Memrise official course impressions?

[Uncle Roger]

I'm really wary of all these apps that are clearly built trying to cater for a "from any language to any language" learning.
I've tried it a little bit for Norwegian and I foudn it pretty rubbish. Couldn't even be bothered to far enough to understand whether they have proper spaced repetition à la Anki. Do they?

[Saim]

I've never been able to stick with flaschards made by anyone but me for more than a day. Never done an entire Memrise course, although I've used it quite a lot at different points to make my own decks.

[aokoye]

I'm really wary of all these apps that are clearly built trying to cater for a "from any language to any language" learning.
I've tried it a little bit for Norwegian and I foudn it pretty rubbish. Couldn't even be bothered to far enough to understand whether they have proper spaced repetition à la Anki. Do they?

I think the majority of the popular flashcard apps, Anki included, are catering to "'from any language to any language' learning." Also, can you define "proper spaced repetition"? That said, yes, Memrise is a SRS flashcard app. I personally like but no longer use Memrise. Have I or would I ever use one of the "official courses"? No. But as a platform I think it's good. It has its limitations but that's par for the course when it comes down to it.

[Evita]

I have been working through the official Memrise Korean courses. I don't understand why they have separate English and English (US) courses for learning Korean. I started doing the English courses but realised they only went up to Korean 3 so switched to English (US) which goes up to Korean 7.

The courses are ok, but the real gold is the meet the natives mode. I practice a lot with this mode, and man, my listening skills have increased dramatically. My italki teacher was surprised my listening had improved so much.

Memrise claim courses 1-3 correspond to A1, 4-5 to A2 and 6-7 to B1. I don't believe this, but I find them to be brilliant courses none the less.

The Korean course uses 당신 to say "you" and 나 to say "I". I would not recommend it.

[Aria]

I love memrise as well as duolingo and anki. Unlike most on here, I love memorizing. Always have done. I love flashcards and the game-like qualities of memrise. This is my preferred method of learning as well as doing other 'casual' things like reading, listening, writing things down, saying things out loud.

Not only do I learn best this way but I like learning for fun and learning as I go - not studying grammar, going to language classes or having a tutor. Grammar for me needs to be learned naturally through reading or learned through duolingo or maybe easy worksheets (well, I once did a worksheet on japanese grammar and enjoyed it). I don't even know what most grammar terms mean and I'm not sure what you actually do with a textbook? Keep reading things over and over until you get it...or I guess they must have lessons for you to practice

Anyway, if you like SRS and learning vocab I don't really see how you could dislike memrise. It's free and you can find courses with audio.

[Cavesa]

The problem is not Memrise per se, the SRS is good, the typing (which you can opt out) is great. I personally think a good textbook is a great resource (explanations, exercises, details one may not notice just in input), but I have no reason not to believe people, who rely on memorisation heavily and succeed.

The problem is the quality of the official content. I think it is likely to vary a lot (which is very common for the "from every language to every language" resources). The ones I checked were definitely worse than the stuff made by users. If some of them are very good, that is great. The cefr levels, however, are totally overused and used improperly by course makers in general, that is no news.

(I have even seen a website with lots of seemingly good content, that was sorted into six beginner levels A1-C2, and six intermediate levels A1-C2. The creators just took the levels for a more fancy way to call the chapters than the usual numbers. Anything is possible.)

As a bit of a bad news, from the Memrise forum, are the developers changing functions and making some courses broken, without any hurry to fix them. It looks like Memrise may soon decide to push away the user made content, so that it doesn't compete against the official courses. Too bad some people don't understand the user based content is the best thing about Memrise.

[aokoye]

As a bit of a bad news, from the Memrise forum, are the developers changing functions and making some courses broken, without any hurry to fix them. It looks like Memrise may soon decide to push away the user made content, so that it doesn't compete against the official courses. Too bad some people don't understand the user based content is the best thing about Memrise.

I knew that was going to happen eventually and have talked about it off and on for years as a potential con of Memrise as compared to something that can work completely offline like Anki. They're going down the path of smart.fm, now known as iKnow. That said, at least iKnow's "courses" are actually good, though there's a paywall there.

[MacGyver]

The Korean course uses 당신 to say "you" and 나 to say "I". I would not recommend it.

Yeah, I know, but I don't think its a big issue. I understand the limitations of when these words can/should be used. I don't think it detracts from the course.

[lavengro]

I absolutely love Memrise. If Memrise were a person, I would marry it.

(More accurately stated, if Memrise were a person, I would propose marriage and cross my fingers hard that Memrise would accept me despite all my obvious, grievous flaws.)

I have worked through quite a lot of user-created Memrise courses in the past, most really good, some less good, though even for the less good ones, I have never been inclined to ask for my money back. I was disappointed when they changed the environment to make it more difficult to create mems, and was aghast when the ranking system recently went completely squirrelly. But otherwise, as I say, a deep, all-consuming passionate love.

Of the official Memrise courses, I have only worked through Italian 1 and 2, and am working through Spanish (Mexico) 1 so far and have really enjoyed them to this point, but it is quite possible I am just easily impressed.

[Aozora]

The problem is not Memrise per se, the SRS is good, the typing (which you can opt out) is great.

I haven't found a way to opt out of typing tests, short of choosing a "no typing" course. Is there something I've missed?


I only use user created courses on Memrise; if they get rid of those, I'd have to stop using the site :/