What are your Skritter Related Goals for 2013?

In 2012, with the help of Skritter and Heisig Volume 1, I learned 1200 Chinese Characters.

This year I plan to learn the remaining 1800 Chinese Characters in Heisig Volume 1 and 2, and start working on HSK 1-4 Vocabulary.

Finishing HSK5 would be nice, but I doubt it will happen.
Hopefully begin to be able to construct sentences with the help of the example sentences update.

2013 Goal: HSK 4 mastery
2014 Goal: HSK 5 mastery
2015 Goal: HSK 6 mastery

On a side note - Why are you using Heisig and not just following the HSK lists?

How has Heisig helped you remember characters?

夏普本 - Are you learning characters before you learn Mandarin?

Frank Pereny,

Heisig only covers only single characters (not 'words'). With the Heisig method, I learn about 10 characters a day in 30 minutes (including Skritter review). It's basically a mnemonic approach, and Heisig has taken care of assigning
a unique keyword to each character and component. I also use the Matthews approach to make mnemonics for character pronunciation.

I tried learning characters without mnemonics before, and I found it slow and I kept forgetting them. I was also lazy and didn't want to write them over and over again for hours :)

I ordered my HSK vocabulary so that all HSK words will contain characters that I've already learned in Heisig order.

I started with Heisig and soley studied characters until I hit 1000, then started looking at word combinations and finally sentence constructs. Heisig worked well in dampening the initial shock of learning a seemingly impossible writing system.

I continued to use mnemonics until I reached about 1500, but now I don't use them so much. Just for those characters that are causing me trouble.

I'd like to have all of the 常用漢字 memorized by the end of the summer. After that maybe I'll dig into some Chinese~

Working toward 5000 characters for the end of 2013 and continuing to add lots of new vocabulary based on the books and newspaper articles I've been reading. On track so far with just over 4500 characters and counting!

Words take a bit more time to add, since I generally only add new words every few weeks when I take the time to review words I've added to Pleco and decide which ones I actually want to learn to write.

At some point I'll also start working on simplified characters and fill in some gaps so I'm ready for "Chinese 101" and "Intro to Chinese Characters" classes that I'll be teaching this fall. Although I can read simplified without issue, writing some of the more obscure simplifications on the blackboard will take some work.


All the best on your Skritter goals everyone!

My favorite useless simplification: 够

Why's that useless, Frank? There were two variants with the same meaning/pronunciation in traditional Chinese. One of them was chosen (and one was eliminated) in simplified Chinese. Seems reasonable enough to me.

SkritterJake, do you still go through character lists, or is all your new characters from vocabulary?

I'm currently on around 850 written characters. I'm moving to China in August so want to hit 1000 before I do!

The reason it is a useless simplification is traditional and simplified just swap the positions of 句 and 多. It's not any simpler!

Allow me to shamelessly quote Wenlin:

From 句 jù phonetic and 多 (duō) 'much', sometimes in reverse order.
(We call 够 the "simple" form and 夠 the "full" form, only because 够 is in the simple-form GB standard and 夠 is in the full-form Big5 standard.)
The more complex character 彀 gòu is also sometimes used instead of 够.

I have no "real" sources at hand, but you might want to look at it in a bit more detail.

Pass HSK 5, be able to read basic books and magazines without much trouble for the end of the summer.
Improve my 写作.

I started the experiment of spending two hours of skritter every day (for one year). When this year will be over in September I will see how far I have come...

ohhhhhh I am getting so jealous when I see you young guys adding 800 words in a month...

Does anyone really learn 800 brand new words a month? Or are a lot of these words that were already known, but not added to Skritter yet?

^I don't know about everybody else, but I can learn that many and more... or at least I could if I didn't have so many gosh darn reviews bogging down my motivation levels lol

@lechuan Most of my new characters now come from 台灣通用字彙, which cover 5568 characters that match the nine grades of compulsory education in Taiwan. Of course any other characters I learn get added as well. One that is rather vivid is 咒 (zhou4: incantation, curse) that came up a million times in Harry Potter.

I've been spending a lot of time reading aloud lately so it really helps me to know a huge amount of characters. I can usually parse new words without a problem and context allows me to make solid guesses as to what new words mean. But not knowing how to read a particular character is rather frustrating. Skritter helps put those crazy characters in my brain, and reading (a lot) helps make meaning and usage stick.

My new words are added from a collection of novels I'm reading (one or two a month for now), textbooks (6 this semester), thesis papers, news articles and lectures. No real rhyme or reason to them, so they just go into my miscellaneous list every few weeks.

As for people learning 800 new words a month. It sure seems like a lot, but if you have a firm grasp on the characters the words are composed of, it is certainly possible. Nick learned 3000 words over the course of three months last year. Not sure how many he didn't already know, but it's still very impressive. The big thing is keeping reviews from building up as KichinToJ indicates. I'm keeping my reviews to 200 or less per-day with 20-30 minutes of Skritter, usually 15 in the morning and another 10 to 15 at night. I also try to just let Skritter auto add words so I don't get overwhelmed. Not having to keep up with a Chinese class, however, certain makes this process a lot easier.


Lists for Taiwan's 5568 common use characters can be found below for anyone interested:

(第一級) http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=247151555
(第二級) http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=247204267
(第三級) http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=247216105
(第四級) http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=247190315
(第五級) http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=247183442
(第六級) http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=247166657
(第七級) http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=247188383
(第八級) http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=247163747
(第九級) http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=247168605

勺 is part of the ninth grade curriculum? That can't be right... I mean, I'd imagine most children learn it in kindergarden.
Can you shed some light on what those lists are used for in the Taiwanese school system, Jake?

-Edit-
I mean, surely, all teenage brats will know how to write 傻 long before seventh grade, how else would they bully each other?

@Laspimon, the lists are ordered and based on frequency of some kind, not the actual grade level in which characters might be introduced. I'm sure kids learn 傻 very early on!

Here is the list source (in Chinese) along with related information: http://ow.ly/gfO2H

Ah I see. Still, I notice a pattern in those research results:

In third grade, the students are taught that children 童 must follow the rites 禮儀, and not to be bad 壞.

In fourth grade, as the hormones start bubbling, the books start preparing for the storm, by introducing 蛋.
In fifth grade, the books are calling the students 混蛋.
in sixth grade, the books are calling the students 笨蛋.
In seventh grade, the books are calling the students 傻蛋.

By grade eight my traditional chinese is no longer strong enough to follow along, apart from the fact that they obviously start studying the classics in the original language (e.g. 曰矣云). So one can only suppose that the students are starting to prepare to attain adulthood, which is to say (as we have seen in the above) that they will no longer be oppressed, but start to act the oppressors (and who better to learn from than our dear Xunzi (荀) himself?).

Now... I am obviously procrastinating. Back to the books!

My skritter goal for the month of may is learn 50 words a day (some I already know but don't know the exact tones or how to write properly), I will be adding from 5 sources mainly:
1.博雅汉语 中级 冲刺篇
2.汉语口语 提高篇
3.random articles
4.internet
5.chinese pod

So by the end of the month I should master these 1500 words. :)

Some of the new words I added today include : 禽流感 (bird flu) and 口罩 (gauze mask) haha better be protected from the H7N9.

加油！!

i thought about how much time i am spending on tones and reading exercises in skritter...

i guess some "smart folks" just disable all the tones and the reading in order to get more "characters learnt" at the end of the day...

any thoughts?

My goal is to keep up my average of about 15 minutes of Skritter per day, in addition to using other resources such as books and movies, and to take HSK3 this Autumn. Chinese is very much part time for me, but I like to keep miving forwards instead of backwards. I knew pretty much zero words/characters when I joined Skritter last year as the iOS app was released.

I have found that 'learning' too many new words at once creates an 'echo-boom' of reviews down the line, and I don't feel I have really learned something until I recognize it in speach and can use it in context, so my slow rate is working well for me.

I suppose everyone learns differently but I have found it very difficult to learn isolated characters out of context (loving the example sentences so far!) that aren't usable on their own, so Heisig is useless for me.

1. Practice 5,200 sentences in Anki
2. Be able to sing along with 52 Mandopop songs
3. Make one comment in Chinese every day on Facebook
4. Win at Skritter

Some of you seem to push yourself hard, don't forget to have fun though ;)

I have re-worked my goals a bit and have a bit more laid back approach;

1. Keep remembering the approx 750 chars so far...
2. Learn more and pass 1000 by year end (1200 bonus)
3. Probably try to take and pass at least HSK3 and maybe HSK4 (bonus) in octobre
4. try to talk more with local chinese neighbour and whoever can speak chinese around here
5. Finish the 500 and 750 character chinese breeze graded readers I bought

Of course 1-2 using Skritter :)

Pass HSK 4 exam. :)

Have started New Practical Chinese Reader vol 5 by the end of this year.

can we also find the lists for chinese mainland learners?

I'm not too sure what you are asking for. Do you want a list like the one Jake posted for Taiwanese schools?

(Just for the record, Jake's list is not "the" lists. It's just one research result. And it is descriptive of the Taiwanese school system, rather than prescriptive.)

1 year on skritter today.
485 hours.
1730 characters.
3444 words.

Hopefully will match that over the next year, but nevertheless I think I got my money's worth.

夏普本, congratulations!
Isnt it amazing what you can achieve in one year...

My year is over in July. Right now I hav 1330 characters.