What is Memrise for?
Memrise helps you learn vocabulary, the toughest part of learning a language. Memrise makes vocabulary learning fast, fun and effective.
Is Memrise free
Yes. Memrise is completely free.
How do I find something to learn?
Head to languages where you can browse courses/word-lists according to the language you feel like learning.
What languages does Memrise offer?
You can learn vocabulary from more than fifty languages on Memrise. Memrise is a wiki, so new languages often appear, and the languages that exist are continuously being added to, improved and enriched by our extraordinarily creative community of learners.
Can I create my own flashcards?
Yes. To create flashcards, just go to the "languages" page and select the language that you are learning. Then click on “create course," and you will be led through the quick and easy process of creating an amazing set of multimedia flashcards.
How does the Memrise community work?
Memrise is a continuously improving trove of memorable material for all the world's languages: an encyclopaedia of mnemonics, pictures, videos, audio and cartoon, all dedicated to bringing learning to life.
Most of the site is freely editable. Anyone can make and share sets of flashcards, add words or create mems.
It is in adding mems, The main mission for our creative community is to share their imaginations to make learning as fun and interesting and vivid as possible. This mainly consists in adding mems, videos, audio and other material to words, to bring them and so the world's languages to life.
What’s a mem?
A mem is anything that helps you learn a new connection between a word and its meaning.
A mem might be a photo, a mnemonic, a video, a cartoon, an example sentence, an etymology or a witty remark, even a piece of audio borrowed from a foreign-language radio-station. Anything goes, so long as it’s relatively brief and enriches your learning.
Learning on Memrise is all about imaginative, real-world richness, fun and exploration. By adding your mems to Memrise, you enrich everyone else's learning at the same time as enriching your own.
Do I get any credit for making Mems?
You certainly do. We track how many people use your mems, how successful they are in helping people remember, and how often people interact with them lovingly. Lots more rewards are on the way!
How can I add all the mems/video/audio and other goodness to my flashcards?
When you are typing a word into a flashcard, Memrise automatically searches to see if there already exist flashcards for that word. If it finds flashcards (which it almost always will), they'll pop up beneath, and you'll be able to see whether those flashcards have audio, mnemonics and so on.
Just click on one of these already created flashcards to add it to your set, with all the mems and audio and other goodness attached. This way you can benefit from the imagination and hard work of the rest of the community!
What makes for a really good mem?
Like all great creations, great mems are concise and vigorous. They evoke an emotion. They amuse, inspire or enlighten. They make learning fun.
For a more substantial tutorial in how to create great mems, head to this community page.
Memrise doesn’t have the language I’m trying to learn. What do I do?
Just head to "languages", scroll to the bottom (taking the chance to great sure your language isn't already there) and click “create language”.
What is the science behind Memrise?
Memrise improves your ability to learn vocabulary by adding three powerful ingredients to normal flashcards.
1) Vivid encoding
We have mnemonics- vivid images that link words to their meanings. These lead to deeper processing, more long-lasting retention and better motivation. Such mnemonics have been scientifically shown to do as much as triple long term retention e.g (Raugh and Atkinson, 1975).
2) Scheduled repetition
Memrise reminds you of everything you have learned according to an optimized schedule, to help you review what you have learned as efficiently as possible. The reminders- initially very close together- space out more and more, as the strength and health of your memories gradually increases.
3) Optimized testing
Memrise quizzes you in various ways as you progress, in a scientifically determined fashion that helps strengthen your memories in the most efficient and long-lasting fashion possible. Actively recalling a memory is among the most powerful ways of strengthening knowledge.
There's lots more going on behind the scenes, but these are the things you want to know about!
Does Memrise teach me grammar too?
No, at the moment Memrise only teaches you vocabulary. We are not ruling out teaching grammar too at some point, but we want Memrise to be the best possible way to learn vocabulary, and that will remain our principal focus for the moment.
It’s worth mentioning, that a variety of different pieces of research have shown that the size and accuracy of your vocabulary is the best indicator of your ability in a foreign language- more important than anything else.
With our videos, mnemonics, example sentences and native audio recordings, Memrise is not only the fastest, but the richest way to learn foreign vocabulary.
What is the greenhouse?
The Memrise greenhouse corresponds to what you might think of as short term memory. It is designed for the period after which a memory has first landed in your mind, when knowledge is at its most fragile, and most in need of care and attention. Memrise helps memories get a foothold in long term memory during this early phase, before they are “harvested” into the garden- into longer term memory.
What is the garden?
The garden is where words that are being consolidated into long-term memory live. These memories still have lots of growing to do, but they don’t need quite as much attention as words you are just beginning to learn: you already know them a bit, and they’re not going to completely disappear from your mind.
As you revise and test the plants in your garden, they continue to grow. There are several stages of growth. As you pass through each stage, the plant grows stronger. Once fully grown, you will have truly mastered these words.
What is harvesting?
Harvesting happens when your memories are ready to graduate from short to longer term memory. That is, after four hours in the greenhouse, your memories are fit to be transferred to your Garden.
At this point of harvest, Memrise tests you on the words in your Greenhouse that are ready for long-term memory. This test serves both to boost the strength of the young memories (testing strengthens memories) and to make sure that you know them.
What is watering?
Watering is what you do to nourish long-term memories, where they are gradually strengthened by being reviewed, tested, and enjoyed.
What does it mean that my plants are wilting?
Memories are like plants: if you don’t nourish them, they gradually fade and wither: we call this wilting. Memrise helps you keep all your memories healthy and strong by estimating when you are about to forget, and making sure to remind you at the perfect moment so that you can . Think of us as mental gardeners.
Is it possible to concentrate my efforts only on wilting memories?
Yes- you can just select “wilting” on the submenu on the garden page, and go from there.
What is the count-down timer I see when I roll over a plant?
In the Greenhouse, the countdown timer counts down the minutes until your memory for a word is going to be ready for harvest- ready to be transferred from short to long term memory.
In the Garden, the count-down timer shows the time till your memory is going to wilt, until you are going to be in danger of forgetting it. That’s when you want to come back and review it.
Does the Memrise garden have any historical precedents?
Good question. The notion of the mind as a garden to be cultivated does indeed have a long history. The Latin word for page, “pagina”, also meant “a row of vines joined together”. Learning from a page was like harvesting the grapes from a vine; indeed, the word for to read in Latin, “legere”, connotes “picking”, “harvesting” and “collecting”.
Hugh of St. Victor, a great 11th century monk and innovator in memory techniques, conceived of memory as a pilgrimage through the vineyard of the text (think: information) towards Paradise, which he conceived of as a garden. That’s a little stronger than how we think of our garden, but same sort of story all the same.
Organic metaphors do not always lean towards gardens, however. Stuart Hampshire, in Innocence and Experience (1989, p.121) talks of memory as a compost heap in which 'all the organic elements, one after another as they are added, interpenetrate each other and help to form a mixture in which the original ingredients are scarcely distinguishable, each ingredient being at least modified, even transformed, by later ingredients'.
How is Memrise going to make money in the future?
Our investors often ask us the same question. We've no idea.
One possibility we’re considering is that Memrise users might upgrade to Memrise+ for a small fee -say, $5 a month. Memrise+ would be identical to the normal site, except that we'd like you more.
My first language is not English! What can I do?
Memrise is intending on offering the functionality to learn from other languages soon. Please email us if you have a specific request, and we can see how we can set things up for you. (info@memrise.com)
Can I make content for non-languages?
Great idea. Just head to http://www.memrise.com/topic/random-facts/ (for the moment). We'll accommodate more and more sophisticated tools for non-vocab content in time, but for the moment this is an area for creative experimentation. Get stuck in!
I love Memrise, how can I help?
There are lots of ways you can help.
You can tell us how to improve things. You can create mems as you learn. You can tell your friends.
