Memrise Review

Tuesday, December 5th

2023 German Lesson Reviews

Memrise

• Quite a bit of content, especially for beginners
• A large amount of video content
• Interactive lessons
• Videos of native speakers talking to you from their country

How is Memrise different? Well, how many times have you heard people say that they've taken four years of language in high school and now they don't remember a thing? The goal of Memrise is not only to be attractive and fun, but also to help you retain the material you've learned.

Clear audio so you can learn to repeat

When you see a visual for the vocabulary word or phrase, you can click to hear a male voice or a female voice. This consistency is helpful for the student to hear the same voice when learning new vocabulary. In hearing the same voice, your mind adjusts to it, and you have an easier time with new words. It's not like each lesson has a different person from a different country or region: this can be quite difficult when learning pronunciation.

Real people in their own settings

Once you hear the standard voice say the vocabulary word, you can now hear it spoken by real people where they live. You might hear a person from Nuremberg standing in front of the Nuremberg Castle, and of course, their accent might be slightly different than that of a person from Munich, but this person is still easy to understand. How wonderful for subtly getting students interested in travel! (And why not travel to Germany someday to practice your newfound skills?)

Natural gestures

When the person in the video is talking to you, they might naturally use gestures when talking like we might, but gestures in different countries may be different than ours. For example, if you ask someone how many sisters they have, and they reply "one" , they will not use their index finger. Europeans use their thumb for "one" and their thumb and index finger for "two." They are little subtleties that one may encounter when travelling, but with Memrise, you'll have that opportunity here and there with these videos.

Growth is good

When you are in the beginning of a level, you'll see the icon of a seed. When you water the seed with your practice, the seed will grow into a healthy plant. Just as a plant needs consistent watering for it to grow, so do your skills. Keep "watering" them regularly and you will see growth, with your skills and your little icon. This is Memrise's gentle way of encouraging you and rewarding you for keeping up your studies.

Maybe you already know some German

Memrise builds upon its lessons and has healthy repetition to learn the material more deeply. If you are not a beginner, you can choose where you would like to start your lessons. No worries if they include vocabulary that they taught in an earlier lesson that you don't know: it's considered review, and there will be places in the activities to catch you up when you need it.

What about advanced content?

Unfortunately, Memrise is heavy on lessons for beginner and intermediate students. If you'd like to fortify the German you've learned in the past, Memrise can help. If you want to continue in your advanced studies, you'll need to find a different program.

How intensely do you want to learn?

Memrise has a setting for you to set notifications for your blocked out time for learning German. How often do you want to make time for a German lesson? Or maybe this is a busy time of year for you and you just can't clear time daily for your lessons. Whatever your situation, Memrise will help you with notifications.

Costs

• Free basic access
• Monthly Plan: $8.99 per month
• Annual Plan: $7.50 per month or $89.99 per year
• Lifetime Plan: $139.99 one-time fee

Free or paid subscription?

Memrise keeps it simple. You choose the free plan or the paid plan. Here is the difference.

• The Free Plan
• Courses for 23 languages
• Video clips of people where they live in Germany
• Fun quizzes in the form of games
• Review plans that are personalized
• Your program syncs across your devices
• The Pro Plan
• All of the above
• Access to all learning features
• No advertising
• Offline learning via the app

Memrise Pro has added benefits

The free plan certainly offers plenty of lessons, practice, and review. The Pro plan offers a few really nice additional features which can enrich the learning process. There's added content, and much was created by Memrise users! You can see statistics of your learning progress. They also have speech-recognition technology. This means that you not only hear the example of the spoken phrase, you can also record yourself and then listen, comparing yourself to the native speaker. Voice recognition hears your voice and lets you know where you veer from the native speaker's example, helping you to know if you might be understood by others. Memrise Pro also offers "mems," or mnemonic devices: ways to help you memorize those words you keep getting wrong. We all have certain words that we just can't seem to commit to memory, no matter how many times we practice those flashcards, right? Memrise knows which words you have difficulty with, and offers their "mems," oftentimes memes, to help you get over the hump.

30-day money-back guarantee

The free plan certainly has plenty of material available, but you'll have to be patient with the ads. You could also bypass the advertising and subscribe. Be sure you try out the program enough within the first 30 days to decide if the Pro Plan is the right fit for you. If not, cancellation must occur within the first 30 days if you choose the annual or lifetime plans. The monthly plan has no option for a refund.

Memrise is addicting and we recommend it

We love the care Memrise took to help its students learn German. There are notifications to remind you it's time for your lesson, they have consistent native speakers for ease of learning pronunciation, native speakers in their own countries on the videos, speech recognition technology, "mems" for the words that are challenging to commit to memory, and we can watch our seed of learning grow. The only thing lacking is a chance to continue using Memrise to a more advanced level of German. All things considered, Memrise easily receives high marks from us.