This is the place for any discussions regarding the Transitive/Intransitive Pairs course. Please post your feedback, suggestions, reports, etc.
What would be a good way to structure a Transitive/Intransitive pairs course?
I often find these difficult to remember, so I think it’d be useful to have a course that tests on something like this: http://nihongo.monash.edu/ti_list.html
With standard flashcards, setting this up seems simple enough. On one side of the card have the transitive form, and on the other side have the intransitive (or vice versa). So something like:
[Prompt: 負ける] → Answer: 負かす (i)
[Prompt: 教わる] → Answer: 教える (t)
The way Memrise handles learning sessions, though, I don’t see that working. Firstly, the multiple choice questions will be totally trivial, since you’ll be presented with:
… no brainer . Maybe if it was presented as all kana instead of using kanji, that’d be a tiny bit harder, but it’d still be trivial. As for the typing questions… those will be fine on web. However, a similar problem will likely arise on mobile, since they give you a preset subset of characters to pick from for the typing tests. So you’ll probably wind up with something like:
[Prompt: 負ける] → Type answer using [下] [空] [か] [集] [負] [掛] [上] [広] [す]
So yeah… anyone have ideas of possible good ways to do this type of course so that it’d be compatible with Memrise’s review style?
I would use a typing course and advise users to install a userscript (full typing by cooljingle, that can be found here) for the purpose of learning these properly. They can choose which courses are affected by this userscript and which aren’t, so they can choose that only your course is affected (or extend the number of courses affected if they are learning other similar courses).
It’s also possible to advise users not to use the mobile application if they don’t want to use the full keyboard. If they want to use the mobile application, they should try using the full keyboard: it’s always possible with the keyboard button on top right of the screen, and this keyboard appears at the same time as the rest of the test, so the user doesn’t see the “small” keyboard. The only problem is that the keyboard for that language has to be installed on the device.
If the course users don’t want to follow your advice when they study your course, unfortunately, there is nothing you can do as a course creator. Memrise is a learning tool, and like every other tool, if people don’t use it properly they can’t expect good results. I think that’s already enough if, as a course creator, you provide everything for the users to use that tool properly.
I use this solution (as a user, not as a creator) for a grammatical course that prompts with questions like () это книга? where the answer would be Чья это книга?, so pretty obvious when it’s a multiple choice (and so completely useless for the learner), and this works well. I don’t think that as a course creator you have a lot of other options regarding that problem, but maybe other Memrise users will have other ideas?
Nice! I didn’t know such a userscript existed. That’s very useful
With that, I settled on a format that I think works well enough. I prompt with kanji, and have the users answer in kana. Using kanji for the prompts removes any ambiguity with homonyms, plus the user surely wants to see the word written the “correct” way for the prompts.
Having the answers in kana, however, makes both the multiple choice and mobile typing tests less trivial. At the very least the user now needs to know the readings for the kanji. This still isn’t super ideal, because the purpose of this course isn’t to drill kanji readings, it’s to drill transitivity recognition… so I included that user script in the course introduction for people who want to just do the typing tests. But at least for those users that don’t use the script, they now need to use some of their language knowledge to be able to get those multiple choice questions right.
Do you know you can use false entries just to do the multiple choice test a bit mor difficult. It is the easiest way. No scripts needed doable on phones
. Maybe if it was presented as all kana instead of using kanji, that’d be a tiny bit harder, but it’d still be trivial. As for the typing questions… those will be fine on web. However, a similar problem will likely arise on mobile, since they give you a preset subset of characters to pick from for the typing tests. So you’ll probably wind up with something like: