Why I quit my streak

Official Memrise Courses Spanish (Mexico)
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So, I had a bit of a streak going and I thought I would keep it going for a long time. I have a streak of 1222 days on Duo, 76 days on Fluencia, a streak on Drops and I’ve been working with Spanish every day now for years. I really like Memrise, or at least I did when I first started working with it daily.
I’m a retired public school teacher, so I have some idea about what good teaching should look like, how to motivate learners, etc., but Memrise was starting to frustrate me to the extent that I’ve just about given up on it.
The problem is, the program begins to advance too quickly, IMO, too soon in the progression of learning. I could keep up if I wrote everything down, but I’m not sure that is the intent of the program. It began to throw phrases at me that I had never seen, and that had a grammar structure which had not been taught. Shouldn’t new concepts be introduced, one at a time and then practiced, before one is expected to understand and use the material? It just seems like too much, too fast and it’s discouraging!
I just think the authors of this program need to keep us ‘slow learners’ in mind and give the option to practice what we’ve learned so that it becomes internalized, before moving on to the next concept.

Ross
Vallejo, CA

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Hi Ross,
I used memrise daily for a long time, then took a long time off - for reasons different than yours. However, I have some tips for you if you want to continue using memrise.

  1. Choose different courses, rather than just the official ones. Need practice conjugating verbs? There’s a course for that. Want the most common words? There are courses for that. Practice with basic sentences? Got that, too.
    For verbs I recommend this one: Verb Conjugation by Person - A Simpler … - by SLL - Memrise

  2. After you finish “learning” a level, go to that level and click “Review” to check your learning on that level. Instead of learning new words every day, spend more time reviewing by level.

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I have taken to learning a level and then reviewing over and over and over again. and then I will review all the other levels. Only when I am confident in the most recently learned level will I go on to the next one.

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