Situation and Introduction

‘Everyone, please remember to do your SolidMemory today! It counts towards your exam mark!’

As our English teacher reminds us, I glance at my iPad, looking at the app with dots traveling in a cloud, thinking about which five precious English words I should add to SolidMemory today.

Many of our schoolmates have complained that using SolidMemory is not helpful. Some even wrote an article discussing the disadvantages of SolidMemory and how it isn’t appropriate for it to be connected with an award (you can read the article written by 5A Ho Yui Ni Esther, titled ‘SolidMemory‘).

But today, I am not here to provide complaints or advice on whether SolidMemory is a good tool or not. Instead, I want to discuss whether forcing students to use SolidMemory for our exams really helps improve our English learning.

Before starting, let me introduce SolidMemory. It is an app that relies on AI to help students enhance their English vocabulary through memorization. All students are basically required to input five words each day, with an exercise as the minimum requirement. 

Advantages

From the perspective of teachers and the app’s founders, they encourage us to use it. Why? First, learning sometimes starts with forcing. There are always subjects that don’t get our attention, but are essential to study. For example, the twelve prescribed articles for Chinese (十二篇指定文章). Our teachers often suggest memorizing all of them to ensure we fully grasp their meaning. So why not apply the same logic to SolidMemory? Its AI system allows students to learn through spaced repetition. Through this, we can force ourselves to learn five new words a day. SolidMemory helps us take the first step toward enjoying English vocabulary. The AI reviews our previous exercises and tailors new ones to help us review words we are less familiar with, ultimately improving our vocabulary.

However, as with anything, forcing students to use SolidMemory to improve their English may have unintended consequences.

Disadvantages

From the students’ perspective, we might encounter some direct problems with SolidMemory. First, memorizing words does not always connect to actual usage. Even though SolidMemory provides example sentences, the app focuses on whether students can memorize words rather than whether they understand how to use them. This could lead to confusion when students try to use new words in writing but misunderstand their meaning. Do we want this to happen? Of course not! This is why forcing students to use SolidMemory may not improve our English but instead create confusion about word usage.

Moreover, by making SolidMemory mandatory, the founders inevitably included rankings in the app to encourage students to use it. The temptation of climbing higher on the leaderboard is hard to resist, right? But do students who aim for the top position really learn English, or are they just rushing to meet a target that has nothing to do with improving their English skills?

The ranking system in SolidMemory may create a vicious cycle where students compete for recognition rather than for meaningful learning, leading to the issues mentioned above. We must ask ourselves: is it worth it? Compare this to another popular learning app, Duolingo, which creates a fun and encouraging environment for people to learn languages without ranking them. Would this be a better solution for us?

Reasons for Different Opinions

SolidMemory will always be a subject of debate. While teachers and founders can insist on the benefits of AI, some students will continue to point out the one-sided nature of the app. Why is there such a difference? It mainly stems from our differences in learning styles. We all have our preferences for studying various subjects, and English is no exception. Our learning habits may vary due to factors like environment, peers, and mood.

Conclusion 

There is no definite solution in this situation. We can always choose our preferred learning materials or AI tools. While forcing us to use SolidMemory might lead us to take the first step in learning English, SolidMemory may not be your ideal tool. But it could still be a building block toward developing an interest in English. It would be better if the founders focused on fostering students’ interest in more advanced English. There is no definitive answer to whether SolidMemory is good or bad; what remains is whether we are willing to learn more and explore English for ourselves. Before we complain about being forced to use it, why not pause, put more effort into our studies, and find a more suitable way for us to learn English with SolidMemory? SolidMemory may not be perfect—neither the AI nor the system, and neither are we. But we can learn to be better, just as SolidMemory evolves with us.

I snap back to the app with the dots moving on the screen, deciding to add more words to SolidMemory.

Have you done your SolidMemory today?