Hello, @two-generals-problem, and anyone else who will happen to read this,
We are all different and what suits one person may not be optimal for another, so what follows is what works for me and I can only hope that some of you will find it useful.
A. I do a number of courses in the same language and at the same level simultaneously.
No two beginner courses are the same, just as two Indian, Chinese, or Greek restaurants will both serve Indian, Chinese, or Greek food but they have different menus as well as different chefs. Some chefs are better than others and some course creators are like top-notch chefs while some are on their very first cooking lessons. Very short courses tend to fall in the second category.
Doing several courses simultaneously leads to more repetition while taking the “oh, I’m so bored” out of it as you can switch from one course to another.
=> One can only ever master a foreign language if the basics of it sit there in the back-offices of one’s memory stable as a rock. The larger the building you want to build, the stronger the foundations must be.
B. Learning on your laptop is far superior to using your cell/mobile phone, especially if your laptop has a keyboard with numbers to the right of the alphabet characters, for speed and convenience.
C. When doing user-generated courses I only ‘learn new words’ and do the ‘speed repetition’ (set at 100 words) whereas I take all the steps as they come on the official Memrise courses.
To change the pre-set options: go to ‘Profile’ - ‘edit profile’ - ‘learning’ and check out what works best for you.
D. Important! Say The Words Out Loud!
If you don’t, well, then you’ll never get your tongue, lips, mouth & vocal cords to work together and actually cooperate when you say whatever you are trying to say in the language you spent so many hours learning, quiet as a mouse.
And… do overdo it! Be theatrical! Play with the rhythm. Play with the intonation. Play with the melody if the language you are learning has melody as a feature. Play with saying sentences out loud in different moods, i.e. as if the person saying it is angry, in love, stuck up, cowering, happy, overconfident, very old or very young, in a superior or inferior position, happy-go-lucky or sorry. Have fun. It always helps.
E. Get used to looking the words up in online dictionaries.
Why? Because then you will get examples of how the words are used in a sentence as well as additional meanings of said words.
Personally, I use reverso.com (listening feature & simple language in sample sentences) and linguee.com (always correct, with serious sample sentences, plus a superb AI-translation feature).
There are of course many more online dictionaries. Use one or two that work the best for you and the language you are studying.
F. Another thing I find to be very useful at times is Wikipedia since you can go from an article in one language to the same article in another language.
@two-generals-problem, I am of the same opinion as you have on marking words as learned as I’d too rather do the extra work, but I can see that it can be useful for someone with more advanced knowledge who is for some reason doing a lower level course. The trouble there is that we humans are too prone to overestimate our own knowledge! (I once heard an acquaintance say that she did not need to prepare for the Proficiency exams because “I speak much perfect English.”)
“Any other little tricks and optimisations that people use to get the best results from Memrise, I would be interested to hear.” I agree.
Chip in, guys!