Memrise benefits:
- The teacher can personalize the Memrise course with any question/answer or vocabulary/definition type content.
- The vocabulary is presented in a scaffolded way. First about 3 words are introduced with audio. Then students practice the words with multiple choice type questions and finally are asked to type the words.Students can hear the audio recording while practicing, helping them improve pronunciation and giving another way to take the language in.
- Memrise is set up to have students set individual goals for practice and sends reminders to them.
- Memrise promotes anywhere, anytime learning. (I ask that students complete 30 minutes worth/week.)
- Memrise practice is flexible. It can be done with an app (Apple or Android) or online. Kids with the app can be encouraged to use the 5 minutes they have waiting for parents to pick them up, on the bus, in the car, etc. Thus, also reinforcing some time management!
- Memrise is free!
- Memrise is fun! When I tried out the app, I found myself continuing to practice, despite the fact that I already know the words!
- Memrise encourages spaced repetition over time.
- Memrise is very user-friendly for students and teachers. It is fast to create your course and easy to move units around if you want to change the order.
- Memrise provides an impetus for kids to keep going and learning because of the nature of how it is set up. Some of my students have worked ahead into vocabulary beyond the topics that I requested they work on.
- Students can create or choose Mems made by others to help make visual associations to the words.
- It matches up with any teaching method you ascribe to, unless you are not a fan of technology or independent vocabulary practice.
- I had students use Memrise before beginning my first story and it increased confidence for them as new language learners. I gave them a Pictotraductor (with the text whited out) document as a “pre-test” with a partner and students who had been using Memrise were able to tell almost, if not all of the story. (This is a sample of the document the kids had, but they did not have the text.
- Memrise is social as students can follow one another.
- It also appeals to students who like competition to be at the top of the leaderboard for the week, month or all time.
Students have begun requesting that I add vocabulary for them to the Memrise course. This is very easy to do and I can be responsive to student’s requests. Since the course has modules, students can pick and choose which topics they do and when if they would like to work on a topic we are not learning in class at the time. I am using a Comprehensible Input and storytelling approach to most of my teaching this year and don't plan to introduce vocabulary topically (like teaching all of the colors and weather etc. at once). However, some of my students have asked for lists in that form. This provides a nice way to do that for them, while staying true to how I would like to introduce vocabulary in class.
Teachers can create groups for classes. I had students use their real names along with something they liked doing. (ex.- Kim-Climbing) This helps me get to know them another way and gives them a safe username as well. You can track student points weekly, monthly and for all time high scores. I had told students 30 minutes a week initially for practice, but I would suggest coming up with a number of points. We are currently in discussion about that. We are also discussing if I should be looking at the leaderboard online to check in the homework or if they should log their progress and show me a sheet. Keeping track on a sheet would allow them to identify if they met their weekly goal or reflect on progress. This has been a good opportunity to give students voice in the process.
Overall, I think Memrise is a great tool to help students with practicing vocabulary outside of class! If you would like to take a peek at the course I am in the process of creating you can click here. There are also lots of other existing courses on Memrise