Study Kanji online with Skritter!

I recently became aware of a cool online study tool service called Skritter, which helps you study kanji (Chinese characters).

As someone who is always looking for good study methods and a self-proclaimed master of self-study (heh heh), I really admire this service and think that anyone can make good use of it.

Skritter is an online kanji study tool that allows you to review kanji that you already know. From looking at the site and its description, it may seem like it's some kind of teaching service that will teach you new characters, but that's not what it's about. It's a study tool for you to review the characters you've already taught yourself.

It combines everything you need to review, but it offers services that other programs and simply writing on paper cannot. Not only does it read to you, but it lets you write the characters directly onto the site. But it doesn't just let you write for practice -- you're supposed to write them properly.

I have to say that if you're dedicated to learning kanji and want an easy tool to efficiently practice kanji the right way, you should really go for Skritter. Here are the helpful parts to Skritter that I think make it the ultimate tool for reviewing the kanji you've already learned:

* Review system based on the Leitner system -- constantly review everything you need to with proper frequency. All automated for you so you don't have to shuffle cards around or think about what you need to review.
* Voice clips help you hear the kanji as you write them. Because you're reading, writing, and hearing all at the same time, you are fully immersed in the kanji learning environment to learn them in the best way possible.
* Judges stroke order. Anyone can tell you that stroke order is greatly stressed as important to writing kanji, and with Skritter, you will practice them in a way so that you review not only the character's appearance and reading, but the proper stroke order as well.
* Judges shape - You write in a box as you review, with guidelines, so that your kanjis come out looking the proper shape and size.
* Fully customizable - Choose what characters you want to study.

Skritter is an amazingly effective tool, and it can help anyone review the kanji that they have learned.

The only downside I can think of is that the kanji are not used in any kind of context -- you are only ever given what they look like, the kana for their reading, a voice clip of their reading, and a rough translation of the words you write.

Because of this, Skritter should mainly be used as a review tool, in my opinion. While it is possible to learn new characters through Skritter, and as you're using it, you certainly will learn some new ones anyway, I think you should keep the "discovery" of new kanji to a more "pick up" method, learning from experiencing them in natural usage, or through looking them up for words you already know through speaking but not writing.

Just learning a character on its own is not very helpful -- it's good to learn it as a way to write a word you already know. Though you'll pick up some new stuff from Skritter, I think it definitely shines as a review tool, and it will definitely help you reach mastery of every kanji you've ever learned.

And no, I was not paid to write this or anything. It's just an honest product review of a service I recently stumbled upon :)