Couldn’t agree more!
There are complete sentences, but now, there more phrases, fractions of sentences.
The Memrise mems were very helpful.
And, I think I have mentioned it before, the vocab is too unusual, not common enough.
For us who learn the language from the basics.
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I don’t think there are that many fewer phrases. A1 French was introduced in much the same way as French 1 through 7; Show several easy one or two word cards, then show a few relatively difficult phrase or sentence cards. I hear you about the sometimes helpful mems though. Still, the sheer quantity of cards containing new words, phrases, and sentences balances this out. Combining the new French decks totals more than a thousand more cards than A1 French. Of course, you can do better by starting with A1 French and then continuing with French 4 or 5; contrary to what Memrise claims, I’m not sure anything is introduced in French 4 that isn’t covered in A1 French.
Though, if you compare and contrast the official German decks, there is most probably a definite downgrade. If I learn German, I may choose to learn from the abandoned decks in addition to or instead of the current decks.
@JonathanPeele The A1/A2 courses were riddled with in accuracy and errors, and let alone less colloquial than the 1-7 courses. Also, they had more repetitive phrases in them.
I finished the A1 Spanish course and did Spanish 1-2 so far. The Spanish 1-7 courses are way much better than the A1 course. I wouldn’t use the A1 courses anymore. Also, if you do find errors in them. Don’t expect them to be fixed either.
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I’m so mad right now, I’ve been slowly working my way through Spanish A1 since March and just now found out that there’s a new course that replaced the one I’m taking. I’m not sure if they sent out an email announcing this or not but I get so many reminder emails from Memrise that I don’t usually look at them. There should have been a big blinking notification in the A1/A2 courses announcing the change. I’m debating if I should start over or continue on with A1. I was wanting to learn Latin American Spanish so the new Mexico course better lines up with my needs.
Relax. You have all possible choices. Why being mad ? If you really can not choose, and have the time, you can do both. You will get more reps.
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You can still finish the Spanish A1 course and transition to the Spanish 4 course, which as stated in the thread title is approximately the beginning of A2 Spanish. Don’t sweat much about the differences Spanish Spanish and Mexican Spanish; It’s not like you’re learning two different languages.
I’ll get over it in the fullness of time, probably. I’ve decided to start over and skip all the reviews until I get caught up to were I was. The new course seems to be organized quite a bit differently than the A1 course. Seems strange they didn’t transfer the memes over to the new course but I didn’t really use them that much. Overall the new course seems like a slight improvement.
Don’t forget to use the “ignore” button, instead of ignoring the reviews.
Go through the levels before learning them, and ignore all the words or phrases that would not help you. You can do it on the app and the website.
I’m in a similar position to you. I had completed A1 Spanish and was well into A2 Spanish when the new courses were introduced. The new ones are structured better but have an inconsistent way of dealing with singular/plural and formal/informal verb conjugation. I preferred the A1 course approach of including an annotation in the English column so that it was clear what was required. Some may say that this gave too big a clue, though!
You make a good point about not being to access the mems from the A1, A2, etc courses. I think this may be because the old and new courses draw from different databases. Elsewhere, I have asked the Memrise Team if there is any prospect of making the earlier mems available for selection in the new courses because there were some excellent ones amongst them. There were also a number of others that I had created myself and which were helpful to me that I now can’t take forward into the new courses. The quality/usefulness of the mems available for selection in the new courses are of mixed quality, to say the least, and include a lot of obvious ‘spammy’ ones which serve no purpose and which, in my opinion, should be removed.
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I wouldn’t even bother finishing the old courses. The newer ones are more accurate and less bloat and more content than the old ones.
I have myself finally dropped (yesterday) the German A2 for the more manageable 1-7 course
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There’s an urgent need for short grammar explanations in the new 1-7 courses(old A1/A2 had it in the mems)!
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@Mimi there is a course forum for these 1-7 courses. Grammar explanations can be done by creating Mems. Did you try?
Old courses already had pretty good explanations as Mems. So wouldn’t it be easier to transfer them instead of re-creating / duplicating? 
I guess it wouldn’t take too long for contributors who can edit the databases.
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Mems are linked to the words through the database, if new sets are created, the Mems are not carried over (I understand).
Copying mems would be a nightmare, as you need to go into each item to do it.
If a set is different how to chose the mems to put in. If the sets are basics there might be various equivalent sets with many different mems.
The link above says that;
1,2,3=A1
4,5=A2
6,7=B1
I am not sure which one is true?
Good question! I never saw that link. I’m going to guess that the 1,2,3=A1 , 4,5,6,7 = A2 is referring to the old Memrise courses A1and A2 and the 1,2,3=A1, 4,5=A2, 6,7=B1 refers to the European standard language levels. This would mean maybe Memrise added more material to the overall course. Still, when people ask the Memrise moderators they always seem to answer with the A1-A2 version. I’d like to see what they say about it.
Also, the link needs updating because they now have videos for a lot more languages.
It is accurate to my point of view. With those seven sections, you can reach a B1 level, in the fact that you can speak and be understood about simple subjects .
For B1 it says :
- Can understand the main points of clear standard input on familiar matters regularly encountered in work, school, leisure, etc.
- Can deal with most situations likely to arise while travelling in an area where the language is spoken.
- Can produce simple connected text on topics that are familiar or of personal interest.
- Can describe experiences and events, dreams, hopes and ambitions and briefly give reasons and explanations for opinions and plans.
Thank you for the answer, I agree with you. I checked few courses in German 7; it feels like all of these tasks can be done with what is in there. An official explanation would clear the doubts, though.
Ah, yes maybe that is the case.
Yes, also I realized that the links need updating :). So maybe that link is older than the post says that A1=1,2,3 and A2=4,5,6,7.
A clarification by the moderators would be good.