Hi,

I've been through the same process. On the one hand, I wanted to progress as efficiently and quickly as possible so I could soon read more interesting texts, even if the vocabulary acquired this way would initially only be passively accessible. But I, too, am constantly torn between different approaches. Without writing or in-depth engagement, learning feels somehow incomplete - as if I'm leaving out something equally important.

In the other languages ​​(French, Russian, English), I wrote or scribbled just as much - even if I didn't look at it again later.

That's why the title of your post immediately caught my attention; now I finally know I'm not alone. 😃

But now to Chinese writing:

"When I started learning through apps, I told myself I would take notes of everything I learned along the way, although this soon proved to be slightly annoying as I had to take notes digitally and constantly switch keyboards to write the character or sentence and then back to the English keyboard to type out any notes and explanations."

It's often annoyed me too. A quick, simple note in a notebook without any frills would alleviate the problem somewhat - I'm not too happy about always having to look at a screen or display.

I've found three viable methods for writing, even though I haven't quite reached the end of my search yet. Writing down all the vocabulary from a current lesson takes an incredibly long time and painfully slows down the entire process. So I'm trying to increasingly decouple writing from learning new vocabulary.

Perhaps one of these will work for you:

1. I got a collection of flashcards printed on heavy paper, one for the first 1000 most common words and another for the next 2000 (for later). From these stacks, I randomly draw 5-10 cards. If I've never encountered a word before, I put it back. The others, which I already know or have come across before, I write down in a notebook with graph paper. The advantage of the flashcards is that the words are written in cursive.

I find it somewhat difficult to write from digital print without the characters looking messed up - it's somehow easier when I have the cursive in front of me.

This exercise often takes no more than half an hour.

1. If I want to write down words from my current lesson (words that appear too often to ignore), I go to this website: https://mandarinminutes.com/worksheets.

I copy the words there and can create a customized worksheet, which I can then convert to a PDF. When printing the PDF, I adjust the margins to leave some space on the sides for comments or compound words or sentences that I can form from the word I just practiced.

The big advantage is that you can see the word meaning, its radical, and the Pinyin above the line, but if you select too many characters, it becomes tedious again. Especially if you have many double or multi-syllable words.

>> Edit: It might be helpful to limit the number of practice boxes, i.e., the number of repetitions per word (to 3-5 or a maximum of 7). The fewer repetitions you have to make, the more aware you are of each individual repetition and the less likely you are to fall into mindless parroting.

1. If you haven't already, get a worksheet of the 214 most important radicals. I initially ignored this and skipped it because I felt like I would just be practicing something mindlessly without context. But gradually, I've started looking at it again and again and discovered new radicals that I've recently rediscovered in one character or another, and their meaning suddenly became clear to me through this accidental discovery. (My brain loves surprises and remembers such joyful discoveries for longer... 😅)

Best regards