I am wondering what is the best way to manage the time spent learning chinese, in particular how much of that time should one spend using skritter?
These days, a large part of my studying time is using skritter (20-30 minutes per day) and I don’t spend that much time on actual reading and listening practice, maybe 10 minutes a day. So sometimes I feel I don’t get enough context for the words I’m studying on skritter.
So I was just wondering how do you guys spend your study time? How long do you use skritter per day and how much do you study using other methods? And what are your experiences with that?
Currently my study time more or less consists of Skritter 15-20 mins a day on the way and back form work on the train, 10-20 mins of listening to grammar and dialogues on Chinesepod while walking or doing chores or watch youtube videos in Chinese 10 mins or watch Chinese drama with subtitles, though I don’t understand much, I pick up new vocabs and hear some grammar points that I learned from Chinesepod in action. I also try to record myself speaking short dialogues everyday and listen to it then fix my pronunciations, it takes about 10 mins or so. I have 2 hours once a week semi private lessons so I spend maybe about 30 mins to one hour a week doing my homework mostly composing a story and/or a dialogue.
I don’t do all of those at once but I mix and match what I can fit in a day and what I feel like doing that day. So far so good, I think I’ve been doing something similar for about 11 months now. When I go on holiday and not do any of those, it’s super hard to get back on track, so this year I had a period of maybe a month when I did the bare minimum of 5-10 mins of Skritter a day and not much else. It was pretty bad, I forgot a lot of stuff. I find grammar particles are the ones I can’t remember without hearing it in context.
I spend about an hour on Skritter Chinese and try to get at least 10 new words in every weekday, often doing less on weekends. I also do Anki flashcards for grammar and reading comprehension which takes an hour or less on weekdays. I Wechat and voice message a few of my Chinese friends regularly which seems to help a lot. I use Hinative when I don’t feel like bothering a friend for explanations of things that don’t translate well. On the weekends I will watch a Chinese movie or a few hours of an easy show (currently SpongeBob in Chinese). My biggest issue is finding opportunities to practice really speaking rather than just sending voice messages.
I spend about an hour or two per while walking or lying down, I have it set to traditional and simplified so it takes a little longer. I make sure to do at least 3 sections of Duolingo per day, to keep my streak going, 40. Those are the constants.
On thing I like about my regimen is that when I run into a word in Duolingo from Skritter, I know it and feel very confident with it. I get to hear it used in a sentence. Just yesterday I’ve started something new, only listening to the Chinese in Duolingo, and not read because I realized I need the listening practice more.
The variable practice I pop into the Chinese language subreddit, many there are more advanced than me though, I also check out Twitch streams in Chinese, and try to see how much I understand which is usually nothing spoken, but the typing in the chat starts to look familiar.