An alum of outstanding character(s): Jake Gill gives back with the gift of Skritter

Students taking Chinese and Japanese classes at UWM are getting a little extra help this year, thanks to the generosity of a linguistically-gifted alum.

Jake Gill is the CEO of Skritter, an app that helps students achieve fluency in reading and writing Japanese and Chinese characters. Gill, who graduated from UWM in 2011, majored in global studies and took eight semesters of Chinese language courses during his time at the university.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, Gill knew one of the many casualties would be students’ language studies.

“We’re doing social distancing, there are stay-at-home orders, and people are not going to school. There’s this huge gap in the teaching curriculum,” he said. “How do you address character assessment? How do you help students practice their Chinese?”

In March, when lockdown orders first began, Gill and his team offered language teachers across the country a free trial of the app’s services to help them finish out their students’ academic year. But Gill wanted to do something extra.

“We’re seeing some really nice growth this year in this business, which I was not expecting at all,” he said. “It gives me more time and energy to think about how can I give back to the programs and the people in my life who have gotten me to the point where I am today.

“UWM was such an integral part in every opportunity that I’ve had since enrolling. So, I hit up my old Chinese teacher.”

That would be Lixin Cai, a lecturer in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature. Gill emailed her with an offer: Would UWM students like to have free access to the Skritter app for the 2020- 21 school year?

Cai jumped at the chance, and took it one step further by designing a pilot program that would integrate Skritter’s learning tools with UWM’s first-year Chinese language curriculum.

Skritter is a product of Inkren, Inc. The company was founded in 2008 by three college students who wanted a more efficient study tool for their Chinese and Japanese language classes.

Skritter started life as a website that taught character recognition and writing, but it required users to have their own tablet to plug into their computer in order to draw the characters. In 2012, the company developed an iOS application.

“That was the game-changer for Skritter,” Gill said. “Now, you didn’t need to go buy your fancy tablet; you could just use your phone. You could study from anywhere, and you could get that pen-and-paper feel just with your finger and the screen.”

Today, Skritter is ranked as the No. 1 character learning app in the world.

Unlike the Roman alphabet, where letter symbols are associated with particular sounds, Chinese and Japanese are character-based languages. The form of a character may have a meaning and a sound, but the meaning and sound are not necessarily related.

“We can’t just open a book in Chinese and sound it out. We’ve got to know the characters and what they mean,” Gill said. “This is a really complicated process for foreigners, but it’s not impossible and there are a lot of tips and tricks along the way.”

Skritter helps by having its users study “flashcards” that quiz them about a character, definitions, the pronunciation of the word, or how to write a character. The app emphasizes words that users struggle with while still reviewing phrases other words and phrases from time to time before they are forgotten.

“The end result is that our average user learns a character in about 90 seconds of total condensed study time in the application, and they learn them to an 87 percent retention rate,” Gill said.

Gill became the CEO of Skritter in 2018. Since taking over, he’s begun to steer Skritter to become more friendly to first-time Chinese and Japanese learners with a new, free guest experience and beginner-friendly content videos and lessons.

Using the app came with a bit of a learning curve for UWM students. Gill created several videos to explain how to use the software, and there were some kinks that had to be worked out as everyone navigated both how to use the app and how to attend classes remotely at the start of the semester. Gill reported that he received some valuable feedback from UWM students and he plans to incorporate their advice to improve the app for users around the world.

He has also joined them for discussions about his career path and sat in on a virtual language table, an informal gathering for speakers of all levels to practice their Chinese together.

Talking with his former teachers and their students felt “like a reunion” for Gill, who added that, “It just brightened my day to see how enthusiastic students were about learning Chinese.”

“If I can inspire one person in the program to go on and learn Chinese to an advanced level, then mission accomplished for me,” he said. “It’s been a blast. I would love to continue this moving forward. If you’re in the Chinese or Japanese program at UW-Milwaukee, you should get access to Skritter. Without that language program, there’s no me and there’s no Skritter (as it looks today). So many people are in need right now, so I want to pay it forward in some way.”

By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science

1. Go to skritter.com/ signup

2. Enter the activation code MKE2021

3. Download the Skritter app on your smartphone

4. Begin learning to read and write Chinese and Japanese!