It is a truism that learning vocabulary in context leads to better retention in the longterm, while at the same time providing the learner with examples of sentence structures. (By “in context” I mean in sentences, phrases, dialogues, etc.)
The Memrise courses generally, and specifically the German, Italian, French and Spanish, do use some sentences and phrases in this way, and I find that by memorizing sentences and phrases, not only is my long term memory of the vocabulary highly enhanced, but I am able to use the vocabulary in question in actual sentences. This also gives my confidence a big boost!
Is there any chance that The Memrise Language Course could have more of such sentences and phrases added to them?
Also, is there an chance that The Memrise Language Courses (especially the French, German, Italian and Spanish) may have added to them an extra section for dialogues? For example, typical dialogues such as those one encounters when going to restaurants, shopping, meeting people for the first time, etc.,etc.This is an effective method that Assimil as well as FSI to heighten fluency.
If these issue have already been covered, I apologize in advance for repeating the topic.
I’ve only taken a superficial look at the new, official Memrise courses, but as far as I can tell, they have fewer sentences than the previous versions did. The older, official Memrise courses are still there, but hidden from the search results.
I’ve completed A1 German, and I’m almost done planting in A2 German.
There are also courses that people have created that are based on the material from Michel Thomas which have a lot of sentences.
Michel Thomas German Foundation is a no-typing course for beginners. (I planted 15 items, and then abandoned it, since I prefer to avoid multiple choice, and I’ve progressed beyond the beginner stage.)
Michel Thomas Advanced German has no audio, but builds dozens of sentences using just a few words. Then, it adds a few new words and builds dozen more sentences. (I just started this course a few days ago.)
The courses I’m posting for Japanese are set-up with context. For vocabulary it’s half test the individual word and half test the example sentence for that word. So students learn 20 vocabulary words in a lesson that test from English prompt and requires typing in the answer and mimicking the audio for the word. Then there’s 20 example sentences that’s listening to the phrase in Japanese and finding the correct Japanese sentence (the hope is that the student can comprehend the sentence and also reads it out loud mimicking the audio). So far, there hasn’t been any major complaints about that set-up aside from one guy that is not much into audio sentence to written sentence.
For context, while Japanese has the advantage of Kanji (I sort vocabulary by kanji which sort of groups meanings as a side effect) for other language words needs to be group manually to have an over arching context.
For grammar, it’s simple English sentence prompt -> Japanese sentence with simple TTS that plays when answered. No reason that can’t work with other languages as well.
For immersion, which Memrise sorely lacks, there’s subs2srs for turning dramas into Anki flashcards. However, they can also be uploaded to Memrise. Use of JTAT equivalent tool can be used to strip vocabulary to post as well. Lot of effort on the course creator side, but should be an effective type of course for people wanting to build a near 100% compression video collection to improve native level listening and speaking.
TL:DR - Course creators are likely going to have to pick up the slack as Memrise likely will not post the most efficient self study courses.
Thanks Kaspian for the leads and links. I was hoping that Memrise would
incorporate something like Michel or Assimil into their courses. As far as
I am concerned repetitive drilling as in Michel and Assimil is the only way
to become fluent in a language as opposed to being able to read and to a
lesser extent understand the spoken language. It is tough and unless you
have very clear goals in mind it can be utterly boring. But the same
applies when I first try a piece of really difficult music for the piano.
It takes hours and hours of repetitive practice before you reach the point
of playing fluently and well.
I had a good look at Memrise Michel and I think I will initially use it
with the Memrise course and as I go along, depending on how I progress, I
may even drop the Memrise Courses and concentrate just on Michel.
Thank you so much for the info. I did not see Michel when I went through
the Memrise courses. At one stage I used to spend too much time evaluating
the usefulness of courses and trying them rather than learning the
language. Again thank you very much.
Thanks for your suggestion Hydroptere. I did look through some of the
courses; but you can waste a lot of time evaluating courses rather than
learning the language. Also I do not like working on more than one or two
courses per language or I lose consistency and coherence. Again thank you
for your suggestion.