When you start a new language, you begin with the first lesson. All of the following lessons remain locked until you complete the prior ones. You can at least jump around to different exercises at your leisure. The structure is fine for beginners, though I wish you could see a learning path on the main dashboard (see the image above). There is a learning path (see the image below), but it’s difficult to find. Another complaint: Memrise is slow. If you’re a quick learner, you’ll find the app tedious.
(Credit: Memrise/PCMag)
Memrise teaches material by first showing you a few characters, concepts, or words, depending on what you’re studying. Then, it quizzes you on them. The app integrates both audio and written material. For example, the Thai program started by showing me videos of native Thai speakers saying single words or very short phrases and sentences. I saw written, transliterated versions of those words, and in very small type, the writing in Thai. The free version of Memrise doesn’t teach the Thai alphabet at all, which is a shame.
After you see and hear the beginner words a few times, Memrise starts peppering in multiple-choice questions that ask you to identify what you just learned. These questions are sorely disappointing, however, because the possible answers include the word I just learned and three others I have absolutely never heard before in my life. Choosing the right answer thus meant that I had to have only a passing memory of what it was. A better method would be to teach three or four new words at once and have the possible answers use all the words. Some exercises were even worse, giving the answer right in the question (see the image below).
(Credit: Memrise/PCMag)
Memrise encourages you not to learn too much at once, and it recycles words and phrases you have already learned to keep them fresh in your mind. You can change the number of new items you learn per lesson (3, 5, 7, or 10) in the settings, which is helpful if you need to go faster or slower. You get similar controls for words per review session.
