just skrittering away here and I just had an idea:

wouldnt it be nice if say at the end of the week or enf of the month we would get a personal mail with the 20 or 30 words that dont stick to our brain?

this way we could give the little buggers special attention.

ummm, sounds sensible, but isn't that the whole point of Skritter? Words you know the least well are shown more often. If you try to add "special attention" on top of that you are second-guessing Skritter. But I would say that when I took the hacking Chinese challenge I got more diligent about creating my own mnemonics for "the little buggers" which did seem to help.

If the Skritter 'Export my words' gave you he option to add some of the SRS info such as when a word is scheduled for review, whether it is was wrong last etc, as well as maybe how many times a word has been failed, then it would be easy to produce this sort of report of your words to concentrate on.

I agree that SRS would naturally bring these words around, but sometimes I feel that if I just can't get a few words I like to single them out for some extra practice- look up their usage, ask for help with them, etc.

To get around this I use the iPhone app StickyStudy in parallel with Skritter, and it has a wonderfu zoomablel view where you can see all your words or sentences at once, colour coded and sorted by how well you know them. I always import the same words to both apps.

Alan,
Re: "...sorted by how well you know them", Could you say a bit more about StickyStudy? How does it "know" how well you know a word? Is it another SRS program or just a place for you to enter statistics?

StickyStudy is an SRS type flashcard app, and it assigns one of 5 colours to each flashcard according to how well you know them. I'm not sure if this is considered bad form from an SRS point of view (you can even just open a flashcard and change the colour), but it is really handy to be able to browse and keep track of which words you are getting stuck on. Here's an example, you can see the words that I was having problems with at the time (red, orange), and the words I knew well (green):

http://files.hskhsk.com/screenshots/StickyStudyHSK2.png

You have to import your own pinyin and definitions (which is a huge disadvantage relative to Skritter) which can be exported from Skritter or created using a PC program. The interface is great though - very elegant and consistent with other iPhone apps (no funny button sizes or placements etc.) I switch between Skritter and StickyStudy, as each has it's own advantages and disadvantages.

@Alan, where and how do you import the new words for your own list?

I am using Quizlet - its surface isnt that good looking but its very convenient to import new vocabulary on the desktop and then review the list on the Quizlet app on my iphone.

To import you copy and paste tab separated text like this straight into StickyStudy:

http://files.hskhsk.com/lists/HSK%20Official%20With%20Definitions%202012%20L1.txt

(I suppose the simplified or traditional and one or both of the pinyin types could be left blank, if you weren't interested in them)

Hi Alan, me again. where do you do the import? in the phone app, ipad app or on your laptop.
if laptop which url?

thanks!