We’re picking up using Skritter again for Astroboy after dropping it for Thumper a few years back because I decided we weren’t focusing on her writing yet.
In the meantime Skritter has upgraded to 2.0 beta version. I’m finding that my own Skritter notes weren’t very clear the first time so here’s an updated quick start version for iOS. Though before I do so, I want to say my impression has stayed the same for Skritter Traditional Chinese: 1) it is not really meant for children who can’t read well yet as there’s no zhuyin, as much as I wish it were. 2) configuration isn’t intuitive between iPad interface and online interface.
So here’s a quick start:
- Sign up for account online via Skritter
- Download the iOS app
- Login into the app
- Click on the Lists, then Published icon at the bottom of the screen and search for Sagebooks1.
- Click on Study List. It will prompt you for which book to start studying from. You probably want to just add one set at a time, otherwise if you added all 5 sets to your list, it will randomly add characters from all 5 sets.
- ALTERNATIVELY: If you have specific characters you want to study, you can also click on the Contents tab, click on each individual Book, e.g. Book 1, select those words, then Add to List to add all the words from just one book at a time instead.
- Click on Settings. Change it to the following (adjust to your liking as necessary)
- Study
- Auto Advance Time: 4s (time before advancing to next character)
- Hide Reading: off
- Stroke Order: 80%
- Raw Squigs: On (This shows your writing as is instead of transforming it to standard text)
- Volume: Max!
- Sound Effects: On
- Auto Pronounce: On
- Extra Chinese Sounds: Download
- Vocab
- Style: Traditional
- Retention Rate: 90%
- Writing: On
- Reading: Off
- Tone: Off
- Definition: Off
- Heisig Keywords: On (mnemonic for remembering how to write)
- Download Sentences: On
- Language: Traditional Chinese
- Add Frequency: Normal
- Characters in Words: On
- Study
- Voila. Now click on Study to start studying your characters.
This is just a quick start. I have not gone into some of the more interesting features such as editing mnemonic or frustrations such as not showing you how to write the first time or ability to set a timer.
Links
- Check out Skritter’s documentation on what each of these settings mean.
- Skritter’s Website
- Sagebook Lists (Set 1, Set 2, Set 3, Set 4, Set 5)
Hi! Quick question, would you know of any groups through which I could get a Skritter subscription? I’ve been using it quite successfully to teach my 4-year-old son, but given that I also need a subscription for myself to work on my own writing, it has gotten quite expensive for us.
We did a group buy last year in the Raising Bilingual Children FB group. You can look there to see how it’s done and contact me.