Is this the ceiling? Memrise Memathon contest winner

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aokoye
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Re: Is this the ceiling? Memrise Memathon contest winner

Postby aokoye » Wed Aug 05, 2015 11:11 pm

vm_nm wrote:But I agree, there are a lot of misconceptions floating around. Memrise shouldn't call their sets/decks "courses" to begin with.


I totally agree with this. There's a language learning thread on a forum that I'm on and while people generally don't think that Memrise or Duolingo will teach them a language (in the all encompassing sense) I think the fact that memrise sets are called "courses" tends to make people think that they're taking a course (even though it's clear that they aren't). From what I've seen on the forum I mentioned as well as on Memrise's forums (which I occasionally pop my head into) a lot of people also just don't realize that they can create their own sets on Memrise which has primarily been how I've used it.

Right now I'm transitioning from using Memrise for SRS to Anki (I've been trying to figure out how make Anki work well for me for some time and I'm only now figuring it out) but I think there really is something to their first contact learning (the bit before you really start SRS'ing) that really works for me. I haven't figured out how to replicate that with Anki but I just remembered that I have Provoc installed so I'm going to see about drilling works on there and then doing them in Anki.
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Re: Is this the ceiling? Memrise Memathon contest winner

Postby Cavesa » Mon Aug 10, 2015 2:56 pm

I totally agree, the "course" terminology is a disaster. And now, they are even strenghtening the notion by creation of the official courses. Don't get me wrong, I suppose they are of good quality, should be without mistakes and with great audio and so on, great! But they advertise them as courses including everything you need to know for the level in question. No wonder they only make A1 and A2 levels. But I still don't think you can trully get to any level with Memrise alone.
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Re: Is this the ceiling? Memrise Memathon contest winner

Postby aokoye » Mon Aug 10, 2015 3:44 pm

There's also a seemingly a ton of typos in the Memrise admin created courses along with missing information in the English side on who they want you to refer to. I love the framework of Memrise's SRS algorithm/system but I really worry about the path they seem to be going down. I keep wondering if it's going to be a iKnow/Smart.fm all over again - except worse.
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Re: Is this the ceiling? Memrise Memathon contest winner

Postby Cavesa » Mon Aug 10, 2015 6:16 pm

Yeah. When they changed from the awesome Beta Memrise to the new one, it looked like they were preparing the ground for paid courses. Courses of awesome quality, thanks to creators being paid for their time. Or courses accompanying coursebooks, thanks to money being paid to the publishers. Something like that. I would gladly pay a reasonable price for such courses, instead of having to spend so much time on them myself or having to put up with imperfections of community made courses. Instead, they are trying to "make courses", which is not a good direction. It might more or less work for a few languages the staff speaks and with large Memrise databases. But I don't think they'll be able to create as well courses of less popular languages, unless they plan to go the RS way and recycle the same stuff, with all the troubles such an approach brings.
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Re: Is this the ceiling? Memrise Memathon contest winner

Postby pir » Tue Aug 11, 2015 12:47 pm

I like Memrise, but yes, the course metaphor is just wrong. Even the new A1 "courses" are not real courses (I am taking the French one), and at this point I actually like the Basic French course I took before slightly better; the A1 course pushes complicated sentences too soon without any grammar whatsoever (if I didn't already know it, I'd be flailing).

I don't even use the mems much; it might not please them to know that I primarily use those to give myself a heads-up when the course has an error, or is needlessly picky about wording. I like the idea, and it is potentially powerful, but I don't seem to need them so far. But the SRS algorithm works really well for me, and the site is just pleasant, bright, and uncluttered, and keeping up the daily streak motivates me somehow more than Anki does. I have no idea why I don't take to Anki more, I use it, but it feels like a chore. Memrise is actually fun. I don't use it by itself, and I know I won't likely use it past A2, but for beginning vocab it's darn good.

I hadn't heard of that big competition (predated my involvement with Memrise), but that sounds like a really bad idea. I think part of the gamification is even a danger without big prizes -- I see this on Duolingo as well, with people having 8, 10, 15 little language flags next to their names. We all know they don't actually speak any of those languages. People get caught up in levels and points and pretty badges, and forget that this is probably NOT why they came there in the first place. I try my best to not even engage in competition with my "friends" on those sites, but to keep to my own rhythm. I actually wish I could turn that stuff off.
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Re: Is this the ceiling? Memrise Memathon contest winner

Postby aokoye » Tue Aug 11, 2015 5:00 pm

pir wrote:I don't even use the mems much; it might not please them to know that I primarily use those to give myself a heads-up when the course has an error, or is needlessly picky about wording. I like the idea, and it is potentially powerful, but I don't seem to need them so far. But the SRS algorithm works really well for me, and the site is just pleasant, bright, and uncluttered, and keeping up the daily streak motivates me somehow more than Anki does. I have no idea why I don't take to Anki more, I use it, but it feels like a chore. Memrise is actually fun. I don't use it by itself, and I know I won't likely use it past A2, but for beginning vocab it's darn good.


The reason I am only just now going from Memrise to Anki is two fold: a. I am predicting that they're on their way to creating a very locked down website that will require users to pay for basic functionality, thus I want out before that happens (hopefully it won't - I would like to be totally wrong in that) and b. I'm only just now getting Anki to work well for me. If I had been able to wrap my mind around how best to learn with Anki years ago I would have likely never used Memrise.

I'm totally with you on the good parts about Memrise - there are so many things I like about it and it's been incredibly helpful for me, more so than any other vocabulary learning technique. I just worry about its future.
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