Glossika - Yes? No? Maybe?

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Soffía
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Re: Glossika - Yes? No? Maybe?

Postby Soffía » Sun Aug 30, 2015 12:37 pm

My Icelandic is not great at all (around B1 comprehension), but after a glance at the sample materials I did have this feeling that the language wasn't as colloquial as it could have been. That was before reading this thread, by the way, so I wasn't biased by the opinions expressed here!

Take it with a grain of salt; I'd be interested to know if anyone else has opinions on the Icelandic.
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Re: Glossika - Yes? No? Maybe?

Postby Random Review » Sun Nov 15, 2015 12:15 pm

Update: after finishing levels one and two of the Glossika Mass Sentence Method for German, I sadly can't allocate the time to do level 3 because I'm back in a hostel in Spain. Really I should put German down for the next 8 or 9 months but I just don't want to, so I decided to continue by doing the Glossika Spaced Repition course for level 3 (it requires just half an hour per day).

The way it is advertised makes it seem like the easy option, boy is that wrong. It is the single most intense, exhausting language program I have ever done.

In short, it is wonderful. I'd now only do GMS for revision or if you are in a rush (GSR takes about 120 days per level), GSR is so much better.
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Re: Glossika - Yes? No? Maybe?

Postby Hanuman » Mon Nov 16, 2015 4:14 am

My biggest gripe with the GSR is I spend approximately half the time for each run listening to someone speak English, and it kind of puts me off my flow with that change between the two languages. I began to get a lot more out of the product when I began only listening to the GMS C files and just put that on repeat for 15 or so minutes for each 50 word block.

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Glossika, I think the product and premise is a great idea and for the most part it's really good but every now and then something might come up with the translation, names or pace of the audio that irritates me and puts me off for awhile.

I just really wish that the pace of the speaker was more natural (QUICKER!!)

Own the first release of the Thai version.
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Re: Glossika - Yes? No? Maybe?

Postby Bakunin » Mon Nov 16, 2015 12:41 pm

Hanuman wrote: I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Glossika, I think the product and premise is a great idea and for the most part it's really good but every now and then something might come up with the translation, names or pace of the audio that irritates me and puts me off for awhile.

You mentioned already a few points, but could you please elaborate on the 'hate' part? :) I see that Khmer is at 50%... I'm tempted to give it a try, but people have really different opinions which makes me a bit skeptical. In particular, are the sentences culturally appropriate for South-East Asia? Are the translations natural? Is it possible to avoid the English part? Are the sentences spoken too slowly to pick up on native intonation patterns?

issemiyaki wrote: Now that I've gotten to know Glossika a bit more, I do have some reservations. It uses English as a point of reference, which runs of the risk of depriving language learners of the most AUTHENTIC-sounding phrases in the language.

Does this apply to all languages? If so, then the further you are away from English the worse it should get. If you already are dissatisfied with French, then I wonder how useful the Khmer version will be... :?
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Re: Glossika - Yes? No? Maybe?

Postby Hanuman » Mon Nov 16, 2015 1:15 pm

I wouldn't call it hate, but there is some minor frustrations here and there and from what I understand, they have updated and fixed a lot of the problems that I mentioned, hence me stating the version I had.

The advantage will be in addressing the point you just made in your log regarding those sections of speech which you glaze over in input but then can become unstuck on in production. Drilling sentences and internalising preposition groupings and structure. This I really like. I'm sure you would find a way to manipulate the product to work for you.

The disadvantage is that in these SEA languages there isn't the abundance of ways to say things that Glossika likes to do with the original. And everything is much more context driven so you end up with either portions of text in Glossika which contain either unnecessary words to create context which you probably wouldn't require in practice or the sentence can be perhaps too ambiguous if encountered on its own without the translation/context.

FYI I don't use the English translations nor do the associated exercises. I would still recommend the product.

Edit: it's not too slow. Somewhere in between textbook and native, if anything it's maybe a touch too slow and a touch too clear in the pronunciation which is great for a beginner level but not exactly what you want as a higher level learner. Culturally relevant? That's actually hard to answer i think there can be some handy stuff in there but not on the level of going to a temple or having a water fight.
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Re: Glossika - Yes? No? Maybe?

Postby lusan » Sat Nov 21, 2015 12:00 am

Hanuman wrote:My biggest gripe with the GSR is I spend approximately half the time for each run listening to someone speak English, and it kind of puts me off my flow with that change between the two languages. I began to get a lot more out of the product when I began only listening to the GMS C files and just put that on repeat for 15 or so minutes for each 50 word block.

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Glossika, I think the product and premise is a great idea and for the most part it's really good but every now and then something might come up with the translation, names or pace of the audio that irritates me and puts me off for awhile.

I just really wish that the pace of the speaker was more natural (QUICKER!!)

Own the first release of the Thai version.


I understand you very well.

What is Glossika? I think it is "set of sentences." Those sentences can be used in a variety of ways. We could follow their recommendations or do whatever we wish with their material. After studying Polish for a while, I discovered that I really really need to work on my understanding/listening of Polish. I found that to speak, for me, is easier than to understand/listening. It would be nice to have a set of nice sentences to practice understanding, right? I thought about Grossika' sentences and I decided to dump the whole Polish set into Anki and use them to practice Polish listening/understanding. Yes, it is a lot of work because I have to split the sounds using Audacity and type every single sentence. Oh well...So far, so good. Does it work? The last time I talked to my mother-in-law., who is polish, she told my Polka żona that my polish is improving. I wonder... (Is she saying that I made it to B1? I doubt it.) After 2 years of studying polish everyday I came to the conclusion that is a journey that will NEVER end. So I might enjoy the crazy grammar of the language. I mean: to learn a language is not about learning either grammar or vocabulary but about learning a way of being.
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Re: Glossika - Yes? No? Maybe?

Postby Random Review » Mon Dec 07, 2015 12:41 pm

Hanuman wrote:My biggest gripe with the GSR is I spend approximately half the time for each run listening to someone speak English, and it kind of puts me off my flow with that change between the two languages. I began to get a lot more out of the product when I began only listening to the GMS C files and just put that on repeat for 15 or so minutes for each 50 word block.

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Glossika, I think the product and premise is a great idea and for the most part it's really good but every now and then something might come up with the translation, names or pace of the audio that irritates me and puts me off for awhile.

I just really wish that the pace of the speaker was more natural (QUICKER!!)

Own the first release of the Thai version.


That's great if you have that kind of level of concentration, in that case the GMS "C" files are definitely the most efficient way forward. Me personally, I kind of drift in and out when using the "C" files, though I did sometimes use them. The thing about GSR (and also the GMS "B" files) is that it isn't really possible to answer the English prompts correctly in the TL if you aren't paying attention, so it forces you to concentrate (especially the GSR files where your brain can't even cheat by memorising the order); in contrast it's perfectly possible to parrot sentences without paying attention.

I do agree, though, that if your powers of concentration are unusually good, the GMS "C" files are easily the most efficient way to learn.

I sometimes do a homemade GMS-style exercise with sentences I get from elsewhere (I can't bring myself to do Glossika's original method of recording myself) and my workaround for the concentration problem is to put the sentences in an album on my ipod with each sentence as a separate track and play the album in "random" mode and with each track set to repeat infinitely. In this way I have to move on to the next sentence manually and I only do this when I am satisfied that I have properly paid attention to the sentence as I say it, rather than mindlessly parroting it, which tends to be anything from 1-6 repetitions. A set of 20 sentences takes about 5-20 minutes in this way (depending on sentence length and how well I concentrate).
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Re: Glossika - Yes? No? Maybe?

Postby lazarus1907 » Sun Mar 06, 2016 12:31 pm

I can't comment on other courses, but I am Spanish and I have studied Spanish grammar and phonetics. Some translations are too literal and don't sound very natural, and a few of them are simply wrong. Many mistakes in translation often arise from the obvious similarity between words and expressions, and unless you have experience as a professional translator, some of them are bound to be bad, and Mike has obviously not invested money to get a professional to check the translations.
Regarding the pronunciation, the woman who has been used to record the audio, who has otherwise a very clear pronunciation, makes a typical mistake: trying to speak so "hypercorrectly", that her pronunciation is not natural, but almost robot-like. Most natives are unaware of this, but in Spanish there are three sounds (/b/, /p/ and /g/) which, in isolation or after certain stop sounds, are pronounced almost like in English, as stop sounds. However, when they are not uttered in isolation, like when people speak, they are pronounced as fricative, and forcing the stop pronunciation sounds plain foreign: you sound worse than a broken terminator. From the most uneducated slang-abusing teenagers to the most educated speakers who deliver the most beautiful formal speeches in pompous circumstances, everyone clearly use fricative sounds, but these sounds are often difficult or weird to many foreigners, especially English speakers, who thrive on plosive stops for these consonants, so Spanish speakers often exaggerate their pronunciation to try to sounds "clearer" to foreigners, somehow pretending not to notice how artificial they sound when they do that. This Spanish module is plagued of over-pronounced sounds that will probably be tolerated coming from foreigners, but never from a native speaker. If you ask me, that is not the right model to follow.
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Re: Glossika - Yes? No? Maybe?

Postby PeterMollenburg » Fri Mar 25, 2016 7:01 am

Expugnator wrote:I'd only try Glossika for a language with less resources, so, in my case, Georgian or Estonian. There are many more ways to activate my German or Mandarin.


I assumed GLOSS and Glossika were the same thing. I was wrong. This is not a resource I would bother with in French or when it comes to studying Spanish or German as I have more than enough resources. However considering they have a Dutch course it's definitely something I would consider for Dutch- a language which certainly isn't short on resources but you do need to hunt a little more than for the bigger languages. Shame it's not available for Norwegian from what I could see. Anyway I look fwd to trying this out with Dutch some day.
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Re: Glossika - Yes? No? Maybe?

Postby annie25 » Fri Apr 01, 2016 10:41 pm

Does anyone here have experience of the Swedish Glossika?
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