Glossika method

[Auberon]

Admin note:
no longer valid
I've been sent "exclusive discount offer to Chinese forums member, Chinese Fluency 1~3 ebooks plus GMS+GSR MP3 training with $59.99 available till 10 July. "
Book preview
GSR Audio Samples (itunes link)
The package product page
Coupon code: has expired, sorry

Admin note ends.

Hello,
 
I was wondering if anyone had any comments, good or bad, on the various products offered here: http://www.glossika.com. A search of the forums here yielded only a few passing mentions; has anyone worked through these books/mp3 systematically, and, if so, are the results as good as the website claims?
 
I have been examining this website recently, and I'm temped to give it a go; any views on its efficacy before I part with my money would be most appreciated.
 
Also, I am unclear on the difference between the mass sentences and spaced repetition books/audio. Are they mutually-exclusive alternatives that cover the same material? How much time per day is required to follow the method properly using either?
The Glossika website is not the easiest to find specific information on.
 
Apologies if this has been covered before: if it has, I haven't been able to find the thread.
 
Many thanks in advance.

[OneEye]

They've only released those products very recently, so you're not likely to find many reviews out there. As far as clarification on his specific products, you should check out their Facebook page. If it hasn't been answered there, you can ask and I'm sure they'll help you.

 

I've never used their products, but as far as the method itself, I can attest that it's outstanding. Some may find it boring, but I find it incredibly effective. If Mike releases the Japanese books reasonably soon, I'll probably buy them, but for now I'm using a sort of adaptation of the method with the resources I have.

 

Full disclosure: I did some contract work for them a while back. Translation and English teaching, nothing related to these products.

 

 

Edit: I posted a review of the Glossika pronunciation book here. Review of the Daily Life module forthcoming.

[Pokarface]

He actually released some audio demos of the product on youtube, but his youtube webpage was removed for the wrong reasons. It's a relatively new product. I downloaded the audio demos, if I have time, I'll re-upload them to youtube so you can hear them.

[Pokarface]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtO0x8HY7-Q

 

Cheers! Here's a demo he released a while ago. Obviously, the purchased edition includes the transcript in simplified, traditional(I think), pinyin, and English

[mouse]

 

How long did it take him to master it?

A lifetime?

Less than a decade?

 

No, he mastered it in just a matter of months, and also a number of other complicated far east languages.

 

While some of their stuff looks like it might be good, this kind of ad copy puts me off to be honest.

[Guest realmayo]

It's interesting OneEye likes the method. I'm always sceptical of 'magic bullet' systems devised by people who are brilliant at learning languages: I'm sure these guys work hard and study smart, but probably they are also naturally gifted at learning languages. I'm definitely not. There's a risk that their magic system -- which in all honesty they think can help loads of people because it worked for them and worked much better than the regular language courses seem to work for other people -- only works for the really gifted.

[tysond]

I have ordered a business sentence pack for $9.99.   1,000 business sentences is just what I need right now.

 

I have yet to complete the transaction however as it appears there are hurdles before I can purchase... 

I have been asked to send my Chinese ID to an email address as some kind of verification.

[OneEye]

Mike is certainly a gifted language learner. According to him, he was reading 金庸 after a year of studying Chinese if I remember correctly. But he also uses this method and these books with the students at his English school here in Taipei, and from what I understand they've been quite effective. The teaching I did there was more like correcting pronunciation on recordings that the students sent me, and it was only short term, so I don't have any personal firsthand experience.

 

At any rate, try it out. I'm not saying you should buy Glossika's books, as they're quite a bit below your level, but try something like 史上最強的英文會話8000 (which has the sentences all recorded in Chinese and English). Tons of great practical vocabulary in that book, and if you use this kind of method it will stick, I can guarantee.

 

Here's what I do. It may be a bit different from the official Glossika method, but it's based heavily on some of Mike's now-deleted videos.

 

I'll pick a section of the book to work on. They're usually 20-30 sentences. I'll look up any words I don't know, and also compare the Chinese and English sentences. Once I understand the sentences completely, I play the audio on repeat. I'll repeat it 10 times, 20 times, whatever I have time for. Then over the next week or two, I'll review it 1-3 times per day, again depending on time. Maybe I'll put the sentences into Anki after all that, at least for a little while before I delete them, just for more review.

 

The words I learn this way really stick. A friend asked me how to say 樓中樓 in English the other day, and I knew it was duplex because I did the chapter on housing a year ago or so. I hadn't thought of the word since then, but it was there. Same thing happened once with 刺蝟. There's no reason for me to know how to say hedgehog, but it popped out because I had drilled that sentence. I get "how the hell did you know that word?" from other foreigners on occasion (and I'm talking about translators and interpreters here, not beginners), and it has been due to using this method almost every time.

 

I'm doing the same method with Japanese now, adapted slightly to use with Assimil. The effect is different because I don't yet speak the language (though that's Glossika's target market), but it seems to be a pretty efficient way to learn a new language as well.

 

The brilliance of the method largely lies in how it makes you internalize the language in a way that few other methods do. (Ash Henson is a friend of mine and really knows what he's talking about here...he spent 6 years working on a PhD in Chinese pedagogy before transferring to the Chinese department to finish his degree there instead.)

 

The thing is, it's just so different from what most people do, and that's where a lot of people get hung up on this kind of thing. I get the skepticism, really. But the method is based in sound principles of language acquisition. Try it out for a while and see what you think. It can get fairly dull repeating the same sentences over and over, but if you're willing to put up with that for a few weeks then I think the results will convince you. And if you do 20-30 sentences per day, that book will only take about a year to get through and your vocabulary and ability to express yourself will have exploded.

[Guest realmayo]

Thanks for that description of how you've used the method, OneEye. Very interesting to know that it has worked well for you.

 

I'm tempted to give it a try. I bought a book by Alexander Arguelles for learning Korean (A Historical Literary and Cultural Approach to the Korean Language) and I liked his method of shadowing ... but had to give up Korean after a while.

 

Trouble is that for Chinese there's probably been maybe 30 days over the last three years that I've had a conversation in Chinese. I know my pronunciation has deteriorated (and it was always rather southern/non-standard anyway) so I'm concerned that if I start a programme of heavy speaking now with no feedback on pronunciation problems I'll just reinforce those errors. Perhaps I'm worrying over-much, don't know. If I do restart work on speaking/production, mabye I'll try to get the book you suggest and give this method a go.

[Auberon]

OneEye: thanks for your comments. I didn't realise it had been released so recently.

 

Pokarface: many thanks for putting the demo on youtube. I see that's GSR; do you by any chance have a GMS demo too? I'm still not entirely clear what the difference between them is. (I am hoping the other one involves repeating the chinese, as it goes by rather quickly.)

I saw that Glossika's youtube account was suspended. Unfortunately I didn't see what was in it beforehand. Any idea why it happened?

Someone has put up various lessons (but not all of them) by Mike Campbell like this:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ojiYPJMzXw

 

which I assume relate to the vocab/grammar used in the glossika course, but I'm not certain.

[Yadang]

Thanks, OneEye, that's very helpful.

 

However, a few things have kept me from doing this, perhaps you have good answers to them:

 

1. How are the translations? I mean this both in an "are they correct" way, but even more so in a "would anybody actually say it that way" kind of way too. This is where I think using a program like subs2srs is awesome because you get native dialogue aimed at native speakers with no one even thinking about using the material for studying, so it's very natural (although perhaps sometimes problems arise because the movie is scripted, I still feel like it's scripted to be natural - they say things how they'd say them in "real life"). I mean, the book looks like it's made by a Taiwanese company, so the sentences are most definitely (I hope) written by native Chinese speakers (this would usually be obvious, but after seeing some of the stuff in my Taiwanese classmates' English textbooks...), but even when native people start to write or say things with a focus on non-native people, it just comes out differently...

 

2. Apart from saying things naturally concerning things like word usage and stuff, what about pronunciation? Is it any worry that they use textbook-perfection pronunciation, and that if I shadowed them and was actually able to imitate them, my pronunciation would be terribly out of place in the real world (maybe not terribly, but it would definitely sound pretty weird...).

 

If I could get my hands on something like this where I knew the sentences were how people actually talk, then I'd be all for it... But I once bought a sentence patterns book, planning to use it like this (although it didn't have audio), and after seeing my classmates scan though it and say things like "this? I've never heard of this...." or "Oh...this.... well, you can say that, but we Taiwanese would never say it that way", I got a bit weary... 

[Yang Chuanzhang]

OneEye: Thanks for sharing your experiences with this method.

 

I read your post about mass sentences on your blog again and I was wondering if you still record yourself saying the sentences or if you just use the audio that comes with the book? Also, do you do any shadowing at all or do you just listen passively?

[Pokarface]

@Auberon, I have another demo he released for Chinese, but it's for the GSR Daily Life 1. I'll upload it later today or early tomorrow. I'll post the link for you.

Glossika almost had a demo for each of the products before he got suspended from youtube.

 

Trust me, there was everything on Glossika's channel: mock news-broadcasts with subtitles in various languages (not only Mandarin), Mandarin lessons, English lessons, Glossika's Vlog, strategies for language learning, etc. I feel Glossika's whole language learning life was in it. He had over 3,000 videos I think. When I try to access his channel, youtube remarks that his account was suspended because of either copyright infringement or publishing inappropriate material. Judging by his videos, he created the material from all his lessons, and he was definitely not posting inappropriate content. I have a feeling that his competitors spammed his videos as inappropriate content (which only takes a click) and youtube simply decided to remove his account.

[renzhe]

Why was he suspended?

I remember seeing some of his videos on youtube, and they were always high-quality stuff.

[Touchstone57]

I've used this method myself, and I found it very effective. 

 

I don't think there are any claim's about this being a 'magic bullet', but it should be something you incorporate along with other learning methods. 

 

I bought one of the sentence packs for $9.99. For a few weeks I did daily drills following the suggested guidelines. I listened to the audio, and then recored myself on Audacity shadowing the sentences. I found it incredibly useful in improving my rhythm and intonation for Chinese after perfecting these sentences. I even notices that the muscles around my face hurt in the beginning as I wasn't used to making so many sounds in Chinese! 

 

In addition, it is really saving time for 'arithmetic'. By this I mean you are able to produce accurate sentences much more quickly without thinking much. My main problem is that I didn't continuously use this method for any reasonable period of time. I think if I did so I would see much more results.

 

The main problem is that it isn't really fun and requires a lot of patience, as you have to grind away and nail sentences again and again until you get them right. Overall I would rate it though. I found the website and materials to be of high quality, and Mike Campbell himself replied to my emails and gave me some useful feedback.

 

The website has improved a lot since I first used it, and I imagine they will add a lot more materials there in the future. They re-released the sentence pack I ordered under SRS which was incredibly useful and made it freely available to anyone who had already bought the original sentence pack. 

[tysond]

I just bought a sentence pack and PDF.  OK so I have 1000 sentences and 400Mb of audio files, lots of things I can do with that.

 

What does it mean to release something "under SRS."  How would that be different?

[Touchstone57]

Here is what they told me below - initially there where just a few huge mp3 with sentences in, but they have broken it up...

 

Finally, I would like to let you know that I’m testing a new Spaced Repetition algorithm in a new program that reworks all the sound files. Even the total output will be quite immense, I believe it will satisfy most students in several ways: instead of all the files being straight through readings from 1-50, I have rearranged the 1000 sentences in a 100-day practice regime, each day introducing 10 new sentences and then reviewing the previous 4 days (40 sentences), and each file is packaged with all the mixed up sentences in Spaced Repetition. This is great news and I’m excited about the launch.

[tysond]

The SRS algorithm is pre-applied to the audio files? 

 

So it's kind of like Pimsleur then, which repeats old content systematically for revision purposes. 

 

It's not a bad idea but I am a little concerned I am asked to pay again for the same content in a different order.

Would prefer if I could just buy it all for $2 more.  I'm a sucker for package deals.

[mouse]

 

It's not a bad idea but I am a little concerned I am asked to pay again for the same content in a different order.

Would prefer if I could just buy it all for $2 more.  I'm a sucker for package deals.

 

Maybe it's teething problems, but they don't seem to have package deals sorted. You can buy the same material in pdf, mp3, or paper form, but the only combination seems to be pdf & mp3 - and then not for every textbook.

 

Am tempted by some of these, as I like drilling sentences, but I think I'll wait until more preview material becomes available and/or after someone posts here about their experience (not including OneEye's very useful posts, of course).

[Guest realmayo]

Why was he suspended?

 

From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knHNGbOct7w

 

 

Mike Glossika

Peter I didn't die.

And it probably wasn't YouTube to blame, but rather a competitor just clicking "report video" as many times as it takes. YouTube states they have 100hrs of videos uploaded every second and it's humanly impossible to review or even scan them all. It was all done automatically.

 

Mike Glossika

4 weeks ago

We're going to try to get the channel back. If not, all the details of those videos are still in my head, if not more developed and mature now.

When I do start a new channel I will 1) keep the Chinese and English viewers on separate channels 2) training (content) videos separate from personal on-screen discussion videos. And we need to mark the actual ownership of all material appropriately, and recommend everybody else doing the same.

 

Here too: http://www.glossika.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/GlossikaCEOMar121.jpg