💻 Memrise: the fusion of artificial intelligence and language learning!

This week I'm going to introduce you to a very popular language learning website. ❓You may want to ask:" In the previous blog, you have introduced many interesting and useful language learning websites, why should I use new ones?" 

(What? You haven't read my previous blogs, then you can explore them by clicking here!)💥

🗣My answer is: Because there's something special about our topic today--Memrise, of course! So let's take a look at what makes it so special!

(Link to the website: Memrise) 

• Firstly, similar to other language learning platforms, Memrise has a 'learn' and 'practice' function that helps users to improve their language skills through repeated learning and practice exercises on different topics.

👉Learning Function

In terms of 'learning', Memrise is focused on learning words and phrases. It chooses to use real-life pronunciations and videos to teach users how to pronounce words. What is noticeable is that most of the people in these videos are in real life situations, such as the street. 🤔I think this makes learning a language more relevant to daily life and gives the user a sense of learning a language in real world situations, which reduces the feeling of being bored.

It is worth noting that in this function it is a combination of practice and teaching mode that is used. This means that students complete the whole set by learning new words and doing quizzes on words they have already learnt interspersed. This greatly helps the user to reinforce their memory of the words and to check them at any time, while greatly enriching the fun of learning.

👉Practice Function

Once the learning tasks have been completed, Memrise collects and organises those elements that students have not mastered well, making it convenient for them to do exercises. There are various ways to practice, such as arranging letters to complete words, or choosing words based on pronunciation.

👉Conversation function

• This feature is one of the best features of Memrise, which uses artificial intelligence technology to free language learning from the shackles of boredom and tedium. Users can choose different types of topics to talk to the AI about. You can choose to talk casually about daily topics with the ‘chat‘ option or complete a conversation with a task to try to achieve a goal with the ‘task’ option.

• Memrise will give you very specific instructions to help you structure your chat ideas and make your presentation logical. For example, it instructs you to convince the other person by listing reasons.

• In a conversation, the AI has the right thinking as well as the proper logic and it will comment on your remarks - supporting or refuting them. If you send something off-topic, it will try to correct you to ensure that your conversation is under the right topic.

• If you do not complete the task within the required number of dialogue rounds, for example, if you do not succeed in negotiating a good birthday party or in deciding on a hairstyle to be done, then this challenge is deemed to have failed. You will have the option to try again.

• In addition, Memrise will correct errors in the language you are sending - both in spelling and grammar. Error correction is necessary for a language learner and helps users to improve better.

👉Limitation

• However, Memrise also has some disadvantages and limitations ......

Take English learning for example, Memrise only allows learning English in one's native language, not using English to learn English.

In the practice function, users can only practice conversations by typing manually, not by sending their voice verbally. Practising 'speaking' in the same way as writing may be uncomfortable for students.

👉How to solve it?

It would certainly be better practice if Memrise continued to develop AI that could talk and recognise the user's speech errors.

👉More explorations

This is my introduction to Memrise and some of my own thoughts on it. If you want to understand it better, you can try watching this video. See you next time!