Readit NewsComing from a phonetic language with only 26 letters, it was such a surreal feeling being able to effortlessly read a character but be unable to reproduce it.
So time to sunset the system, surely? I don't know why so many countries are so obstinately hanging onto something so difficult.
Do it like Korea if you don't want to go the Vietnamese way.
Overall it's been a successful approach, and I recommend it to new learners unless they have a particular interest in being able to write by hand or they feel strongly that writing the characters helps them remember them.
It's only rarely that I have to write anything other than my own name in Japanese. I've practiced my address but writing it in English is fine in 99% of situations. Being able to write properly would save a little embarrassment, but I still believe my language learning time would have a much higher ROI in other areas.
Being able to write characters was handy whenever I came across documents that needed to be filled, but since leaving China I never had the need to write characters again. I now just input them using pinyin on keyboards, and I can easily recognise and read / input the correct characters. It is a strange feeling trying to write the characters I once knew, but now have forgotten, yet being able to read them instantly...
I would like to recommend dong-chinese, a language app I came across when I prepared for my stay over there. It taught things in a very efficient manner.
At this point I would like to recreationally increase my vocabulary so I have started working on a game called LingoRogue. My goal is to make it addictive to play, with a sneaky vocabulary-increasing effect. In other words a game that is "learnified" rather than a learning software that is gamified.
As an alternative: I started using org-mode 5 years ago and have never looked back. This is my workflow (https://karelvo.com/blog/orgmode) although I sync it via Git now, and have an iPhone where I use Plain Org (https://xenodium.com/plain-org-for-ios).
After paying $15k (after subsidies) for a 40kWh battery, our battery is filled by roof solar and grid provided renewable energy, when needed, at very cheap rates (6c/kWh). I pay $1 a day for grid connectivity. Our total annual energy bill will be approximately $500 for the foreseeable future.