I have been studying Chinese for a few months now. I am using some software to test my knowledge of the characters. Sometimes I do not recognize every character of a word but I can still derive the meaning based on the character I do know. My Chinese wife thinks this is not such a good idea and I should be more demanding to myself. Also, sometimes the differences between the characters is rather subtle and I make a mistake: when typing on the computer the first character the computer suggests is often the right one and I feel I depend too much on that. I do notice when I study by writing down each character I pay much more attention and those characters are much 'deeper' in my brain, maybe this is the only good way to do it ? On the other hand, it feels like quite time consuming...
What are your experiences ?