Hello Skritter team.I ended my subscription 4 months ago and I am long time user of Skritter and really liked it.Now,I want to restart again but there is 23000 due in my skritter app.Is there are strategy to finish all due or restarting from zero is best option? I do not want to lose my progress.Is 2 hour working daily can make me finish this due in 1 month? I have more than 10k words in my skritter account.
Thanks,
Jahandar
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Hi Jahandar,
I cannot exactly answer your question, but I’m in kind of the same situation as you are. I had around 5000 words due and after a streak of 72 days I’m back to 3000. I only have a goal of 100 words a day, which takes me around 10 minutes. Not sure if this information will help you, as I don’t know the algorithm for card to be due, but with 2 hours daily, it should go much faster than me. On this forum there are more users having the same problem. I believe for now they are recommending setting a daily goal and slowly work through the due words. Good luck!
Sander
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As @SanderTrap says, the sanest option here is probably not to care about your total due count too much, but to set a daily goal and focus on that instead. Theoretically, you could set that goal to 23,000/30 to clear everything gin one month, but you could also set it to something much lower and spend the rest of the time reading or listening to more Chinese.
Below, I’ll share how I would think about your question. In your situation, there’s no ultimate solution that is always best no matter what. You can do anything from keeping everything and grinding away at the due count to nuking your account and starting from scratch. Both extremes are valid approaches, as is anything between them.
If you do the math for your 23,000 items, you need to clear one review every 9 seconds to be able to finish it all in one month. This assumes that you get everything right and no extra cards come due during this time, which isn’t realistic. However, 9 seconds is a very long time, considering that most reviews will be things you know quite well. Looking at ä˝ ĺĄ˝ and acknowledging that you still know how to read it takes maybe 1 second. I think you could probably clear your queue in one month if you really wanted to.
Should you, though? Probably not. It’s important to remember that your progress is in your head, not in the app. I know you already know this and that it’s obvious, but I want to point this out. A better approach would be to look through the content you have in Skritter and make a decision about how to deal with each deck.
- Ban or ignore things you’re sure you know (things that are likely too easy for you, even after taking a long break)
- Study and review things that are roughly at your level or below (i.e. things that yo were likely to get right four months ago)
- Ban or ignore things that were new to you when you added them four months ago (e.g. a new textbook you just started or that deck you just finished)
To clarify, when I say “ignore”, I mean that you don’t select these decks when selecting which decks to study. Unless you ban the items, they’ll still count towards your queue and you can deal with them later if you want. A bolder, and in my opinion better, alternative is to just ban them instead.
The above approach can be adjusted as you see fit. You can ban or ignore almost everything or keep most of it. Like I said, I don’t think there’s a clear right and wrong here, but unless you’re also spending more time learning in general, it seems a bit excessive to invest 60 hours in one month only on flashcards, but that’s just my opinion!
Hope this helps, and good luck!
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Thank you for detailed answer.I decided to clear the queue.One thing I want to ask.For example,if I choose only to clear 50 cards each time and made 20 mistakes,should I just exit the session and start the new one or I should finish until making all of them correct? Which one more beneficial in terms of learning and not forgetting.Is trying to finish all of them would make next reviews very longer or it does not affect scheduling? Previously,when I start a session,for incorrect answers,I did not continue and next day it was on due cards.Because I do not practice for 4 months,I forgot a lot of words and characters and at least I want to practice incorrect cards next day for not forgetting.Is finishing all cards in session good or bad for this situation?
I don’t think it affects scheduling, but research into scheduling and active recall generally shows that the longer the interval (the harder it is to recall something), the better the effect, assuming that you are able to successfully recall the information in question. So, in essence, if you can wait 30 minutes before reviewing the item again without reviewing it, that’s better than waiting 5 minutes. Practically speaking, I would wait until you’re done, but if you start forgetting things a second time because of this, you might want to shorten the interval.
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Oh, I also just remembered I wrote an article about this a few years ago. It’s not specifically about vocabulary, but might still be interesting: How to start learning Chinese again after a break | Hacking Chinese
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My English is not native,so I could not explain the situation correctly sorry. Here’s my situation:
Let’s say I review 10 cards in a session and get 5 of them wrong. I see two possible ways to handle this:
- Exit the session after making mistakes – The 5 incorrect cards remain incorrect at the end of the session, and they will likely show up in my next review (probably the next day).
- Correct all mistakes before ending the session – Instead of exiting, I keep retrying the 5 incorrect cards until I get them all right. Then, I finish the session with everything marked as correct.
My concern is whether these two approaches affect how Skritter schedules the next review for those cards. Specifically, in the second case (where I correct my mistakes before finishing), does Skritter assume I know those words better and schedule them much further into the future?
I don’t want these tricky words to be pushed back too far just because I eventually got them right after multiple attempts. Ideally, I’d like them to reappear soon so I can reinforce them properly.
How Skritter’s algorithm handles this? Should I leave mistakes uncorrected until the next session, or does fixing them immediately still ensure they will be reviewed sooner?Based on Skritter’s algorithm, does fixing mistakes within a session still cause those items to be reviewed sooner, or does Skritter treat them as if they were always correct?
Thanks for any insights!
Thanks for the detailed answer.I think banning newly added words good idea.I just want to know does it mean the unlearning option.For ex,if I ban and then unban some word,can I relearn it or after unbanning it will be added to queue without relearning?
Does Skritter assume I know those words better and schedule them much further into the future?
Technically yes, but not much farther. You’ll still see it after 1 day if you got a card wrong and then got it correct on the same day. I wouldn’t worry about pushing these words out too far by marking them correct in the end. Skritter does distinguish between a card you got right and a card you got wrong and then right in its scheduling. So, to answer your question: do what you think is best for your learning style.
If there’s more than one or two incorrect cards at the end or some really tricky new material, I personally like to save them for a separate review session I do later that day before marking them right–a little extra spaced repetition!
if I ban and then unban some word,can I relearn it or after unbanning it will be added to queue without relearning?
Banning means the word is learned and any reviews/progress you’ve done on its related cards is saved, but they won’t show up in your review queue. If you unban a word, its cards will be added back to your queue without relearning.
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