of new words at the same time dramatically increase your reading speed.

I think it's a great challenge, but then I've missed every target I've set this year, and am ok with this (aim for the stars, hit the moon and all that).

I think Byzanti makes a fair point though - could be worth creating a new list for this challenge and add your hundred a day to that - that way can always ensure are continually fully studying your pre-challenge list through single list study.

I think the real challenge is the wall of reviews that will come pretty quick - I would guess adding 100 / day will lead to due reviews per day of 2-3000 after a few weeks. Would be great if you could indicate your daily words due also and if you are clearing these each day.

Depends how much know some of these words in advance. Anyway, you stats are looking good so far!

I need about 30-40 minutes to get through my ~200 due characters each day while adding something between 1 and 5 new words.
I guess I would need like 10 hours a day to keep up with what you want to do and even then I don't think I would be able to know the words.

Anyway, good luck! :)

03 AUGUST -107-

Time studied: 2:00:00 aprox
Retention Rate: 94.4%
Character writings:
Learned: 31
Added: 16
Retention Rate: 95.6%
Word Writings
Learned: 107
Studied: 97
Retention Rate: 86.3%

04 AUGUST -minus8-

Time studied: 50min
Retention Rate: 92.6%
Character writings:
Learned: -10
Added: 0
Retention Rate: 94.7%
Word Writings
Learned: -8
Studied: 0
Retention Rate: 86.7%

05 AUGUST -84-

Time studied: 2:15:00
Retention Rate: 91.7%
Character writings:
Learned: 10
Added: 30
Retention Rate: 94.7%
Word Writings
Learned: 84
Studied: 115
Retention Rate: 86.7%


5 days totals

466 WORDS LEARNED = 93.2 p/day
90 CHARACTERS LEARNED

ricksh
I'm clearing all the daily words due. About 1500-2000 p/day. (Which includes all my lists, not only HSK ones)
I try to clear as many due words as possible during the day, to always keep them fresh and forget as few as possible, as soon as I wake up I clear around 500, and during the day the rest of them while adding new words.

itaju
thanks for the good luck, I will try to have a 100p/day ratio by the end of the month.

you impress me, dude, keep on!

btw. you might have 1000+ words due every single day from September 1st on, so it will continue being a lunatic challenge :D

Crazy, what a challenge :) Good luck, keep it going!

(24 words learned to write myself last MONTH)

I'm happy if I can learn one new word a day. You're ambitious. How much do you think you will retain 100 days from now?

Just curious, how is it going? Are you skrittering 24/7? ;-)

06 august 113
07 august 79
08 august 52
09august 124

ratio 92p/day

I will update full stats tomorrow.

even if you stop now you are doing pretty good.

Friends arrived to beijing on saturday, went to KTV, got really drunk with cheap 白酒 and waked up on sunday at 4pm, I opened skritter to see horrified 3000+ items due. Also my memory got really affected by the alcohol haha, forgetting some words.
Took me 3 hours to clear them all and add 80 new words.
Today I learned only 47 words.

Advice, never get too drunk on baijiu

Haha, baijiu is the best. Congratulations you even managed to get drunk with it - I couldn't really drink much of it.

As for the challenge: I was quite busy the first 10 days, so I didn't even open Skritter on a few days, on others I just did some reviews, so they don't pile up too much. However, I'm still in and I think the next day will be much smoother.

Ahoy!

Things are looking better now that I'm fully sober, yesterday learned 150+ words!

Today already cleared my 1800+ piled reviews and preparing to learn 100+ new words

10/08 74
11/08 47
12/08 153

*I'm finding my reading speed considerably increasing day by day.
Right now I'm studying this books:
成功之路 Intermediate
Reading chinese this way lvl 4
汉语高级口语

Also trying to read at least 1 news article a day.

加油 mate

What is your current writing retention ratio? I'm at 90.1% (weekly stats) now, which is about 4% lower than the average July week.

But I think I still do fine, now I'm actually doing some words I've never seen or heard. Before that, there were a lot of words I "knew", but just haven't added to Skritter yet.

Can we get an update? Very curious th hear how this has been going?

13/08 77
14/08 25
15/08 -7
16/08 -9
17/08 54
18/08 70

... I've been really out of focus this past days. I will try to be back on track for this last part of the month.

*On one side note, I was featured in the top learners of this month :D.

I couldn't stick to 100 new words/day either. The last few days I did 1+ hours (in Skritter time) twice a day, and still didn't manage to learn that many. Also I found out that it has little value for me, because I have too limited exposure to these words. I'm not stay in China right now and after learning 3 hours (in real time) I don't have the motivation to also read another hour to get some exposure to the new vocab EVERY day.

So what I'm doing right now is: much less new words and try to get more exposure for these.

It's September 1st. Results?

Results:

LEARNED

2316 words
543 Characters

Spent 50.48 hours

I was 784 words short of my goal.

Cleared

HSK 1
HSK 2
HSK 3
HSK 4
HSK 5

and cleared half HSK 6

:)

I will start a new 50 words a day challenge for September.

My HSK 6 Written and oral exam will be the 06 of december.

First, let me say that I'm in awe. I'm barely managing 15 per day…
I
'm curious to know, some months after the fact, how good your retention is I find that I can ramp up the number of words per day for about a week, but if I don't either spend more time reviewing during the following weeks, or drop the number I add per day, I start running into problems.

It might just be because my job is mentally demanding and by the time I get around to study in the evening, my brain is mush. But still...