It Took me 4 months which works out to be like 2.8 characters a day. I didn’t start from 100% scratch though, as I’ve previously learnt 150 chars of the old HSK 1 a few years ago. But it’s been literally years since then so I’d definitely forgotten a good chunk of them. I’m in my 40’s with a wife, kids, house, career etc so wasn’t trying to go too fast, just trying to be consistent.
Assuming this keeps up, hoping too knock off the HSK 2 list before the end of the year. It’ll be interesting to see if I can. On the one hand since I’ve already learnt loads of the components and sounds there isn’t as much “scaffolding” to learn along with HSK2 list. But on the fip side there will be many words I’m learning for the first time (as opposed to HSK 1 where I knew all the words already, just couldn’t ready/write most of them). Interesting to see if it’s faster/slower/equal with the HSK2 list - either way I’m sure it’ll be different!
So I was on track to do this - even had a little google sheet that extended the trend line of how fast I was burning them down clearly showing I would make it around mid December. I was pretty chuffed about it to. Instead though, I decided to intentionally slow down and almost certainly not make it (will prob hit end of Jan if not later instead).
There are 2 reasons:
I realise I’m doing more SRS reviews that input. This isn’t just HH, I’ve got some old sentence decks I still add to + review etc, but if I’m going to put in an hour to an hour and a half to studying Chinese every day, spending 1 hour of that doing SRS reviews is just way too much. If I had 5 hours to spare then sure, 1 hour of SRS reviews is fine, but my goal is to be able to USE the language, not to win the SRS competition. If I want to improve my listening, I should practise that!
I’ve hit a point where a lot of the characters I’m learning in HH are often for things I don’t yet know. I’m fairly certain it’s because most content still follows the old HSKv2 vocab lists, while HH has all the HSKv3 additions. I sit somewhere in the level 3 to 4 area in the old HSKv2 version, but there so many extra chars/words in the new HSKv3 bands that lots of new level 2 characters I’m hitting are new to me. It’s great, I like them, they all seem useful but I find them much harder to learn. Mapping a character to something I already understand is comparatively easy compared to learning a new character that doesn’t fit into any existing knowledge.
So I’m going to do a few things:
Drop new SRS items down significantly so my SRS time gets closer to 20 mins a day across all of them. This means going from 15 items a day to 5 in HH.
Spend significantly more time on input (either reading DuChinese or watching LazyChinese/Peppa pig etc)
Prioritise characters/words in HH that I actually want to learn. I’m not studying for the HSK exam, I don’t care the order I learn things in. I know how to say loads of stuff I can’t yet read - I should learn those characters instead of the strict HSK list (especially now the dictionary words are available!).
For the new words that do show up in the HH queue, try to learn how to use them as they appear in HH, don’t just try to grind it out in isolation.
That’s a great plan! I think HanziHero is most effective when viewed and treated as what it is: a supplemental tool. The key to making good progress - and to verify that HanziHero is working for you! - is definitely continual engagement with actual material that uses Chinese. Finding that balance between structured studying a la HanziHero (or other tools) and immersion can be a bit tricky though in my experience, but it seems you got a good grasp on it.
The thing is because I’ve been prioritising quite a bit of stuff from the dictionary I have another ~60 characters learn on HH as well, they’re just from different levels so didn’t help progress to the HSK2 graph specifically.
Even with those extra characters, I’m still mega slow compared to a lot of the other posts you see here. My graph will give you a pretty good idea of why:
From December to March I kept up with reviews, just stopped adding new cards so the flat graph isn’t actually no HH study. But March to June did nothing. That lead to a substantial backlog of about 1k due reviews which took all of July to clear, but since July I’ve been pretty solid, only missing 1 or 2 days.
I think I’m in the minority in that while I think Chinese characters are damn cool, I don’t actually enjoy them. I think they’re a necessary evil on the way to my goal of being conversational. Without learning characters, the homophones area a killer, and new words aren’t nearly as easy to learn - so it is worth my time continuing. But I don’t have the motivation/grit to keep up the 20 new items a day and grind it out. I want to talk to people and watch interesting shows - characters are just such a drag. But any time I do keep up with them, that talking to people and interesting shows goes better.
So I’ll keep at it for the foreseeable future … at this rate it’ll take me 3.5 years to get to my target of 3k characters. But on the flip side I’m old enough thata 3.5 years doesn’t actually seem like a long time any more lol!
Thanks for telling that! I’m also like you and not trying to win the SRS compatition but to use the language. Since I’ve finished the entire free plan on HanziHero, I can’t learn new items but only to review. Also, I’ve started high school junior so I don’t have a lot of time to spend on learning Chinese.
Right now I’m trying to switch to Anki but I’m really picky about the setup that it takes me forever. Like it’s already been 11 days and I’ve done only about 40% of the setup (I still need to add audio for exmple). It’s a bit tiring to do both the reviews and finishing the setup.
Lol I’m with you, entering my late 30s and got very busy at work and prepping for our first kid, so I have not been adding anything for a month to get my reviews back down to under 100/day, then I’ll get back to adding 5/day, again until I need to slow down and just maintain. We’ll get there!
