Please use this thread only to contact Maxine_Downunder about any of my courses, or those I am supporting, when you can NOT fin the Creator or a specific forum link.
If you find any typos, have problems or questions etc, about any of the courses I am supporting, please post them here.
Kindly provide the following information:
which course (please provide the link);
if possible, the level in which you have found the problem;
You support / teach the course āFrench Verbsā created by alexpgp - http://www.memrise.com/course/809/french-verbs/ . It is a great course but it allows responses without accents. Can this be amended?
Yes for sure @ripcurlgirl. Itās a while since Iāve done any editing in this course. Now that youāve raised the issue it brings to mind a number of courses Iām studying with exactly the same issue! Iāll endeavour to edit āFrench Verbsā accordingly within the next week.
hello Maxin, love the app! Iām spanish speaker and I would like to change the course from english- french, to spanish-french, is it possible to do this without reseting the app and loosing my progress?
Hello @MelissaJimenezc3. I really donāt know the answer to this. You would need to check with someone at Memrise. Iāll tag @Lien here - maybe she can assist or redirect you to someone who can.
Hello again, @ripcurlgirl. Iāve been trying to find out how to edit per your request and it appears that as a contributor (and not the creator), that I cannot do so. This link here confirms that: http://feedback.memrise.com/knowledgebase/articles/525167-add-a-contributor-to-my-course
I will contact āsomeoneā at Memrise to ascertain if I can be given editing rights. It could take a little time. Thanks again for your interest in this course which is a good French Verbs course in my view. I must also give credit to my co-contributor @timangleterre, who has spent a lot of time on the audio in particular.
Merci beaucoup Maxine ! And to Tim also. There is one male voice which is very clear which I wish the course defaulted to. Is there any way of āhardwiringā or defaulting to a speaker of oneās chosing?
I donāt think there is a way to default to a certain voice. Iām sure Iāve seen this request on a forum before but it would be for Memrise to organise not for course contributors. When Maxine and I took over this course not all the verbs had audio (and some had poor quality/wrong audio). Today all have at least one audio as I saw that as a priority. I plan to have two audios for all verbs - one male and one female and this is currently true for the first 12 units of the course. I will add more early next year. The voices used are computer generated and my French speaking wife tells me they are pretty good. If you give me an example of a verb with a clear pronunciation I can tell you if it is something I have added or not. Tim
Would it be possible to remove the ones with poor audio after rerecording? I have come across some which have several recordings from poor (can barely be heard) to clear. The next time I come across one of these I will post it for you as an example.
Thanks (& Maxine) for all your hard work on this course.
Hi Tim - found quite a few examples but I have been struggling to use the computer over the past few days (router problems but they are fixed now) so I havenāt been making notes .
A good example of poor quality audio is in Level 6, - āfinirā. The male voice is excellent but the female voice is barely audible. This particular verb matters little as, being a common verb, I am familiar with its pronunciation however, It does make it difficult to do audio exercises. There are other verbs that I am not overly familiar with and, on the audio exercises, you have to keep clicking on the speaker until the other recorded voice comes up.
Hi Kim - This is one of the recordings that was added during the course creation. I agree the level is too low. I will add a better audio soon but as a temporary measure I have removed it. The male voice (which is one I added) is, for now, the only one learners will hear.
Thanks. The male recording is brilliant and is the one I wish I could default to on ALL the verbs where it is available. I really donāt see the necessity to have both a female and a male recording, esp when most of the female ones are inferior in audio quality. I simply want to hear (clearly) how the word is pronounced.
Thanks again for all your work on this and sorry for the late reply !
Hi. Iām an English speaker learning French. Iām currently studying French 3. Like others on this forum I have concerns about the French accents. The course allows answers and corrections without the accents. I think it would be better if the answers required correct accents so students can learn this important aspect of written French as they go.
One other thing Iāve noticed is when clicking on the answer in the Meet The Natives videos, the written section under the video window often displays several characters instead of punctuation, making it more difficult to read.
Other than this Iām really enjoying the courses.
I donāt take course but I went and did a little and I see what you mean. However, it is not one of the courses @Maxine_Downunder supports. It is an official Memrise staff-created course so you should probably post this in this thread [Course Forum] French 1-7 by Memrise
Also the Meet the Natives videos are only linked to official Memrise courses.
Bonne chance !
BTW Did you know that the French word āpinguoinā refers to the auk - a bird similar in appearance to a penguin but lives in the northern hemisphere and can fly. True flightless penguins (āmanchotā in French) only live in the southern hemisphere. I was reading a French article on this very subject only a couple of days ago. Weird coincidence!
Thank you for your email. I will post in the appropriate thread. Thanks also for the info about pingouin. It will serve as a reminder for me to never trust those English/French translation books!
Hi again Maxine, I have found another anomaly in āFrench Verbsā. The translation in Level 7 for āto memoriseā is Ā« apprendre par cÅur Ā» but it marks the conjoined āÅā in cÅur as wrong, forcing you to enter ācoeurā. I donāt mind if the latter is accepted as correct but rejecting the former, correct form is just weird and quite annoying.
Sorry to bother you again - is there anything you can do? You would think that the āstrict typingā setting would pick it up as incorrect.
Thanks for picking that up. I would have also thought with the āstrict typingā that it would call for āÅā. I have just tried to edit it so that āÅā is the correct answer - but have as an alternate ācoeurā as being acceptable. What I discovered though that the ligature āÅā is not a choice on the accent bar. Iāll have to sort this out so consider this a work in progress.
Thanks Maxine. I also noticed that Ā« Å Ā» is not a choice on the accent bar. If you canāt work it out (which, Iām thinking, you probably wonāt be able to) itās no big issue - I just have to remember it for future reference. It is just weird that the ācorrectā form is rejected as incorrect.
No worries Kim. Iāll hunt around a bit more. Iām sure Iāve seen Ā« Å Ā» on an accent bar on another course. If I canāt work it out Iāll make enquiries elsewhere on the Forum.
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