I found that there’s two different default courses for learning Japanese in the app. Japanese 0-2 seems to be updated and more consistent with learning Japanese (Phrases, grammar, words and forms, etc), but after 2, 3-7 seems to have been updated the same way with a lot of things being repeated and is inconsistent with how the way the courses have been in 0-2, which makes it unappealing to continue since I don’t really want to repeat stuff a bit differently. I don’t know how correct the phrases learned in 3-7 sounds to Japanese person, but it lacks. I enjoyed the Japanese up until I got into Japanese 3, and I hope you update the remaining courses on the app.
The official Japanese course has a Course Forum, and if you post there, you get a faster response from Memrise Japanese specialist KanaTsumoto.
There is a question similar to yours on that forum answered by KanaTsumoto. I will put the link below:
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Thank you so much for this input, and yes, like @Milamy rightly pointed out, we are still working on updating the later courses, which I can’t promise a time for just yet. But it’s very useful to hear that you liked what we did in the Japanese 0-2, cause that will help us understand how we should do things in 3 and onwards. What about the 0-2 did you especially like? Could you give me some examples?
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Well, I have a friend who very fluent in Japanese, and I’ve been reading stuff in Japanese and seeing a professional translation of that stuff, and after experiencing all that, I feel that the stuff I learned in Japanese 0-2 feels like more natural Japanese. A lot of stuff I use to teach my myself Japanese has been improved to give a more natural sounding translation in the past year (Google translate has improved their translations to make them sound natural in a conversation). I’m glad you guys are working on developing the next courses and can’t wait.
What I enjoyed most about the revamped courses was the prevalence of kanji and the fact that it was less formal by using -る forms etc. instead of -ます forms. This makes it seem much for fluent and in most cases makes it easier to understand the structures and patterns in the language.
The old versions seem much for rigid, and unnatural. I’ve been watching a lot of Japenese TV to add to my learning, and it is much more difficult to transfer the old courses to what I’m seeing, compared to the new courses.