I just realized that it had passed the 15th, and I hadn't gotten a Skritter newsletter. Is there not one this month, or did I just not get an email?

It where send out and is also on line here http://www.skritter.com/newsletters/10-09

I did get this mail but do have some problems from time to get the progress reminder mails.

Did also see in the mail that our average retention rate is 90.01%. I have to work harder to get up to that...

I didn't get it either - wierd eh?

Looks good though - and nice piece there madarin boy

Thanks. The stats they present on the news letter is interesting. We spend some 4070 hours last month. Let's say that we on average spend 15 minutes per day per user, then we are maybe some 600 users or so. Not bad but still to few for such an extremely useful site. More interesting is that we almost learn 1900 characters per day!. That is impressing. If we take the old number for literacy in Chinese: 1500 Chinese characters (for a farmer) and 2000 characters (for an office worker or urban resident) that mans that they produce about one new every day:-)

@ Mandarinboy: "1500 Chinese characters (for a farmer) and 2000 characters (for an office worker or urban resident)"
Office workers need to know a lot more than 2000 characters, at least 4000+, excluding a number of less common characters that need to be recognized.

I know that by we are talking about literacy here, not fluency. Also,those are the old numbers back from the time Mao decided things in China(1952) and UN tried to define this. Modern studies in China say that you need between 3 and 4 thousand characters to be literate in Chinese. Compared to the approximately 47,035 there kangxi dictionary. Well I have some more study to do there. In japan they have a much more strict system around this that clearly state the number and the actual Kanji you have to learn. Totally love the Japanese efficiency. Feels so nice to come back to Japan and the structure again even after a shorter visit to China;-)

I didn't get it either.

I received it fine...

I got it as well.

We may have had serving problems while sending it out which caused many of them to not send? I'm not sure. I'll put a blog post with it to increase exposure.

@mandarinboy The profile is very interesting. What did you do for the UN?

Regarding memory problems: years ago I went to Guatemala to study Spanish. The oldest student at my school was a man in his early 70's who had suffered a serious stroke which impaired his speech and memory. His neurologist recommended that he study a foreign language to help his brain recover; apparently even older people's brains retain a high degree of plasticity and can re-wire themselves to work around damage. Even though his speech was still somewhat impaired, his Spanish was much better than mine, and he was making visible progress. After I met him I thought "I have absolutely no excuse." ;)

James

@jww1066 I where at the peace keeping forces for some 10 years. Love your comments about age and memory. That is so true. My parents where 68 when they took up night classes in English. After 6 month they book their first ever abroad ticket to London. They did just fine on their school English. Eve at the age of 71 my dad did beat me in Tetris. Your brain do get slower by time but you can get it back in shape just as you can with your body at any time in life. My daughters learn Chinese much faster than I ever will be able to do but I am still not hopeless either. Actually I can still notice improvements in my learning capability just by study some languages every day. I am part of an medical study where they scan my brain. The brain is not growing but the number of synapses is growing. That is cool. By repeating what i am learning I can actually see the brains motorway grow. That is also what is happening when old people study. You can't really grow new brain cells but the connections between them can grow and make it easier/faster to recall what you have learnt. Up to the age of 7 children are extremely adopted to learn languages. After that it is gradually decreasing since other areas such as emotions develops and takes over some of that power. My daughter learn Chinese by osmosis, Yes I am sure:-) She is the only non Chinese child in her Chinese state run school and she is just learning at super speed. Got to love those brains.