Ah, yes, then I support that wholeheartedly! I experienced a noticeable boost in reading comprehension and my ability to guess the meaning of new words after doing this. I even wrote about it here (but note that I don’t recommend doing exactly what I did, just that the idea of learning individual characters can be very helpful if done right):
I’m a little confused by this. Why would you need a separate single character list for your words. Doesn’t Skritter already break the words you are learning into single characters as you review? It does for me.
This is a setting option in legacy (characters within words), but I can’t find it as an option in the new Skritter.
I’m pretty sure that is happening as I review in the new Skritter. I’m certainly getting single characters from the words I have input.
If others are not getting this, why am I?
I get that too. Thought it was standard 
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I do not get words broken down into characters. I only get what I exactly have on my lists. I would not want it to automatically do that either. I only use the new iOS app and looking quickly through the settings did not see an option to turn on the behavior to add single chars from a word….but vaguely do remember seeing it in either the old app or list management.
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Well this is interesting. I have the “characters within words” option checked on my legacy app. I wonder if that is replicated on the (legacy?) website.
It is automatic on my new Skritter app, so it must have carried over somehow from legacy. I prefer it that way.
However, it should be an option on the new app, as it is on legacy.
Edit: I don’t get every single character for every single word on my list. The algorithm seems to take care of that, as I only get single characters to review if I haven’t seen them in a long while. So I never get common characters in review if they occur in a word, not if I know them well.
(No numbers, measure words, or other well-known characters within words show up in review. For example, if a new word is 酷熱 I will get that word in review, as well as the single character 酷 in review because it is new to me, but not the single character 熱 because I know it already. That is very desirable behaviour in my view.)
@SkritterJake this is a question for the team!
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Adding individual characters while learning new words can currently be enabled on the website from the User Study Settings page here: https://skritter.com/account/settings/study
Turning this on does not add characters from previously learned words to your review queue. Because this operation is not automatic or retroactive we’ve kept it out of the Skritter: Write Chinese and Skritter: Write Japanese apps for the time being.
If you’ve had this setting enabled from the website or older mobile apps, then the app has been adding contained characters automatically the whole time and no further action is needed. If you’re interested in turning this setting on and want to add characters for previously learned words you currently have two options for retroactively adding contained characters.
- Reset deck/ deck-section level progress and re-learn all items, which will now add contained characters
- Use the vocab info screen for any previously learned item in a deck and press the “Learn Now” button to study individual words again. Once you’ve studied an item this way the contained characters will be added to your queue if you’re not already studying them from another deck.
Note on scheduling
Scheduling for these characters can vary depending on the client you’re using or if you’ve studied the single-character words in other decks. On the legacy iOS clients, the contained character scheduling is adjusted based on your word-level grading. Skritter website and the newer mobile apps do not do this. So, multi-character words will not adjust scheduling due values for contained characters.
Additional considerations
- Turning on this setting does not introduce individual characters during learn or test activities.
- Turning on this setting can balloon a review queue very, very quickly (美国 for example goes from 4 cards to 12 total cards added to review)
- Disabling this setting will not remove contained characters that have been previously added to your queue
If it isn’t obvious from all the stuff above, this setting is tricky to control and is even harder to explain. If you’re looking to up your character game (and not already using this setting) I would recommend using frequency decks or creating custom study decks for characters really giving you trouble instead.
Single Character Study Decks
In addition to some of the individual character decks above, here are dynamic links to study decks on Skritter to check out.
The first deck comes from a Beijing Language Institute Frequency Database and is based on a character word-forming ability—SUPER COOL! The Skritter Chinese Character Course not only teaches ~150 characters/components but also has section-level videos that cover just about everything you need to know about character learning theory. I’ve also included the nine Taiwan lists @SkritterOlle made, which cover 5568 individual characters.
- 800 Prolific Characters
- Skritter Chinese Character Course
- 台灣通用字彙（第一級）
- 台灣通用字彙（第二級）
- 台灣通用字彙（第三級）
- 台灣通用字彙（第四級）
- 台灣通用字彙（第五級）
- 台灣通用字彙（第六級）
- 台灣通用字彙（第七級）
- 台灣通用字彙（第八級）
- 台灣通用字彙（第九級）
Happy studies!
-Jake
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Thanks for the explanation @SkritterJake, although it’s true I did not quite fathom all of it!
I like the legacy algorithm for characters within words just fine. I rarely get old characters that I don’t need to practice, and I do get new characters that need extra time. It works great, doesn’t load up the review all that much, so I for one am leaving the setting turned on.
Though I can’t imagine the complications you guys have had to deal with to convert everything and more importantly sustain so many things from the legacy app and website. Must be a helluva tangle.
This Wikipedia page includes 8105 characters:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Table_of_General_Standard_Chinese_Characters
I tried to create a Skritter list with them, but there are two caracters in the level 2 and many more in the level 3 that can’t be found in Skritter. More information about the list can be found here:
Perhaps this could be a good addition to the offical Skritter lists?
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