For years now I’d been using Anki like I assumed most users here do, along with supplementary textbooks like Heisig. No doubt they’ve helped, but I’d never felt like I really *grasped* kanji tightly, at least not nearly to the extent I do English. Things would stick for awhile, fade into nothingness, maybe make a comeback, slip away again, and so on and so forth.
But since about March I gave Memrise a go, a site I’d always avoided because…I’m not even sure. I guess I didn’t like how their app blasted me with layers of “Subscribe NOW!”, and I guess I always assumed I just had to use their built in Japanese course and I was already way beyond that.
But a friend told me the best way to use Memrise was on a laptop and with custom courses users have made. Using it on a laptop meant **NO MORE ADS**, and I was astounded just how I never realized the abundance of courses that have been made available by other users. It feels like absolutely any textbook you’re using has a companion course on Memrise, similar to to how Anki has a companion deck made by someone.
So I “enrolled” in the Sou Matome N3/N2/N1 Kanji course, along with the textbooks IRL, and half a year later I’m half way through the N1 section of the course and I feel like I’ve firmly retained about 85% or so of the kanji I’ve learned along the way, with the remainder occasionally needing a quick lookup. I’m blasting through Yahoo and NHK online articles, with only a few words here and there I don’t know yet. My grammar isn’t completely up to snuff, but by knowing a lot of the words along the way I can make up the difference through context.
I think the reason Memrise has stuck where anki and the like haven’t is because of how game-ified it is. Learning new words gets you points, reviewing learned words gets you points. And you have others using the courses that you’re competing with. Admittedly I got pretty obsessed in the gamer way my brain works, but in a way that just hurried up my retention of characters.
I know in the end the points mean absolutely nothing and the learning is what matters, but…well, points are still points, right? Points in games never meant anything anyways.
So I think if you’ve got a gamer mindset, and want to use something with a decent looking UI, give Memrise a go. Just **NEVER** use the app, because using the browser UI is better looking, smoother, and best of all allows access to everything completely free.
4 comments
I’ve used Memrise since I started learning Japanese pretty much. I think it’s far superior to Anki when it comes to actually memorizing vocab, especially the community made courses. The main reason I primarily use Anki though is because Anki is much quicker. I don’t retain info as well on Anki, but I go through it quicker, whereas Memrise takes more time but I get much much better retention.
If I’m doing something like a community made course with lots of vocab I already know, it takes way too long to get through it and I end up removing a lot of it.
But basically, I agree. Memrise is better lol. At least for community made stuff like vocab in textbooks.
Edit: wanted to add that Nukemarine’s courses on Memrise are top tier. They usually also include audio.
I try to keep my mouth shut about Memrise because the vast majority of users here will shit on it and say “Anki is superior to everything!”
While I finally did give in to Anki, you have to do extra steps to make Anki effective. So long as you make sure to choose one of the community-made courses in Memrise, I find it VASTLY superior. In fact, it’s been because of Memrise that my Japanese has actually been improving.
Nothing wrong with Memrise in general. As far as I know it mostly gets criticised for the official Japanese course that they made themselves. The user-made courses are typically just as good as the products they are based on (your success might in fact come from using So-Matome and its textbook more than from using it on Memrise specifically).
I would however not underestimate the fact that Anki is open source and that all data is owned locally by the user, who has full control over what happens with it. Other apps and websites could be discontinued at any time (taking all your data with them) or receive a terrible update that removes functionality you relied on (Memrise already did this [many times in the past](https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/r534rk/memrise_is_removing_mem_functionality_on_december/)), or decide to suddenly remove certain user-generated decks (e.g. if the original content owner complains), or simply start charging a high subscription fee whenever they feel like doing so. If you only do a quick deck here and there that probably won’t matter much. But for my main vocab SRS that I expect to use for many years to come, I would not put my trust into any other product that I have no control over.
I agree definitely but the thing I dislike the most is that the pronunciation aspect is too difficult