Memrise is one of the most popular language learning apps. It is based on a card-based game application, which is a great way to help users expand their vocabulary. Novice students will benefit most from it. The main thing is not to use this application as the main tool for learning a new language.
What is Memrise?
Memrise is a language learning tool available as an application or on a website. In fact, these are cards in which there is something like a game element.
Memrise's advantage is that it is a free, convenient, and rather fun way to learn and analyze vocabulary in a way that is more interesting than traditional cards. The application actively uses mnemonics so that the words remain in memory.
Some of the courses were created by Memrise, but most of them are custom. Some of them have audio and images, while others do not. Some use mnemonics, while others do not. Since many courses are created by users, their content and quality can vary significantly from course to course. The fact that there are so many custom courses leads to unique and interesting content.
Of course, there are typical courses, such as the most common nouns or verbs. But you can find several courses in grammar, conjugations, business, history, and slang.
Since all people are different, the reviews about Memrise are very different. What works great for one will not work for another person. Fortunately, for most of the most popular courses, there are about 7 user-added tutorials.
Getting started with Memrise
To start using Memrise, you need to go to the Courses page, select the language that the user speaks, and then select the language that you want to learn. The list will list all the courses that it is possible to take in this language, and the number of other users studying it, as well as the average time it will take to complete the course.
You can access your Memrise profile on multiple devices by simply logging in with the same information (email address / username and password) in your Memrise mobile apps on Android and iOS or on your computer (memrise.com). At the same time, all the success of the user will be synchronized automatically so that he can continue training at any time from the place where he stopped.
Free or paid version
Setting up an account in the Memrise app is very simple. It has opportunities to increase vocabulary, as well as basic phrases and sentences.
A free account gives the user access to a lot of content. But it gets much more study opportunities and additional features such as offline access by paying for membership. But according to reviews of Memrise Pro, these are more pleasant marketing terms than things that really help the user progress faster and learn better.
The cost of the Pro version is 1316 rubles per year, and users receive chat bots that help them learn, videos of native speakers for selected languages, adaptive technologies (that is, the application changes the principle of training depending on user performance) and some statistics that shows when and how much was studied. The Pro version also gives you access to the exercises “Difficult words”, “Listening skills”, “Quick repetition”. The positive Memrise reviews on subscription primarily highlight the opportunity to learn with a native speaker by video - a feature available to Pro users. In the "Pronunciation" mode, there is also the opportunity to learn how to speak as a native speaker, repeating after thousands of sound clips.
Suggested Languages
Memrise has content for both native English speakers and other languages. Some of the most popular language courses for native English speakers are: Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian and European), Spanish (European and Mexican), and Turkish.
These languages stand out because of their popularity, and also because the application has a lot of content that is structured and developed by reliable sources. For example, when learning Korean, a user can start with courses called "Korean 1", "Korean 2", "Korean 3", etc. These numbered courses are created by Memrise and not by random users of the service, which allows them to control the quality . For any course, it is possible to see the name of the creator next to the name of the course.
In addition to these basic courses, there are more specialized courses such as slang in Korean and 1000 of the most common Korean words. These courses are generally not created by Memrise, so quality is not guaranteed.
Features and Experience
In general, according to reviews of Memrise, the application looks polished and has a clear structure. When the user just starts working with the application, he should start from the first lesson, since the next ones remain blocked until all the previous ones are completed. The structure is great for beginners, but hardly suitable for advanced students.
Memrise teaches material by first showing a few words, characters or concepts, depending on what the user is learning and then testing. To study languages, the application uses both written and audio materials.
For each studied symbol, word or phrase, a small plant icon appears in the upper right corner, which changes so that the plant grows as the user encounters this term and answers the questions correctly. In other words, the plant grows the stem, leaves and, ultimately, the flower, the more the user is familiar with the words being studied.
Advantages and disadvantages
Most reviews of the Memrise app recommend using it with other resources, rather than in isolation. New students or those interested in learning a particular topic will benefit most from using Memrise.
Positive reviews about Memrise:
- Expanding knowledge of the language and vocabulary.
- The points system and general gamification are a great motivator.
- There is a free version.
Negative Memrise Reviews:
- After some time, the words become blurry, and the "memory coefficient" of the user is technically reduced.
- Due to the simplicity of the application, very often, without knowing the word, you can guess it by the exception method. This means that the application notes that the user knows this word, which does not indicate his real knowledge.
- Often there are words that sound, look or have a similar meaning.
- Memrise is an application that is used in conjunction with other language learning methods. However, some users find that its effectiveness worsens over the course of weeks. His method of assessing the level of the user is greatly distorted (and actually simply erroneous) and makes users think that they have a fantastic understanding of the vocabulary, when in fact the memorization of words worsens.
- Users are impressed by the hundreds of words that they know (as the application indicates), but are also depressed by the fact that they still could not order coffee with milk.
Final thoughts
The general opinion of users is that using Memrise is better than learning words from a book. At first, this works very well, but it seems that there should be some changes in the teaching methodology, as the number of words that are supposedly learned is increasing.
Using the website and application is visually appealing, and actually seems to work well due to mnemonic methods added by users.
Although many free features are available, some of them require premium paid memberships. Nevertheless, this does not prevent users from using the site and does not deprive them of access to a large amount of useful material.
The free version provides a lot of advantages, but it is important to make sure that it will not be the only resource that is used when learning another language. When a user first starts learning, it makes sense to use Memrise to get a basic word base. But after that it is better to find other resources and abandon Memrise.