Hi, after some on and off, I’m currently evaluating the app a bit more seriously.
I’m sorry my opinion could prove impopoular here, but I’m not finding Memrise so useful.
I explain my point of view:
Main offender is the selection of answers: they’re so diverse that very often you can get the correct one by understanding just ONE word. This wouldn’t help you learn sentence construction, particles use (I’m trying the app with Japanese, but playing with French too).
The fact that questions are timed will aggravate this behaviour (looking for the couple words you’re familiar with and click on the answer).
Oftentimes I read all the answers, to check if I can understand all of them, even when I already found the correct one, and the timer expires failing me the question!
Then, the sentences are always the same. Last Saturday I did go to Karaoke or I studied in Tokyo for two Years are always the same. I get that this could require some more programming job, but it seems to me it could greatly improve the usefulness of the app if the sentences could have some randomness in them (i.e. random day of the week, random place (karaoke, cinema, library), random time, and so on). This could keep the questions fresh and keep the learner from learning set phrases (i.e. Saturday - Karaoke) and get used to pay attention to the whole sentence.
This would also help to mitigate the first issue above: place SIMILAR sentences in the answers, to actually check if the user comprehension is improving.
Personally, I think this could be extremely useful with particles (i.e. same sentences with wrong particles as possible answers) as particles are a weakness of mine.
Sorry if my words feel rude, I dont want to criticize the product of someone else’s work, but Memrise is one of the few apps that actually try to teach you something more than just vocabulary, but as it is now, this is spoiled by the issues described above.
imho, of course.