A (suspended) investigation of an obsolete form of glossika

[sfuqua]

About 20% of the way through the investigation I planned, glossika decided that the form of the course was obsolete.

I've decided to give glossika https://glossika.com/ a try.
The website has all of the details, but to put it briefly, glossika is a set of language courses for an impressive number of languages that emphasizes oral production. The designer built the course based on the idea that thoroughly practicing a set of 3000 sentences will lead to production at the B1/B1 level. 30000 repetitions with these sentences will activate a language that the learner has some familiarity with, 60000 reps will teach an inexperienced learner a language of average difficulty and 90000 reps will teach a hard one.
The course designer has some credentials that make him stand out from some of the charlatans on the web. He is an experienced polyglot and he is associated with a school where actual students learn.
The courses are translated and recorded by outside contractors, so there is probably some variation in quality. They are all based on translations of the same set of sentences. This means that there will be uneven coverage of some features of some languages, but this technique does allow rapid development of new courses.

I have doubts; is learning to speak simply a question of reps, whether you get them doing FSI, flirting on Skype, or repeating glossika sentences? I figure I can try doing 30000 reps with Spanish and French over the next few months and report whether anything good is happening. I'll be doing at least some extensive reading and I will be doing Anki reps also.

My first few days on the program suggest that the program may work to some extent, you spend about 20 minutes a day, per language, trying to chorus along with sets of sentences. It feels like Pimsleur or FSI drills, I hope it is as effective.
One thing that excites me about the program is that they claim that they will release Tagalog and Cebuano courses soon. My Tagalog could really use a good swift kick of drilling.

[sfuqua]

Ok, some details about what I am doing.
The glossika site lists several ways of approaching study using their materials. I gravitated toward the easy, leisurely approach using the "gsr" recordings these recordings give you ten new sentences a day and review earlier sentences. The sentences are read briskly, with a translation and the learner is encouraged just to follow along, even if all they can do is mumble. The idea is that things will eventually work themselves out. (if I do FSI again, I'm going to mumble instead of just failing on drills)
There are other audio files included with glossika; clearly they intend for their materials to be used in more than one way. For the "slow and easy" version I am using I am supposed to read along while I play a "GSM" recording. This Recording introduces new sentences and what they visually look like. There is a pdf that comes with the course that I turned into an Anki deck, that I am using every day to introduce the sentences for the glossika course.

[smallwhite]

I love experiments

What is the purpose of your project? To start speaking, or to improve existing speaking ability, or to learn French in general, etc?

Are you keeping time records?

"30000 repetitions", "you spend about 20 minutes a day": How many reps are there in 20 minutes? Or, how many minutes will 30000 reps take?

How confident are you in eventually reaching 30000 reps?

Do they say the English sentence first or the L2 sentence first?

Good luck with the project!

[Elenia]

Do they say the English sentence first or the L2 sentence first?

I'll let sfuqua answer the rest, but English first (at least on the Greek trial I am doing)

[jeff_lindqvist]

I have doubts; is learning to speak simply a question of reps, whether you get them doing FSI, flirting on Skype, or repeating glossika sentences?

Recent topic:
Glossika--Is the only thing that counts in fluency development the number of “reps” (i.e. sentences heard and spoken)?

[sfuqua]

Like many people who study on their own, my productive skills lag behind my receptive skills. The languages I learned while living in L2 environments aren't like that at all. It is more complicated to find opportunities to speak if you don't live where the language is spoken. The Internet can make up for this if you have enough time and the right personality to do this., but I never seem to get around to it. I guess I just like studying by myself.
I'm a beginner in French; I'm probably approaching intermediate. I'm at an advanced level in Spanish. In both languages, my active skills lag.

Glossika GSR files are about 20 minutes long; each contains 10 new sentences and 180 sentences total. In the program I am doing every fifth day you are supposed to do a GSM file, which will lead you through reading 50 new sentences aloud. These sentences are then drilled with the GSR files over the next five days. There are a total of 300 GSR and 60 GSM-A for each language, for a total of 57000 reps if you complete the whole 300 day program. Glossika claims that the effectiveness of the program starts to kick in at about 30000 reps.

I'm going to do something slightly different than the suggested course; I've put all of the sentences from the GSM files into Anki, and I'm going to learn them that way. At 20 new cards a day I will complete all the sentences in the course in 150 days. I put 10000 random sentences each from Proust and García-Márquez into the decks after the glossika sentences, to give me something new to do in Anki if I decide to finish the second half of the course.

[lusan]

I'm going to do something slightly different than the suggested course; I've put all of the sentences from the GSM files into Anki, and I'm going to learn them that way.

This is what I did it for Polish, L2 to L1 Anki, and I have ~100 % understanding. However, I think it is not enough. The problem is that people do not speak only in Sentences. They use sometimes FULL paragraphs! Glossika does not deal with the full impact of an speaking talking for 2-5 min without stopping. I think that indeed it might be good enough for A2 or beginning B1. Now I create similar Anki cards with Subs2srs, hoping to reach B2.

By the way, I just came from Poland and I found that I could hold a conversation, if the speaker does not make it too hard on me. People were surprised that I spoke Polish. Americans who speak Polish are very rare. Still I have a long way to go before I can watch Polish News.

[sfuqua]

Lusan, that makes perfect sense.
I'm starting to believe that drilling and practice only get one to about a B1, and that to get beyond that you really need to interact.

Of course I have no proof of that.

Some people are thrilled to be at B1 and would report their results as great

I bet that this won't affect my Spanish very much; I'm probably already B1 there. B1 in French would be great

[blaurebell]

I'm starting to believe that drilling and practice only get one to about a B1, and that to get beyond that you really need to interact.

Actually, the interaction part is somewhat optional, at least with real people. I got my English to B2 with drilling, massive input and *imagined* interaction. I was basically having imaginary conversations. What would I say if I had the chance to speak to a certain person. Usually I took musicians, fictional characters from books, writers, that sort of thing. I have to say that it feels slightly silly when you're not a teenager anymore though

[sfuqua]

I just did my Anki and glossika reps.

Today, I had a bunch of interference between my French and my Spanish reps. I did the French sentences first and when I did my Spanish reps, the French kept popping into my head.

I think I am going to alternate day by day which language gets practiced first.

Another way to limit interference would be to just start the courses at different times, so that you are not hearing the exact same English prompts for each language.