Hi
M'y rétention raté is getting lower and lower as i havé Been studying for 4 month.
Thé annual rétention raté is around 88% but with an aim of 95% (raised to 97% last week). It drops to 70% when it comes to thé daily rétention raté.
I m scared thé annual rétention raté Will décrease to 0% as i keep studying.
What can i do to increase it ?
Thanks

I've been studying with Skritter for almost 1.5 years and my current total retention rate is 81.5%, and frankly speaking, I don't give a damn about it. As long as I'm learning more words and characters, this is all that matters.

A low total retention rate indicates that my memory is not as good as that of most other people. (And I know all too well that this is true in my case). However, bad memory doesn't mean that a person like me can't learn foreign languages. Chinese is my third foreign language already, so I think I'm doing pretty well in spite of my bad memory... ;)

I also wouldn't worry about your retention rate too much. Some goods tactics are to study every day (which it looks like you have been!), and also to make sure that the queue is cleared every day as well. Even better would be to study first thing in the morning, and also right before going to bed (clearing the queue).

Hi

Thanks for your quick answers. It's true; anyway I learn new words, so I shouldn't give much attention to this.

Talking about clearing queues, I think my retention rate drops, because even after my queue is cleared, I keep studying for a while (my aim is 20 minutes a day, which is higher than the time required to clear up everything).

So mechanically, new words are added every day, hence my low retention rate.

Do you think that on a long term it's a good idea to go beyond the daily load ?

Thanks

I think going past the daily load is ideal for learning vocab as quickly as you can, since you will be seeing new words more frequently with a cleared queue (which also explains a lower retention rate since you a grading many new words as wrong). I say go for it!

As long as you keep Skrittering at the same pace consistently putting in roughly the same amount of time, that's the key. It also helps to study words that you read/see outside of Skritter, which helps the retention rate significantly. For instance if you are reading a book, to only add words from the book and keep your Skritter progress equal with your progress in the book.

Like Jeremy said, I've found out memory works best before going to bed and just after waking up.