Skritter Review: Learn how to write Chinese characters

What is Skritter?

Skritter is, in my opinion, the best way to learn how to write Chinese characters.

Since I started to use it ten minutes per day (about two months ago) I’ve learned how to write 492 characters and 169 words (composed by two or three characters). I’m also learning the meaning and pronunciation of those characters.

Why do you need a software to write characters?

If you watched the video at the beginning of this post you already know that the software is pretty cool.

But the real reason for using Skritter is the algorithm behind the software, which allows you to remember more than the 90% of the characters that you are studying (in the photo below you can see that in the last 30 days I was able to remember the 92.9% of the characters that I studied, it’s the green number on the bottom-right corner).

My stats with Skritter in the last 30 days

Skritter is a Spaced Repetition Software (SRS). I’ve explained what a SRS is here.

In a nutshell, when you review the characters by yourself you are often forced to review all of them without a precise scheduling. Conversely, Skritter keeps track of your mistakes and shows you more often the characters that you still don’t know how to write.

When you are dealing with fifty or one hundred characters this may seem a small advantage. But when the characters sum up it translates in a huge gain of time.

How much does it cost?

Skritter costs 14.99 USD per month. You get a week of free trial, you pay month by month so you can unsubscribe when you want, 100% money back guarantee and, if after a while you decide to don’t pay anymore for your subscription, you can still keep using the software for free to review the characters that you have already learned.

How to use the software

If you have an iPod or iPad you can write your characters on the touchscreen. Unfortunately at the moment the app for Android doesn’t exist so that, if you have an Android smartphone (or if you don’t have a smartphone), you can only use Skritter on your laptop.

You have three choices: use your mouse, use the touchpad on your laptop, or invest in a pen tablet. At the moment I’m using the mouse and I find it comfortable enough.

My experience with Skritter

I’ve being playing with Skritter since late November. However I only started to use it seriously almost two months ago.

At the moment my goal is to learn the HSK list from level one to four. Also, I want to learn all the radicals (that is the basic elements of Chinese characters) because I think that in the long term knowing the radicals will help me to remember how to write the more complicated words as 跳舞 or 游泳.

So far I’ve learned 492 characters, which is not bad if you consider that I only use Skritter ten minutes per day.
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