Memrise Release Notes - 28 Nov 2017 (Update on changes to typing test)

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189

It’s just TERRIBLE how Memrise messes up the learner’s experience. For a week I was totally demotivated to do lessons. Why is the team so stubborn? This discussion is going on since months now, each time they tried to impose their terrifying changes on us, and each time a lot of users complain. Ok, there might be some fake learners that don’t want to learn but just want to have a good “dumb clicking experience” here, so why don’t just make those shit functions like auto-accept and the keyboard OPTIONAL?!?

I am so sad and demotivated that NOBODY OF THIS COMPANY SEEMS TO ACTUALLY CARE! They behave like god but have no clue about learning – maybe just about dulling people’s mind and make profit. But there would be even greater profit with a happy user base instead of with an angry one!

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190

I already cancelled mine last time they did something stupid and didn’t rectify it (e.g when they broke memrise during updates - I’m still getting errors messages).

191

Sorry, but it sounds to me that you use the “auto accept” feature totally wrong.

You SHOULD know that the correct answer is “das Haus”.

If you know it, then you can type it and it will be auto accepted and Memrise jumps to the next question.

If you do NOT know it / you are unsure, and your 1st thought was “der Haus”, well, then YOU SHOULD still type “der Haus”.
Memrise won’t accept your answer, and you SHOULD hit the ENTER hot key!!!

Why? Because you don’t know for sure the answer, so you WANT, that this question will be asked in the next 4-6/12h again.

“Auto accept” shall NOT lead you to autoprobing through all available choices like “der Haus, die Haus, das Haus”, where finally the correct might be accepted.

Don’t fool yourself and use the system in a wrong way, which only hurts YOUR LEARING!!!

Another example:

We have already found out, that for longer phrases/sentences on the offical Memrise 1-7 courses, there are different possibilities or synonyms but one course just prompts for the correct answer “in a special way” (Memrise designed their 1-7 courses for multiple-choice for >15 character answers, but not typing!!!).

If a learner knows the answer, or almost the answer (e.g with 2-3 synonyms or 2-3 fill words), why should he not be allowed to test his known / possible answer choices?

If I do REALLY not know the correct tense or single word in a prompted question, well then I just type ("all typing user script) my answer as best guessed and hit the ENTER hot key, so I can learn how close I am…and that I get the next chance at 4-6/12h…

My advise to you: Don’t use the Memrise system in a wrong way and cheat yourself for pushing back the spaced repetition intervals, even you do not know the answer for sure /or at least 90-99%).

Your above example (good example!) is the perfect showcase how a learner can trick him-/herself and the Memrise system by typing; but it makes no sense to do this.

Memrise is not DuoLingo for accepting many multiple alternative sentence and word possibilities!!!

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192

I don’t really get what are you trying to say (probably because I never used duolingo)

193

I’m afraid it’s human nature, when you’ve typed an answer which isn’t auto-accepted, to look again at what you typed and to either correct a typo or try a different answer. I’m not sure it’s a case of “using the auto-accept feature totally wrong”. If you look again at BeaTrisy’s OP in this topic, it’s clear to me that this feature is all about speed and has little to do with what’s best for learning.

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194

And what about situation when you for example want to type let’s say “thoroughly” but auto-accept feature activates after “thorough”?

No option to being honest here :wink:

I personally find this option terrible. It’s messing with my pacing, cuts audios.

And this virtual keyboard - another horrible idea. Release notes mentioned special characters. So my question is - what are the special characters in english? Why this in-app keyboard is present there?

Seriously - on this phase of developing application not putting these changes as an option is outrageous

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195

Many good points above about how this change isn’t at all helpful for many courses and languages.

BUT - I really like that FINALLY we can get immediate feedback on correct accent usage for Spanish and French. That’s something that has been requested forever. For many of my courses, this is a HUGE improvement to my learning.

196

There is no proof you don’t learn anything if you shuffle through answers to the right one. If you are walking thru a maze, and pick the wrong turn that leads to a dead end, do you tell your self you have to go back to the entrance again? No, you just turn around and take the other turn, and you remember for when the next time you have to walk thru the maze. I have shuffled a couple times already and I don’t once feel I have cheated or that the word is not learned in my head.

by the way to course creators. You can turn the keyboard off in your own courses by enabling special characters.

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197

@BeaTrisy : any answer here? From you, or somebody in charge?
I don’t get how you guys can think that “No communication is the best way to deal with unhappy customers”. (because, just to be clear, it definitely isn’t)

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198

immediate feedback? you mean guessing until you get the right one is immediate feedback? this is how “school” functions nowadays? and you get also max points for guessing… geeez

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199

Give them two months. Maybe we’ll get five words by then:

“We’ve been thinking about this.”

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200

A) Past 5 years: accidentally omit an accent, never know, get full points.

B) Now: accidentally omit an accent, realize that it is missing, figure out where the accent is required, strengthen understanding of accent usage, and sure, still get full points.

Is this optimal? Heck no.

But it is certainly better than method A. Your antagonistic, insulting response to my post makes it sound like you haven’t been aware of how Memrise has treated accents for the past 5 years, which is ridiculous; of course you’ve known that Memrise hasn’t required accents.

201

Just adding my voice to the pile. Auto-complete is terrible for two reasons

  1. In Japanese I can accidentally pick a kanji combination that I think is right, but if it doesn’t get accepted, I know it’s wrong - I can just hit the down arrow (perhaps) to get the right one. This defeats the learning process
  2. The answers bleed into the next page. So, for example if I type 人口, and it’s the right answer, it will accept and go to the next screen and not show the characters. This means that the next screen has 人口 hidden in the input buffer for IME, and when I type the next answer it will come out as, e.g. 人口白鳥, which is wrong. If you get into the habit of hitting escape, sometimes it will clear and register the blank “wrong” answer.

So, in short, automatic submission of answers has ruined the site that I’ve been using for five years and made it unusable. If it’s fixed (e.g. option in the settings) I can use it again, otherwise I will go elsewhere.

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202

oh yes, of course, my msg insulted you, because dared to say guessing in not learning and it should not be “rewarded” with max points. The accents issue is not the problem that the auto-accept wanted to “solve”. Of course you are insulted, even discriminated against. Something else, related to the issue at hand?

203

Accents are not the problem; If you made the course yourself you could have just turned on strictly typing to solve that.
But that doesn’t work for every course cause you don’t own every single one you’re learning.
Personally, if I didn’t know for certain whether or not I was missing an accent, I would sometimes hit escape after answering a question correctly to check if I missed any accents and would later include these in my answers. Note that memrise did mark it wrong when you typed accents that weren’t supposed to be there, so that solution was sufficient to learn where to place accents.

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204

I use a Korean program made by How To Learn Korean on a desktop computer using the website. The audio cuts off before the entire words is pronounced and/or it plays over the next word making it very difficult for me to imitate. I also want to get rid of the boxes with the Korean syllables. It is too easy to ‘cheat’ and it’s stressful to ‘not look’ while I’m trying to think of a correct answer. This change happened for me at the same time you did the ‘auto-correct’ update. I believe the update goofed up my program.
I should mention that I am a paying member. There should be an option to turn these things off. They are not helpful for memorizing new vocabulary and isn’t this why we are using Memrise?

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205

I would also like to add that I am not a fan of these updates.

Auto-accept is a somewhat annoying, for the reasons others have stated. But I am certainly glad that I am not currently studying Japanese. I’d be so annoying; I want to learn to write the words not do anagrams. Have it available to turn on and off on the users end, so if someone doesn’t have that language’s keyboard they can have it on, but it they do they can turn it off.

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206

The language I am learning primarily on memrise is Swedish and it doesn’t use many accents, BUT there are a few common words - en idé - for example which DO require them. When I was allowed to become a course contributor for the four-part course, “8,000+ Most Common Swedish Words”, I immediately requested an in-course keyboard so that these letters were added for those who didn’t have them on their regular keyboard: ä ö å é were all added so that people could write these words correctly.

The good people at memrise - back then, it was about two years ago - had no trouble adding these keyboards.

So, it is not entirely accurate to talk about “how memrise has treated accents” as if there is a blanket policy for every single course that appears on the memrise platform.

Just sayin’

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207

Yes, of course.

I merely shared a personal observation. I am finding it useful that if I omit an accent in French or Spanish, the word is not auto-accepted.

208

Should I abandon hope? Since November 28, I haven’t been able to learn new words because auto-accept is basically incompatible with Chrome + IME.

This is pitiful.

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