Memrise Easy Language Learning

When I got this app over a year ago, it was great. Videos are excellent, the UI was lovely, I had so much control. I loved that I could choose to do vocab when I wanted. I could go through all the words I need to brush up on before diving into something else, on my terms. The new UI has changed this. Now I can't just do vocab until I've reviewed all my words. I can do one or two vocab reviews of 10 words before the vocab section decides for me that it is time to learn more new things. I am trying to review what I have already learned before learning new things, why does the app have to force me to continue my last scenario? It's been so long since I've used the app, I need to review before I go into new scenarios and just fail every question. I have over 100 words left to review and I have to keep manually crashing the app in order to allow me to actually just. Do. Vocab. Please change your UI so that I can just review my vocab until I decide I am done. I left duolingo specifically because they were doing this to me. I was no longer able to choose what I learned and when, duolingo chose for me, and if I happened to take a break and forget some things, then I have to wait until duolingo decides I am allowed to review stuff. That is incredibly frustrating! If memrise follows the same route and continues to cut me off from finishing my vocab, I will be cancelling my subscription and finding a new app that actually lets me choose.

Memrise is really good! It has similar learning styles with other apps, the flash card style memorization, but it also has audio and the “robots” saying the words sound very human, they are male and female voices so you can catch some of the nuances of each. One of the best features is it has video of natives saying the words. You can keep repeating the video until you have really understood the words. This helped immensely in my Japanese lessons. The interface is really good too, easy to use, intuitive for practicing specific things, you can focus on just listening, spelling/writing/reading even your own pronunciation. They recently added video of writing the hiragana and katakana. Now I can see the stroke order, and practice reading people’s handwriting and have more ideas of what it’s gonna look like on a billboard or sign here in Japan. I’m really really pleased with this app. Oh, and to top it off, you can download the lessons so they will be available offline. I really can study anywhere. I thought 60$ for the year was reasonably priced, but I was bummed I didn’t see the 100$ unlimited, I think I would have liked to have bought that instead. This app beats the others, in my opinion by a long shot. You have to download all the free ones and practice each just to get a similar well roundedness that Memrise has, and then you still won’t get the most useful feature, the videos. I would recommend it to everyone trying to learn Japanese!!! Go Memrise!!!

I have tried every single language learning app for the last 5 years. Literally EVERY single one. Memrise is, by far, the best. This app is truly amazing, I'm so impressed. The learning pace is fluid and natural, teaching you the basic concepts of the language and building from there, step by step, to give you a proper working foundation. And the best part is that they don't stick with just teaching you words, they also teach you a core understanding of WHY it's done that way. I've understood and retained more Japanese using this app in the last 3 months, than over a *year* of attempting to self-study via books and internet sources. I'm genuinely amazed by Memrise and I've been recommending it to everyone I know who wants to learn a language. One of the biggest problems of other language apps is that they try to give you too much information all at once, or give you only a little and then attempt to quiz you on concepts you haven't learned, or focus too much on just the spoken words and not any reading comprehension, or vice versa. Memrise's pace is completely balanced, and if you ever get tired of the styles they use to help you learn (combination of automated voice pronunciation, video clips of natural speakers, written sentence translation, flashcards, multiple choice, etc) then you can take a break and do a chat scenario with an automated AI that will teach you the concepts through story-telling/role-playing. I really cannot say enough about this app, it's truly fantastic!!!!