Skritter: Write Chinese 4+

My favourite app!

I’ve been using Skritter for about 3 months. I use it for about 10-15 minutes a day, with my morning coffee. I’m taking it slow, learning only about 1-2 new characters / words per day, but making sure to do all my revision.

Everyone talks about the importance of learning Chinese speech first, but that has not worked for me. I’ve tried to learn Cantonese for more than 15 years, starting with weekly evening classes. I also lived a year in Hong Kong. Yet (to my shame) I’ve never managed to learn enough to even keep simple conversations.

I really think Skritter is on to something. By learning the basics of reading I can start to immerse in a way that’s simply not available with speech. I can take all the time I need to decipher a menu, and don’t have to implore people to repeat or slow down again and again.

The spaced repetition is a game changer. It’s so much easier to motivate myself to practice knowing I’m practicing the most important words, at the right time, for maximum retention!

The handwriting recognition is not perfect. Some characters accept amazingly sloppy versions, while others are hilariously strict. Honest learners can override the score to correct for this, however, so it’s not a problem.

My wife’s family is from Hong Kong, so ideally I would learn Cantonese. No app I’ve found offers that, however, so I’m learning Mandarin with traditional characters instead. Skritter team, I’ll give you 7 stars if you add a Cantonese learning mode!

Developer Response ,

What an awesome review, thanks so much! Nice and slow is a great approach to get the SRS tailored to you without creating a situation where it's hard to keep up with daily reviews. Regarding handwriting-- you should check out the "raw squigs" modes which is more like pen and paper. One mode won't enforce stroke by stroke recognition, which is a bit of an extra challenge (and definitely worth it for retention). We do have some light Cantonese support! You can change your source language to "English / Cantonese" which will put Cantonese information into the definition areas when available. We hope to add much more support beyond this at some point in the future, too.

Best way to learn reading and writing Chinese

I’ve been using the original Skritter app for a couple of years and just moved over the new design. The Skritter concept is a great way to learn vocabulary from your textbook and also add your own lists and study any topics you want to learn. My reading and writing has improved so much with Skritter. I love that it breaks down characters for you, and teaches you separate character meanings in words, and offers user mnemonics to help you remember how the characters are built. The new version is more modern, prettier, and more responsive and gives you more freedom in adding words you want to learn so you can increase your learning speed. The app is so easy to use that you can just fit Chinese practice into your daily life. Much better than wasting time on Candy Crush!! I really love this app and it’s worth every penny of the subscription. When i has a question about the app, the team was super responsive and helpful. I would give it six stars if I could!

Developer Response ,

Westbromstayup, this might be the most uplifting review we've read-- thank you so much!!

Love the app- but I have suggestions for improvements!

It’s brilliant as I can learn vocab on the go, and as someone who’s going on a year abroad next year, I really appreciate the pre-made situational sets (especially the Taiwan-specific vocab!).

However, I think the app would be even better if I could choose whether I want some sets to be both trad and simplified, and some sets just trad. I’m learning Classical Chinese as well, and I would love to be able to designate my classical vocab as just traditional characters, so when I do my daily review, it doesn’t get mixed up! Also, it would be good if I could choose a pinyin in the edit function for this reason, as Classical characters often have different tones to their modern counterparts. Thanks!