I selected Language Quarters Japanese because I was in the Japanese course today and I did not see a category that applied to all of your courses. Everything I am saying here applies to all of your courses.
When first learning anything it is counter productive to the learning process to be timed. It is a terrible teaching practice to do this. When any one learns a language whether you are a baby or an adult, our brains need to do it slowly at first. Our brains need time to think, remember, formulate and respond. This is the way we are wired as humans. As a musician you learn that to play something fast you have to learn it and practice it slowly. You learn to walk before you run. When I first learned hiragana and Katakana I had to do it slowly. Now that I know it better the timer is actually a good thing. But I would never have used your site to learn this in the beginning because of the bad decision to use a timer.
I love your site and it is so much better than a lot of them. But the timer ruins and undermines the very purpose of your site, i.e. to teach. By the way I really like DuoLingo and have used their site for a while now for 6 different languages. BUT when they recently came out with their Japanese course, I was extremely disappointed. In their favor it is still in Beta but it is inconsistent with the teaching style of the other courses and they also have some bad teaching methods they are trying to use. Your course blows them away… Except for your use of the timer of course…
There should be a way to turn off the timer until we are ready to work through something more quickly. Is there a way to turn off the timer? If not I really, really think you should modify the site so it can be turned off. Learning 101 dictates that your brain needs time to form synapses and anxiety impedes learning. Having the timer on impedes learning. A course that impedes learning is a bad course. A bad course does not teach anything nor does it keep students… Please let me know what you think and if there is a way to turn off the timer. If nothing else, at minimum, when we hit your pause button it should pause everything and let us see the screen with all the information on it and NOT go to a pause screen where we cannot see what we were just looking at.
I disagree with almost everything you say. I’ve been using memrise for almost 6 years now and I love the timer. Helps me learn. Is helping me a lot.
btw, learning cards/flash cards are not “teaching”… and memrise is a flash cards site, not exactly a teaching site. It is amazing to see what expectatios different people set in the same thing - I expect memrise to help me learn words, phrases, structures eventually: one cannot really learn a language only by using memrise (well, i never used duolingo, i’ve paid several visits to the site and disliked it; found it … boring)
Yes it is interesting how people differ in interpretations. Everything I said about learning and teaching is not just my opinion, but rather documented fundamentals of learning, teaching and cognitive mapping or learning styles. It is just as important with flash cards to be able to vary the speed and timing. I have had much success at teaching and learning. But no matter what any one says or how we differ in opinions and interpretations, having the timer as a choice to have on or off as a switchable option would be optimal and would satisfy everyone and everyone’s preferences. As a programmer I know this would be a very simple modification to the code behind Memrise.
As a programmer I know this would be a very simple modification to the code behind M
Memrise.
You better tell this the investors of Memrise who seem to clearly tell the “business developers” and programmers what to do (e.g web portal dashboard rewrite for same mobile app functionality), in what short timeline (and pressure)…and how many web features to remove.
They constantly request clearly that new BETA code updates are rolled out un-tested and that no testing department can care about QS ~1-4 weeks before.
This is going on for several updates on the web portal.
This is my opinion I wrote 4 days ago:
What is the point in killing API timer functionalty like function cancel() when multiple internal developers know very well from the community forums that 2-3 timer user scripts are available and worked before.
Ahhhhh…this is such a typical faux pas in just about every industry. Schedule or profit dictates quality. This is why the Space Shuttle blew up years ago. Schedule and politics were more important than the lives of the astronauts. I was in IT software development for years and there was always clueless pressure and insistence from managers to put something out prematurely. Arrrrgggg! Sometimes people who are supposed to be smart or even have a modicum of intelligence, are the stupidest morons on the planet.
Way too often the main objectives and purpose of a business, company, project or mission get lost and forgotten. Sometimes because of something similar to scope creep and more often because of idiots in management that are cluelessly catering to (kissing ass) the “money people”. Memrise, for example, should be focused on and committed to teaching, but the design of the question pages with an uncontrollable timer and blanking out the page when you hit pause, actually impede learning which directly contradicts any objectives in teaching.
I have had a lot of success and received many kudos for being a good teacher in helping people around the world in learning English. I also have a lot of experience learning other languages as I was attempting to learn 8 at the same time. In helping others with English they are helping me with their native language. There are many ways to teach and each person might have a different learning style that is better for them. BUT…their are some factors and methods that affect everyone. Learning should be done in the easiest, most basic way. It makes no sense to make learning difficult or to create obstacles for the person learning. This is not rocket science and it baffles me how so many people in the teaching profession can be so incredibly stupid and clueless. This goes for many problems in universities and schools too. I have seen incredibly brilliant people in their fields as professors at schools and colleges who are total ZEROs as teachers. They miss the mark on many levels and probably discourage and negatively affect many of the people whose lives they unfortunately touch.
In this case it would be so easy and would benefit everyone, if they would just make the timer switchable. We can turn it on or off…very simple. OR at least leave the question data on the screen visible when you hit pause. That is even more stupid that they blank out the screen and show the big play arrow. When we have to use the cursor to move around to select the symbols (like in the Japanese course) there is no time to even do that when you know the answer. Dumb, dumb, dumb times 100…
Memrise would become a much greater site if they would make the timer switchable on or off, let users control the duration of the timer meaning increase or decrease the time, and leave the screen with the questions totally visible when we hit pause so that we can have time to think if we need to. You know like when you are first learning something. Using a timer is appropriate when you have already learned something and you want to sharpen how well you know it and speed up your recognition etc.
I have a work around for the timer issue which of course does nothing to the timer or app code. It’s a bit of a pain better than trying to deal with the dumb ass timer. I don’t want to say what it is for fear they might try to do something to foil my method…
Except for your use of the timer of course… 