I just found your channel a yesterday and surprising watched all your videos in about one sitting. Currently signed up with a tutor to practice the HSK3/4 and I am slightly panicking. Awesome videos!
aww that's so amazing!!! I feel so honored heh. and don't panic! Just do what you can, and don't worry about comparing yourself to other people's progress. There are studies to show that studying under stress prevents long term retention, so try to have fun, enjoy the process, and let yourself learn at your own pace!
A beginner app I like is LingoDeer for Portuguese. Glossika had an $8 monthly 1 language Black Friday special ( You can switch the target language after a month. ). So I finally pulled the trigger. Glossika seems like a good intermediate level ( Your first foreign language ) or a third+ language learning tool.
A big thing that this offers is not just grammar and sentence construction. But it's also the sounds of the language. How different letters sound next to various other letters. This is key to approximation native pronunciation and accent.
Not a Chinese learner, came here for general info on Glossika, but I am wondering about the following: It seems that the app assumed that you knew how to type all the special characters used in the pinyin writing system? If you were a complete beginner, how would Glossier teach you all that? Or would the app assume that you already knew?
yeah... that's definitely an issue. I'm not sure how glossier would approach someone who didn't know how to do that. I had to look that up on my own back in the early days of my learning. on a laptop you need specific shortcuts using the extended English keyboard, which is a pain to figure out in the beginning.
When I last looked at glossika, the sentences weren't 1T which was my main issue with it. That and it's boring, and super expensive for 1 language. I struggle to see a case where it's better than just sentence mining native content for 1T sentences from media.
Yeah so I noticed that you really do need a decent level of language foundations even at the A1 course. But once you have that, it’s actually pretty okay at i+1. I actually found it harder to fine pure i+1 sentences that are less than ten words in my sentence mining because Chinese can be so lengthy with their sentence compositions. I mentioned this in the video, but as you mentioned, sentence mining is the ideal way to make cards. The issue is that not everyone has the capacity or desire to sit at the computer and make flash cards for hours on end. For that person, this is the next best thing. It’s up to them to see if the price justifies the time saved sentence mining (it takes me dozens of hours to sentence mine native episodes since I just started (more unknown words)). But if this helps someone get into comprehensible input, spaced repetition, and language acquisition, then I definitely think it could be useful for them!! Definitely better than other programs out there, and many people just want a course to give them the info, as opposed to finding the language materials themselves.
Great review thanks Bianca! I'm curious did you keep using Glossika after all? I'm a bit behind you (10 months ago) on HSK, got HSK4 last May and I'm slowly integrating HSK5 materials. Would you still start as a beginner or use the placement test? It puts me on B2 Low but I'm not sure how relevant that is, I knew all the words from the test phrases but the hardest ones needed several repetitions to figure out, my theory and 读写能力 is pretty decent but 听力口语 is really insufficiant, especially now living in China. Thanks in advance for your suggestions !
I actually didn't end up using it since I just dived into native material (I'm making a video about this soon). But realistically, B2 is an overestimation. at HSK5 you probs know enough words to be technically considered B2, but the words HSK teaches you become less conversationally relevant the more advanced you get (at least with the HSK 2.0 books). So even if you know thousands of words, you may not be conversational if you just follow the HSK5 materials. The CEFR framework is also notoriously bad for asian languages, especially Chinese, so B2 in a European language (which is what CEFR was built for) may not be equivalent to B2 in Chinese. I would say dive into native material, especially if you're living in china. you can get some really awesome pop culture material that you can talk about with native speakers surrounding you!
Glossika's stuff...was great before he made his programs subscription based. As it is now it's not worth the price. And his sentences are not as interesting and as useful as they could be if he put more effort in making them EVEN MORE context based and even grouped by different themes and interests one might have as a priority. At this moment Du Chinese is the only app I see in the Chinese learning space that is worth paying any money monthly and accomplishes much more than Glossica's stuff and at a cheaper price. You can watch Days of French 'n' Swedish's review of Glossica to see the real scoop and mostly downsides of Mike's approach. The AI thing is absolute nonsense when it comes to this app, and even Mike's language level assessment is completely inaccurate.
thanks for this comment!! I definitely can see this perspective! ultimately I think it really depends on the learner. yeah, it's not going to be the best resource in the world (native content would give you that, albeit with varying degrees of comprehensibility). but you don't have to spend hours and hours and hours making anki decks for sentence mining. I personally think that one should make their own decks for peak language acquisition, but not everyone has the time. Du chinese is great as well, but the generation of the spaced repetition cards is still on the onus of the learner (unless I missed a recent update where they generate the cards for you). LingQ does make SRS cards, but they were so glitchy for me, so I stopped using it pretty early on. If someone would rather pay because they don't have the desire or time to make the SRS cards, then Glossika is a pretty good option for them!
Glossika works guys. If you are exposed to massive numbers of sentences in your target language and have spent hours and hours listening to it is worth it.
I just found your channel a yesterday and surprising watched all your videos in about one sitting. Currently signed up with a tutor to practice the HSK3/4 and I am slightly panicking. Awesome videos!
aww that's so amazing!!! I feel so honored heh. and don't panic! Just do what you can, and don't worry about comparing yourself to other people's progress. There are studies to show that studying under stress prevents long term retention, so try to have fun, enjoy the process, and let yourself learn at your own pace!
A beginner app I like is LingoDeer for Portuguese.
Glossika had an $8 monthly 1 language Black Friday special ( You can switch the target language after a month. ).
So I finally pulled the trigger.
Glossika seems like a good intermediate level ( Your first foreign language ) or a third+ language learning tool.
I've heard a bit about lingo deer but I've never tried it out for myself!
There is a review of Glossika on the channel Days of French and Swedish that is very interesting.
I saw that!! was a great perspective!
A big thing that this offers is not just grammar and sentence construction. But it's also the sounds of the language. How different letters sound next to various other letters. This is key to approximation native pronunciation and accent.
great point!!
Not a Chinese learner, came here for general info on Glossika, but I am wondering about the following: It seems that the app assumed that you knew how to type all the special characters used in the pinyin writing system? If you were a complete beginner, how would Glossier teach you all that? Or would the app assume that you already knew?
yeah... that's definitely an issue. I'm not sure how glossier would approach someone who didn't know how to do that. I had to look that up on my own back in the early days of my learning. on a laptop you need specific shortcuts using the extended English keyboard, which is a pain to figure out in the beginning.
Glossika is my go-to cure when insomnia strikes !!! 😴
Agreed Glossika is about as exciting as watching paint dry but great when your doing other activities like walking.
gotta get in that beauty rest somehow!
When I last looked at glossika, the sentences weren't 1T which was my main issue with it. That and it's boring, and super expensive for 1 language. I struggle to see a case where it's better than just sentence mining native content for 1T sentences from media.
Yeah so I noticed that you really do need a decent level of language foundations even at the A1 course. But once you have that, it’s actually pretty okay at i+1. I actually found it harder to fine pure i+1 sentences that are less than ten words in my sentence mining because Chinese can be so lengthy with their sentence compositions.
I mentioned this in the video, but as you mentioned, sentence mining is the ideal way to make cards. The issue is that not everyone has the capacity or desire to sit at the computer and make flash cards for hours on end. For that person, this is the next best thing. It’s up to them to see if the price justifies the time saved sentence mining (it takes me dozens of hours to sentence mine native episodes since I just started (more unknown words)).
But if this helps someone get into comprehensible input, spaced repetition, and language acquisition, then I definitely think it could be useful for them!! Definitely better than other programs out there, and many people just want a course to give them the info, as opposed to finding the language materials themselves.
Great review thanks Bianca! I'm curious did you keep using Glossika after all? I'm a bit behind you (10 months ago) on HSK, got HSK4 last May and I'm slowly integrating HSK5 materials. Would you still start as a beginner or use the placement test? It puts me on B2 Low but I'm not sure how relevant that is, I knew all the words from the test phrases but the hardest ones needed several repetitions to figure out, my theory and 读写能力 is pretty decent but 听力口语 is really insufficiant, especially now living in China. Thanks in advance for your suggestions !
I actually didn't end up using it since I just dived into native material (I'm making a video about this soon). But realistically, B2 is an overestimation. at HSK5 you probs know enough words to be technically considered B2, but the words HSK teaches you become less conversationally relevant the more advanced you get (at least with the HSK 2.0 books). So even if you know thousands of words, you may not be conversational if you just follow the HSK5 materials. The CEFR framework is also notoriously bad for asian languages, especially Chinese, so B2 in a European language (which is what CEFR was built for) may not be equivalent to B2 in Chinese. I would say dive into native material, especially if you're living in china. you can get some really awesome pop culture material that you can talk about with native speakers surrounding you!
this is a very useful video! thank you so much
You’re welcome!!! Stay tuned for next weeks video with an example of the more advanced course!
Useful. Thank you.
App is not working from all of the phones at home... Nothing is working... Crying.
Glossika's stuff...was great before he made his programs subscription based. As it is now it's not worth the price. And his sentences are not as interesting and as useful as they could be if he put more effort in making them EVEN MORE context based and even grouped by different themes and interests one might have as a priority. At this moment Du Chinese is the only app I see in the Chinese learning space that is worth paying any money monthly and accomplishes much more than Glossica's stuff and at a cheaper price. You can watch Days of French 'n' Swedish's review of Glossica to see the real scoop and mostly downsides of Mike's approach. The AI thing is absolute nonsense when it comes to this app, and even Mike's language level assessment is completely inaccurate.
thanks for this comment!! I definitely can see this perspective! ultimately I think it really depends on the learner. yeah, it's not going to be the best resource in the world (native content would give you that, albeit with varying degrees of comprehensibility). but you don't have to spend hours and hours and hours making anki decks for sentence mining. I personally think that one should make their own decks for peak language acquisition, but not everyone has the time. Du chinese is great as well, but the generation of the spaced repetition cards is still on the onus of the learner (unless I missed a recent update where they generate the cards for you). LingQ does make SRS cards, but they were so glitchy for me, so I stopped using it pretty early on. If someone would rather pay because they don't have the desire or time to make the SRS cards, then Glossika is a pretty good option for them!
Days of French and Swedish, who I am a fan of, did a nonsensical hit job on Glossika. Glossika is great.
it's ultimately based on personal preference and what's important to people :)
@@bianca.phdinprogress Sadly, his channel put out a hit job which has really badly affected Glossika. A shame, because he's a good guy.
@@BryanAJParry Calm down. His stuff is not that revolutionary.
Glossika works guys. If you are exposed to massive numbers of sentences in your target language and have spent hours and hours listening to it is worth it.
more immersion will definitely increase your comprehension!