Glossika method

[AlexBlackman]

I've been looking through the pronunciation module and I've noticed Mike records them himself.

 

Just how bad an idea would it be to mimic his pronouncation?  His Mandarin seems perfect, but I'm far from an expert.

[etm001]

 

 

Just how bad an idea would it be to mimic his pronouncation?  His Mandarin seems perfect, but I'm far from an expert.

I bought this package not because my own pronunciation is bad (although there's room for improvement), but to use it as an occasional "tune-up" and to keep up my muscle memory (if that makes any sense). In that regard, having all of the various tone combinations in both written and recorded form is quite nice (although you can these drills online for free, although perhaps not all of the combinations that Glossika provides?)

 

Is his pronunciation good? Yes, definitely. You would not do wrong to mimic him. That said, if I had to bet, I would bet that 100% of native speakers who listened to this recording (without knowing who recorded it) would conclude that it was a non-native speaker. There is just some element of "nativeness" missing, for lack of a better term.

 

Actually now I'm curious -  I'll ask a few native speakers to listen to the recording and see if what I just said holds up or not. I'll report back later with results.

[stapler]

Just curious if anyone has actually gone through the entire set of recordings yet? Any thoughts having completed the programme?

[crt32]

I've finished the Fluency module and I'm 1/4 into the Daily Life module.

 

I think it works pretty much as expected. It's a really nice "natural" and at the same time very efficient way to learn a language and it definitely helps a lot to improve speaking and listening abilities.

 

I tried to do one or two GSR files, that is 10-20 new sentences every day, and I always recorded all the sentences that will appear in the next GSR file separately first. This way I could make sure that I pronounce everything right and look up new or forgotten words.

 

Looking back, I think Glossika really makes a good point that "mass sentences" is more useful than focusing on a few sentences. If I had more time available every day (and didn't burn out that easily), I would definitely try to do the suggested 50+ new sentences per day. I only really noticed progress every ~500 sentences and sometimes would even get bored with just learning 20 new sentences per day.

There were many sentences I thought would be particularly useful, so I tried to pay more attention to memorize them. But I ended up forgetting single sentences and replaced memorization with the ability to produce my own sentences.

 

All in all, the whole experience is just like described in this thread and those posts by imron.

I'm actually working through 那些年，我們一起追的女孩 right now as a side project in order to close the gap between the natural but clearly spoken Glossika recordings and "lazy native speech".

[Mr. 愛爾蘭]

AlexBlackman

Where is this pronounciation module you speak of? I'm not seeing it listed on his site.

[AlexBlackman]

They now don't sell it seperately. You get it if you buy a full course. 

[Alfred R Baudisch]

I have seem mixed opinions whether Glossika should be used for a completely beginner. Some say at least HSK3+ is necessary, others say basic tones understanding and others say it can be used for complete beginners.

I've been acquiring individual words for the past month as well Anki'ng listening pairs using Fluent Forever's paid pronunciation trainer.

 

I can't make any sentences at this moment, because I've been solely studying individual bits. Would it be a good idea to buy Glossika atm?

 

On the very beginning of this topic, OneEye said:

 

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.

 

This got me interested.

[makochan]

Hey Alfred, I'm sure others might have a different opinion, but I think if you are interested in Glossika you should just give it a try.  But I would give two caveats:

 

1. For beginners, not being able to understand a lot of the grammar or vocab may make it more discouraging (and more likely to give up).  So the learner definitely needs to come with a lot of self-motivation and discipline.

 

2. Some learners (including myself) have a personality that they really need to know and understand the grammar in every step of the language learning process.  But for other learners, they don't mind jumping right into difficult material, and having grammar that remains confusing or ambiguous.  The Glossika sentences are not necessarily arranged in easiest to most difficult sentences.

 

Of course, if you find the course too difficult, you can always try again at a later time.

[JustinJJ]

The sentences are very easy, but it could be a good idea to have someone check/train your pronunciation so you don't sound too foreign.

The tricky thing about trying the Glossika courses is that you have to buy three courses in one ($70), whereas the courses seemed a lot cheaper before. Better if you could somehow just buy Fluency 1 so your not spending so much if the glossika method doesn't suit you at the moment.

[Alfred R Baudisch]

@makochan

 

Some learners (including myself) have a personality that they really need to know and understand the grammar in every step of the language learning process.

 

Good point, I'm into that group. In order to learn Spanish I first finished a pure grammar only book and then jumped straight to conversation. I tried that with Chinese, but I found out to be extremely overwhelming because I had no idea about the characters, as opposed to romantic languages in which the word shows itself what it is.

 

So until this point I've been only studying several Anki decks:
1) Pronunciation trainer (with tone drills)
2) Individual characters

But contradictorily I'm feeling the process to be not constructive.

 

@JustinJJ

 

The sentences are very easy, but it could be a good idea to have someone check/train your pronunciation so you don't sound too foreign.

 

I read somewhere Mike Campbell saying that training individual tones is useless, since what counts is the overall sentence intonation, not each word. So since in GMS  one of the steps is to record myself to compare the pronunciation with the audios, wouldn't just be better to quit the Anki pronunciation trainer deck (which deals with syllables in an isolated way) and just follow Mike's instruction to train intonation with the sentences?

 

I think I'll just grab a grammar book + Glossika and dive in already. At the moment I can study comfortably 2h/daily.

 

EDITED: Sorry, I've read too fast and I just noticed you said to have SOMEONE check my pronunciation. Good point, I was already considering working with an iTalki instructor but I thought it was too early, since I was only studying individual stuff. Now your recommendation gave me the itch to just move on, record 50 sentences daily and get the help of the instructor to check my pronunciation.

 

So definitely moving on with that plan! Thank you @makochan and @JustinJJ.

[JustinJJ]

Intonation is important but knowing the correct tone is also vital for making it easy for people to understand you. Here is an (albeit exaggerated) example of slight tones differences changing the entire meaning of a sentence.

小姐水饺多少钱一碗。

小姐睡觉多少钱一晚。

[Auberon]

 

I have seem mixed opinions whether Glossika should be used for a completely beginner. Some say at least HSK3+ is necessary, others say basic tones understanding and others say it can be used for complete beginners.

 

I don't think it would work for 'complete' beginners, in the sense of someone who knows absolutely nothing about the language and the first thing he does is to sit down and listen to glossika. However, I also don't think that you really need to know anything like as much as HSK3 vocab.

I'd say the absolute sine qua non is properly understanding all the sounds used in Mandarin, and being able to accurately make, and aurally differentiate between, the various minimal pairs that tend sound alike to English speakers. And, of course, a basic understanding of tones.

 

Secondly, you want to know the really basic grammatical words and particles, such as will be covered in the first few chapters of a beginners' Chinese-learning book. In my experience so far, glossika introduces new grammar gradually, in big groups of lots of similar examples, in a way that makes them very easy to pick up; the grammatical patterns at the beginning are very basic indeed, but without knowing something of them even the simplest sentences will sound like gobbledegook.

 

 

I've been acquiring individual words for the past month as well Anki'ng listening pairs using Fluent Forever's paid pronunciation trainer.

 

I can't make any sentences at this moment, because I've been solely studying individual bits. Would it be a good idea to buy Glossika atm?

 

The question is what do you find easier--memorising individual sounds and their meanings on anki, or memorising whole sentences with their meanings with glossika? I personally find it much easier to remember tones of words, in particular, when they appear in sentences, but that might well not be the case for other people. It's just a matter of the most efficient way of retaining vocabulary for you.

Either way, after a while you'll reach of a certain critical mass of vocab and remembering new words will get easier.

[Alfred R Baudisch]

@JustinJJ

 

小姐水饺多少钱一碗。
小姐睡觉多少钱一晚。

That's totally insane (and at the same time the reason of why I'm in love with Chinese). I had to put on Google Translate. At this stage I wouldn't be able to notice at change at all in the pronunciation and intonation.

 

@Auberon

 

I don't think it would work for 'complete' beginners, in the sense of someone who knows absolutely nothing about the language and the first thing he does is to sit down and listen to glossika. However, I also don't think that you really need to know anything like as much as HSK3 vocab.

I agree. I think I expressed myself wrongly, since I've been studying intonation and vocabulary for the past 45 days (+ passive immersion with music, videos, tv all the time), I am somewhat comfortable already. But then I was scared with the declaration I read on the topic that HSK3-4 was somewhat necessary.

 

 

personally find it much easier to remember tones of words, in particular, when they appear in sentences,

To be honest I'm remembering more words/pronunciation from my passive listening of videos than what I've been training in Anki! So I fit in your declaration as well.

 

 

In my experience so far, glossika introduces new grammar gradually, in big groups of lots of similar examples, in a way that makes them very easy to pick up; the grammatical patterns at the beginning are very basic indeed, but without knowing something of them even the simplest sentences will sound like gobbledegook.

 

That's exactly the kind of description I needed, about the progession and difficulty grading. Going to buy Glossika and I'll report here how it worked for me. I think it will be of interest of other beginners in the same level as me (2h/daily ~ 45 days).

[ChTTay]

Anyone making sentence flashcards in pleco for glossika?

 

What's your experience?

 

I currently make gapfill sentences in Chinese within Pleco and find it pretty easy. I'm not sure about making English>Chinese flashcards though - as I probably would with Glossika.

[Andrew 45]

Hey guys, long time no see!

 

I spent a couple of weeks reading this whooooole topic and have come up with a post wherein I ask some questions.

 

I'm interested in this Glossika method, and I think I'm going to buy it, I just have a couple of questions, I suppose.

 

I've been hearing advice not to start it right away if you're a beginner. I'm a beginner, but I don't know what sort of beginner I am (1). I'm using footnotes so that the post isn't too tl;dr big.

 

I suppose I'm going to be doing this anyway. I respect you guys and you're doing great work here, but even if it's not recommended to me, I want to start Glossika. To me, I either let the tiniest bit of "don't do it" advice completely sway me[even among quite the tide of "go ahead and do it" advice!], or I tune it out completely and do my own thing. I'm determined as all get out to learn Mandarin, so I suppose I'm set on trying out Glossika.

 

My first concern is pronunciation. This will be my first journey into REALLY practicing speaking. Down below in (1) you'll see I did Pimsleur, but I didn't record myself and probably mispronounced my zh's, ch's, r's and sh's for that whole time, perhaps my x's and q's as well, I KNOW I did the z's right though, somehow. I also did the pronunciation module of FSI (It's FSI right? I can't find it anymore in google) So I know at least a bit about how one's mouth should move for certain pronunciations. I have more to say about pronunciation experience in (2). My question is if there's still a pronunciation module, if he teaches you exactly how to move your mouth, etc. And also how long would you recommend someone who's kinda-beginner like me to do it before even starting the actual sentences.

 

My second topic is about time per day. I think I can guarantee an hour per day on the weekdays (I get a LOT of listening practice in at work and on the bus to work... my job is relatively easy and I can completely waste a day away and still feel accomplished as long as I got lot of listening in), and more on the weekends, but is this "enough"? I've heard studying Chinese (or any language) is like baking bread where some critical amount is necessary to get the dough to rise and to actually "cook", I can probably up my time to 2 hours or 3 hours per day, but from what I hear Glossika is more like vegetables in that it's good for you, but not all that "fun" and thus I don't want to burn out. I whole-heartedly agree with Imron about nailing quality of words (sentences in this case) rather than quantity, so I'm thinking an hour to an hour and half should get me 20 sentences per day? This might be something I'll know better when I actually try this out.

 

Third and Forth are about the product itself. I see it's on sale right now (4/19/2015) for $80 US, down from $100. It's been like that for a couple weeks and I want to order to take advantage of it, but I also want to know if they still give you a link and limited time to download everything. Sometime this week will be fine for me to buy it and download it, heck I'll probably do so before this topic gets a response (that's not a jab at this forum, just that responses are all up to chance). Just wondering about how long this sale is (if anyone knows) and if the delivery method is still the same (download with a limited link).

 

I have more questions, but... I don't think they pertain to Glossika specifically. I've decided I'd like to go Full-Taiwan mode with Northern Dialect occasional flavorings, but I have no idea how to type traditional characters... and I'll have to learn traditional characters. (I've gotten used to the Microsoft IME for typing simplified... I don't see anything like that for traditional). That can be another topic for another time though. I don't have a particular love for Taiwan (maybe I do?), It's just I want to pick a direction and go full-force.

 

Lastly, I really appreciate what Mike Campbell is doing here and want to support him and efforts like his... so even if this doesn't work out for me, at least I know it works for others (from what I've read) and I'll be assisting that.

 

 

 

1. I'll never know what level of Chinese I am. to me, I'll be the eternal-beginner because it never feels like it's good enough, I'll achieve HSK10 someday or something really high and think "yeah, but my retroflexes are off when following Altevelars, I'm a total beginner still". I'm not saying I'm actually even an intermediate, I'm just saying I know I'm a beginner, but I don't know even how much of a beginner I am. I've done the first 90 lessons of Mandarin Pimsleur (now they have 120, but I'm not interested, tbh), and have studied the first 1400 Characters of Heisig Simplified (you're reading that right, I felt like the deck was gaining too much mass too quickly and stopped new characters for a while, there's 100 left in book 1, and 1500 left in book 2), so I guess I have some knowledge? I know how the tones should sound, I know some of the rules (like two third tones next to each other, the first becomes a second tone... I don't know how this works if you have 3 third tones in a row or more) and have listened to hundreds of hours of for-native-by-native entertainment. I felt so joyful on the bus when I realized I understood 你们不知道负责人是什么意思， 对吧 as I've been trying to "sentence mine" a particular show and this was perhaps the first sentence I actually got without mining it first (that was of longer than 3 words in length) and in real time, It felt like quite the accomplishment. Anyway, I just wanted to say I'm a beginner, but perhaps I know enough to start? My listening is probably pretty good for a beginner, but I have not really practiced speaking... much... at all.

 

2. I kinda want to do what I'll call the "OneEye technique" after OneEye who seems like a pretty great guy to me [you're all great, btw, buy Roddy, Imron and OneEye get an extra handful of olives here, oh and RenZhe too], with regard to "sentence mining" movies and shows and repeating the sentences exactly like the characters do until it sounds perfect. However, I think I need to practice pronunciation first. Pimsleur's great/good (I say great because... I'm going to be honest, it felt like the only kiddy pool I could learn to swim in in an ocean of deep swimming pools, and it took me through it at a good pace, and built my confidence), but it didn't really teach me how to pronounce words. I studied the first modules of the Defense Language Institute's old Mandarin program (old as in the program was from the 70s or 80s, not that the language itself was some old variant of Mandarin) and learned a lot about proper pronunciation in it (how to hold your mouth and tongue for certain pronunciations, etc.)... I nearly freaked out and gave up when I realized I spent a year not knowing what a retroflex WAS and wasn't even pronouncing it. I wasn't recording myself either, so I don't know if I would have caught that. Basically my questions are, does this still come with the pronunciation module? Does he detail exactly how to make these sounds? I heard someone say that speaking the proper pronunciation made their mouth move in new ways and thus got tired quicker, which is Great! I want to perfect my technique/pronunciation... I want my mouth to tire from practice of well-spoken Mandarin.

 

3. I know this isn't noted above, but I wanted to say thanks for reading through all this. I wanted my points to come across short and sweet, but the important specifics... I feel had to be heard. I'm also not worried about getting discouraged... I don't know what it is, but I guess I've just made this a life goal and will stop at nothing to achieve it. I'm also not afraid of one single possible tool (like Glossika) not working and thus throwing everything off, I'll just find a new tool, a new system, to make it work.

 

Thanks!

-Andrew

[imron]

I think I can guarantee an hour per day on the weekdays

An hour to an hour and a half a day is a good amount - just remember though that a core part of Glossika is speaking and (ideally) recording, which you probably won't be able to do on the bus.  It's important to make the time for that too.

 

As an additional note, if you find you have more time, you're probably going to be better off going over and repeating sentences you have already learnt than trying to rush through as many sentences as you can in as short a time as possible.  Remember also that the number of sentences you can do a day is meaningless - some sentences will be shorter, some longer, some will be based on patterns and vocab you are familiar with, some will have completely new vocab and structure.

 

In short, sentences per day is not a useful thing to track and can often do more harm than good.  A far better metric is the number of days you can do it continuously - just keep putting in the 60-90 minutes a day, and you'll slowly but surely make progress, even if some days it's 20 sentences and other days it's 5.

 

I've decided I'd like to go Full-Taiwan mode with Northern Dialect occasional flavorings,

If by northern dialect you mean mainland northern, then that's like someone learning English saying "I've decided to go with an English accent, with occasional American flavourings".  So probably not a good idea unless you want to sound weird.

 

I've gotten used to the Microsoft IME for typing simplified... I don't see anything like that for traditional

The Microsoft IME can be configured to output traditional characters - have a hunt in the settings somewhere.

[etm001]

 

 

The Microsoft IME can be configured to output traditional characters - have a hunt in the settings somewhere.

There's also Sogu, Baidu, and IMKQIM of course. I currently use Sogu and IMKQIM; there are times when Sogu just won't predict the traditional character(s) I want, but IMKQIM will predict them immediately. Otherwise Sogu is nice due to the cloud services, multi-device syncing, etc. (Baidu does all this too).

 

OP, if you are used to the Microsoft IME, then it might be best to stick with that (set to traditional characters). 

[Crush]

I think you could get quite a bit out of the course. As you've read through the entire thread, i'm sure you've come across quite a few comments about the initial course focusing on the Taiwan dialect (now a Beijing version is included as well), so if you go that route you'll be set. For sentence mining, i highly recommend you check out Subs2SRS. It's helped me pick up a lot of chengyu and things i generally skip over when watching movies and TV shows. I've put together a few decks for 爱情公寓, 色，戒 (Lust, Caution), and 致我们终将逝去的青春 (So Young) and shared them at the uztranslations forums (Google "subs2srs uztranslations"), though it looks like the site's currently down. If you're interested, get in touch. I also just finished Pleco's New HSK6 list just 2 days ago (finallyyyyy) so once my Pleco reviews calm down a bit i'll be making some more.

 

I was also going to suggest the FSI pronunciation module, but i see you've already done it. I think it helps a lot for distinguishing the pairs you mentioned (j/zh, x/sh, q/ch, n/ng), though depending on the dialect you aim for it may or may not be that important.

[Andrew 45]

Alright, thanks Imron. Yes, I want to make it a priority to review, since "it's not what you make, it's what you keep", and as you said I think my hour and a half or so at home should be decent. I might be able to work in more time as I go on, but it's best to keep things realistic. I found out how to do Microsoft IME with traditional characters (Chinese > Taiwan > New Phonetic) at least I think so, it's working the way I wanted so far. What I meant by Northern mainland dialect flavorings was that it couldn't hurt to at least listen to a bit of it, see how it sounds, get an idea of what makes it different. It's good to be consistent in output though.

 

Thank you ETM for the suggestions, I may switch over at some point since... it'd be great to do things with Chinese characters on my smart phone, and not leave everything for my computers at home.

 

Thanks for the links Crush, I like the idea of making sentences into SRS formats. I'll need to research a bit more to see how to do it and the best way to do it. (For instance, I noticed in one show that the subs did not gel with what was actually said? This was on tudou though, but I think the subs were the "hard" kind that are official and part of the animation itself and thus can't be turned off). I'd like to keep as much aural presence as possible, and it only makes sense to mix that with reading, I think.

 

Alright, thanks guys for answering my questions! Sorry for the wall of text!

 

-Andrew

[wibr]

for anyone who wants to split the mp3 files I recommend mp3splt.

 

mp3splt -s -p th=-96,min=1.5,rm,nt=101 -d targetfolder sourcefile

 

nt is the number of result files, depends on the source file, 1 (intro) + x * 50

th=-96 works quite well for almost all files, once I had to use th=-50 and once I had to add a file manually.

 

Check the manual on the website for more information, it's quite fast and seems to work well.

 

Edit: It's a bit tricky, sometimes you have to use "shots=15" (see the manual) and nt can be 101, 102 or 104 (due to different intros and stuff at the end).