So far, three classes. All of them individual, which was great. Three different teachers. One excellent, two normal ones. The first one was my favourite, perhaps I'll be lucky to have her tomorrow.
I am finally feeling really at home in the resources. Erkundungen B2 is a bit denser book, than I am used to these days, and it is good! If only it wasn't so green (inside! Not just the cover), I don't like the colour and find it off putting Speexx is very good, even though by far not perfect. And the "videos" are funny and I am not sure whether it was the creators intention to make them funny in exactly this way (they visually look like a parody on the old German tv shows people were always making fun of).
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Now I've been putting a bit more time into German than Italian, I need to balance that back again
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A sad resource news: Memrise is really going to hell. After various other changes throughout the years, they are making yet another change in the "we don't care about users and their preferences of features" and "we no longer want to be Memrise" kind. They are removing the Mems. We all know they are gonna remove the user made stuff one day anyways and leave just the trash official courses with sloppy content, mistakes (or in some cases at least misleading stuff for the newbies trying to use Memrise as a real course and not just SRS), and very stupid videos. A funny detail: I've just seen a member complain on the forums, that it might not be a good idea to teach "Shut up" and especially so early in the official Russian 1 course. They are right
The last straw was the official explanation by a community support staff ale_c:
mems have been an important tool for your learning and a core part of the Memrise history, however they are difficult and expensive to keep supporting within the new learning experience we’re building, and they’re no longer providing the right pedagogical value in their form.
The first part is totally legit. They don't want mems, there are some expenses etc. That is ok. But what the hell is it about the pedagogical value? I still remember some mems from the first time I started learning German! For example that picture of Brücke made of bricks!!! What is giving that value instead? The very stupid generic videos in the official courses? Certainly not. Mems were remembering worthy.
As we speak, the team are hard at work building and improving features that support our pedagogical principles, to help you: (1) Learn words and sentences, (2) Immerse you in videos and audio experiences, and (3) Communicate with fellow humans with no fear of making mistakes.
This is pure bullshit, as usual. The way it is worded, the stupid clichés and empty phrases...
1.yes, memrise has been a tool to help learn words and perhaps sentences (but it's always been bad with sentences, the official courses just prove that). removing mems doesn't improve that. Even people not using them much (I lately) are gaining nothing, while a large part of the community is losing something.
2.video and audioexperiences. Who has been asking for that? Not the users, who had made Memrise what it is. Who have been supporting it since the early years, who have created courses for free (so that Memrise could get money for features used to use them even more efficiently), and been marketing it online and offline. Memrise really wants to become just another shitty "not a language course" course of low quality and boring videos. Sad.
3."Communicate with fellow humans with no fear of making mistakes". We've heard this a million times and it doesn't seem any less like just a phrase here. Yep, the vocab drilling is a tool be more confident in communication. But this sounds as if Memrise wanted to delete itself and become Italki2, or a therapy tool for mistake anxiety
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And even worse: it looks like the Memrise to Anki addon is not working anymore. Memrise changed something, perhaps on purpose, and you can no longer just save the courses easily, based on lots of community posts. It sucks. Anyone knows about any functioning and easy to use addon? I would like to move some courses, at least the one I've made.
So, I stopped paying. I have wasted money as I had no time for Memrise since I got my new job. But still, I wasn't that upset about it. Until I realized that Memrise is going on the list of stuff I used to like, but should abandon, as it is more frustrating than helpful. Just like Duolingo, which turned from fun basic practice to stupid waste of time designed to be as slow and inefficient as possible to make you see more ads. Or perhaps Speakly, where I love the content but the website's bugs and slowliness are just a torture (I might return there though). Or yet others.
I now need to either find a functioning addon, or at least manually save at least the course made by me. Many hours of not too fun work to look forward to.
This is why Anki is so beloved. It looks dry, it can burn you out, it is not as cool looking as many others. But you have 100% control over your content. Nobody is ever gonna just remove a part of your decks, or your used images, or anything.
I really regret having failed to develop a real Anki addiction on multiple opportunities!