The unforgiving nature of the “Difficult words” feature is annoying bordering on insulting. If you miss a question a single time, which can easily occur due to mis-tapping as opposed to actually not knowing the answer, or because you haven’t memorized it after a solitary prior exposure to the word, it gets added to the remedial “difficult words” list. I would prefer to have control over this setting and personally I wouldn’t want a word added to the list unless I have missed it 3+ times or unless I have deliberately added it to the list of words I am subjectively finding difficult (which I am not too proud to admit). But the way it currently functions is more of a slap in the face for earnest learners and slightly demotivating. Furthermore, this category could be re-named or seamlessly integrated into the review features by prioritizing those words. More generally I find it unhelpful and artificially arbitrary to categorize words as “easy” and “difficult.” Thanks for taking these thoughts into consideration.
I guess it’s not your general idea of this comment, but an “easy” word marker could be very helpful, if it means less repetitions and so on.
@JBorrego , why don’t you think about it?
it’s been flagged up before, yes - Memrise’s definition of when a word is ‘difficult’ is rather skewed. My personal bugbear is (ok, was) to get a word flagged as ‘difficult’ because I got it wrong once during learning. I’m learning the word, I don’t know it yet, FFS!
Either way, I have abandoned difficult words as it was just an aggravation and didn’t add any real learning benefit. Should Memrise decide to improve this (and I mean improve, not ‘improve’ as they frequently seem to) then I might give it another try…
Wrong words get shown more often (I thought) until we get it right consistently, so in a way there is no need for them to be flagged - but I suspect many like to do a revision session on just the difficult words and not on all words as in a general review session.
But there could be times when although we get the word right immediately, we might know it’s a tricky one and would like to concentrate on it, so a flag (tick/ untick) option would be useful.
@MemriseSupport, do you think this thread ought to be moved to [Feature Request] rather than a bug?
I rather it not be changed. If you got it wrong, you got it wrong. It’s as simple as that. I don’t always know which word it wants, but with how it auto accepts, it’s not a problem. I can cycle through possible answers.
Hi all,
Thanks for your feedback on this.
As you can see, users have differing opinions on this so we can’t promise to build an algorithm that will suit everybody. That said, we’ll continue to monitor feedback on the Difficult Words feature for any changes we decide to make in the future.
In the meantime, you can remove any words you don’t want on your difficult words list by following these instructions: https://memrise.helpshift.com/a/memrise-learn-a-new-language/?s=getting-started&f=what-are-difficult-words-1556554476&p=all
And any words that you find easy and don’t need any revision on you can ignore by following these instructions: https://memrise.helpshift.com/a/memrise-learn-a-new-language/?s=getting-started&f=can-i-ignore-words-or-entire-levels&p=all
Hope this helps for now.
Kind regards,
Memrise team
Really helpful advice - even I learned something new.
As far as I am concerned these two options are a good solution to the issues raised.
Easy words is not an issue, but a feature like this could add customization to a learning process and make it more adjustable to user’s requirements.