Tool Tips – Memrise

I’m not doing much Worldbuilding right now, so I don’t have a Worldbuilding Wednesday for you today, but I wanted to post something. Since I’ve been volunteering today, and got to practice my Arabic a lot, I thought this language-related post (which I wrote a while back) would be appropriate.

Ever heard of Memrise? Well, you have now! Memrise is a learning app, made especially for learning language. Or, more specifically, for learning words. It doesn’t teach grammar, but it’s great for vocabulary practice. It’s an easy to use app, with a lot of content to chose from. You find a course you like (which can take a bit of trial and error since it’s sometimes hard to see from the description if a course is at a good level for you), then you press the “Learn” button. You are given 5 words at the time and you repeat them a number of times. The app then asks you to revise at increasing intervals. New words are reviewed more often, and old words very rarely. You can learn as many or as few words per day as you want, and you can set daily goals and reminders if you want (I use goals but not reminders). When I first started using the app I’d plow through words and always have loads of reviewing to do. Nowadays I have a low daily goal and only learn as many new words as that goal requires, but I was reminded of my early binging days recently when suddenly dozens of words I hadn’t come across in months showed up in my review queue!

I use Memrise chiefly for learning Lebanese Arabic vocabulary, but it has courses in loads of languages. You can even make your own courses, but I am not personally familiar with that feature. It also has some non-language courses, although obviously it’s only suitable for topics that require memorization similar to vocabulary practice. For example, I’m currently going through a course about Greek Mythology. I also use some English courses, a few on advanced vocabulary and one on collective nouns for animals. The collective nouns one is just for fun and probably not all that useful in reality, but I think the vocabulary ones will benefit me as a writer in the long term. Most of the words in these courses aren’t really new to me, but they seem to be helping me move words from my passive vocabulary to my active vocabulary, which is always useful!

So if you’re a language learner, want to expand your vocabulary or just like learning trivia, check it out! And if you’re already using it and have some tips on courses I might like, let me know in the comments below.