Hi all,

This is a theoretical question, I am now reaching 930~ characters in writing, and I seem to be learning characters much slower than ever. But when I look at my progress stats, I see that I am learning way more character definitions and especially word definitions than writings.

Is this because I am reaching a stage at which point I can learn a multitude of new words from the characters I already know?

If not, how come the SRS is not adding many new characters? I don't practice 1 hour per day... and I'll be going to China next July, I am hoping to get 2OOO by then (that's very slow, I know).

If you know of any method that could help me reach 3000 by next July, with 30-45 mins per day, I'd love to know! I already set skritter to add words very often and a low retention rate to avoid repeating the same items too often.

Well, that seems pretty normal for me. You now have enough characters to make a large number of words. If you really want to just work on characters without words, I believe there are multiple custom lists that can help you with that.

There seems to be two schools of thought on that issue. One school values characters first and foremost. According to that school, you focus on characters for the most part. After several thousand, you then start really worrying about words, grammar, etc. I have seen several people who seem to belong to that camp.

The other side says that the characters will come with time. You should focus on words. Be sure to learn how to write what you can say, but don't obsess over your character count. As new words demand you learn new characters, you learn them at that time.

I personally belong to the latter camp. I value word count over character count. With that said, someone once said something to me that implied Skritter is much better at tracking your character count than your word count. I honestly don't know about that.

Your situation about slowing down character wise seems normal to me, though.

@helixness it should all depend on what lists you are studying. Choosing something that interests you is the most important thing.

Although I'm not exactly sure why, I've always cared more about how many individual characters I know than words. At the same time, I don't like studying lists of single characters. I also like the idea of adding a few words that use a new character to get a feel for how you might see it in the wild.

I've really had to amp up how many words I input and add to Skritter to even get close to my goal of 100 new characters a week. It seems I often add 300 new words and only 50 new characters. Lately it's been easier because I've been studying minerals and animals, many of which have unique characters.

Anyone else have an insatiable appetite for new characters?

helixness, here's a list of the 3000 most common characters:

http://www.skritter.com/vocab/list?list=agVza3JpdHIWCxINVm9jYWJMaXN0SW5mbxj59_kNDA

@west316, Right, I had noticed these two schools and I also belong to the latter you described. Although it's weird: I tend to focus on my number of characters, it seems like my main goal but in reality I actually care more about vocabulary and words, because I practice speaking every day.

@Thomas, I am studying old HSK 1 list and New Practical Reader. But how do you get 100 characters in a week? is my memory simply not that good?! XD

When I open my vocab lists, I notice I got sections completed much faster before, and now sections simply don't seem to end...

300 (even 100) new words a week seems insane, how do you memorize vocabulary so fast? I am talking about vocabulary you learned well enough to use in spoken conversation ~~ recognizing definitions and writing characters doesn't seem to be the issue, it's using it.

thanks murrayjames, I'll give that list a try!

@helixness I think my situation is a bit different than the usual. My memory isn't too great, to be honest. Most words I learn are first used in my major classes, then I add them to Skritter, then I'm using them in class as I'm reading them in my textbook and hearing them repeated in the classroom. Not only do I get lots of repetition, but I also have lots of motivating factors to really smash them into my brain so I can answer questions when my teachers pick on me in class (way more than any of my Chinese classmates, by the way).

I put between 1.5 and 3 hours on the Skritter clock every day, with an average around 2 hours, usually in 2 or 3 sessions per day (a big help). I don't spend much time off the clock, though, so I think that time is much truer for me than what I hear from others.

Right, last semester I was in a chinese class and that probably helped me learn much faster too. Unfortunately, I finished all the classes my school could offer so I have to wait until I go to China!

Hopefully murrayjames' list will help me add more characters as well as words.

It's easy to get hooked on "scores" doing Scritter, but let's face it, you're learning a language not playing Asteroids.
Single characters can have so many different meanings that learning them in isolation is a bit pointless. The second character determines the meaning, so you really need to learn them in tandem. That way you get further frames of reference, and more variety with the repetition
You should be more pleased with what you've achieved!

@citroenamy - I couldn't help but laugh at that remark. I think there there is a lot of truth in your words, though. I have found that as time passes, my character counter is getting to where it barely increases at all. I could easily just drop a "6000 most frequent characters list, into my Skritter account and get several thousand characters, but I prefer the frame of reference from words.

I joke about the ease of learning it, but, in actuality, this last list I did of most common surnames has been a nightmare. It is just a character, a pronunciation, and the general knowledge that it is a surname. There isn't a whole lot there to generate some kind of memory hook with.

@helixness I like to add words from material I'm reading. My rule before I started Chinese classes was if I saw a word twice, I'll look it up and add it to Skritter. This method enabled me to learn lots of common characters and words for lots of situations. Also, books often use the same vocabulary throughout the book, which adds interest, motivation, and repetition to your reading pleasure.

Now, prepping for HSK tests and so on includes looking through the HSK lists and picking up anything I haven't seen or can't intuitively understand. I've been very pleased with how much I haven't had to study with Skritter, learning combinations of characters I already know through conversation. I've seen it mentioned here many times - conversation is the best learning tool (well, second to Skritter maybe)

I think conversation is number 1, and skritter comes after. Skritter doesn't only enforce characters but general vocabulary too. If I encounter I word I don't know, I immediately add it to skritter. Do you know any good books for an lower-intermediate level? My ex-girlfriend had this very old book with fables, it had pinyin under the hanzi. It was called 三百册 but it's impossible .. too old i guess.

@west316, surnames are indeed hard to memorize, but usually reading them isn't too hard as they utilize common characters with just an extra/different radical.

Speaking of character vs. word progress--have any of you changed your home page progress graph to display word writings instead of character writings?

@nick, I just discovered that feature today as I wondered why it had to be "character" writings instead of whatever else. Maybe that's why people strive to character counts instead... ha!

@Nick I just now noticed it after you brought it up. I always just go to the progress page if I am curious about those stats. Kind of cool to learn about that, though.

helixness, there is one way, to add a lot of characters, if you want. Take a character list, say the most common 3000 chracters and add some to your learning list. Once they pop up, you can go to the example sentences and see, how they are used and in which words. Then you can add those words additionally to your learning list. In this way, you increase your learned characters very fast plus have them always in context.

@Roland, yeah I have been doing that for the past two weeks. The thing is my queue is probably never ending, I once added a whole bunch of words to study (over 1000). I didn't really think at the moment, I just wanted many many words! Now it's impossible for me to add words in context :/

My situation just now -
I have added words here and there, and also all the HSK1-5 lists (2500 words). I have just exported all words from skritter and there is 3200.

I've just done a check in excel of how many words in HSK level 6 contain new characters - the result is about 1000. HSK 6 is an additional 2500 words, which i have not yet studied. So 1500 words in the list are just permutations of characters I already know.

@Neil

I am a bit of an Excel newb. I can do the basics, but I never really mastered it. If it isn't too much of a headache to explain, how are you using Excel to ferret out the words that have new characters?

I am also currently working on the HSK 6 list and am curious about my number. I would also like to cross reference my vocabulary against the 4 or 5000 most common characters to see what I still lack.

Excel sucks for doing list operations with strings and characters. So the manipulations involve a few ugly columns of half-calculation stages which are by no means an efficient way to do the task, but it works and if it takes a couple of seconds thats no problem.

Drop me an email at spuds747 at hotmail dot com, and I'll send it to you.

@ Neil

The email is away. Thanks for the help.

Be sure to tick the "Also Add Characters When Adding Words" box on your Language Settings page, so that for any word that contains unknown characters you will learn the separate characters too.

Your rate of progress doesn't sound anything out of the ordinary to me. Getting to 2.000 characters and 2.000+ words by july is definitely possible.

I have added several custom lists with characters based on frequency to my study lists, but I paused them all. When I feel I am ready to add some extra characters (I don't want my practice queue to become too long) I click the play button for the list I want on the "Active List" page and I add 10 or 20 characters manually. Then I pause the list again.