Glossika method

[Flickserve]

On 05/06/2016 at 3:28 AM, snowflake said:

, (2) 史上最強英語會話8000,

 

I have this book. I checked some of the sentences with a mainland speaker (but not a Taiwanese speaker). Some of the expressions apparently are a little strange for a mainland speaker. I suspect some of the sentences are translations from English into Chinese which is sort of understandable  because it's a book to teach English rather than Chinese.

 

 

Would be interesting to know what the new glossika method entails. 

[snowflake]

I have this book. I checked some of the sentences with a mainland speaker (but not a Taiwanese speaker). Some of the expressions apparently are a little strange for a mainland speaker. I suspect some of the sentences are translations from English into Chinese which is sort of understandable  because it's a book to teach English rather than Chinese.

There's nothing that will be perfect so it becomes a matter of using what is helpful/usable enough for the particular stage that we're at.  At the moment I'm reading something that  uses some classical Chinese, not great for spoken vernacular but it gets me into the language and the mindset.

[wibr]

@stapler They had a private beta but I assumed it's public now (or maybe not, I think it's not mentioned on their main page currently), what exactly can't you access? It's a webapp (like Skritter) where you can practice Glossika sentences with automated scheduling for all sentences.

[Flickserve]

49 minutes ago, wibr said:

's a webapp (like Skritter) where you can practice Glossika sent

I just get a login page from the link you posted. No mention of a web app

[Mati1]

So it's like the old Glossika method, but instead of a tiny cheap mp3 player you have to use a much bigger and more expensive web browser device?

[eddyf]

First of all, my mp3 player and my "web browser device" are the same size and the same price... because they are both my phone... I'm guessing a lot of people are in the same boat. Second of all, you get personalized SRS scheduling (i.e. it keeps track of what you got right and wrong) which is a huge improvement over the old method.

 

I haven't tried it yet, though, and probably won't because I feel like I've already moved beyond the level of Glossika these days. But maybe I'll try it for a language other than Mandarin some time.

[Mati1]

I don't know how it works. Clicking correct / incorrect would help the scheduler but I'd rather just listen to the traditional one. On the other hand, if the new service would judge you automatically by evaluating your spoken answer that would be a nice feature.

[Crush]

I don't think there's any "personalized SRS" stuff going on, at the end of a session you can mark whether the sentences were too hard, easy, or just right, and that influences the next sets of sentences you will receive, so if you are consistently marking sentences as too easy you should theoretically start getting more difficult sentences more quickly. I'm not sure if it's a general thing or if there are specific data tags added to each sentence so that you will see fewer similar sentences when marking it as too easy.

 

I used my mp3 player, not my phone, for the old Glossika course. It's much easier to pause on my mp3 player (i can actually feel the button and don't have to pull it out of my pocket). But the new web app is fine, it's just a web app, it'd be better as a native app, more responsive, quicker, and we would've probably had an offline mode by now. The app as it is now is a bit pricey (well, way pricey), but there are quite a few languages which are now 100% free, including many Chinese dialects (not Mandarin or Cantonese, but Taiwanese Hokkien, Wenzhounese, and the two Hakka courses are though).

 

I like having the audio and the text matched together, that's really great. What i don't like is having to be connected to the internet all the time to use it. Having the web browser open all the time also seems to drain my battery super quickly.

 

If you want to support the project and can spare the cash, it's definitely a nice system. Overall i imagine it's gonna cost more per course than before and you won't actually own anything, so not really sure what happens when your subscription runs out. I imagine you just get kicked out and can't review anything anymore. If you aren't really passionate about the method/goals (like getting more regional languages out for free and i believe being able to put out community courses which if i understand correctly will also be free) it's probably not worth the money, at least not now. It's very bare bones, all you can really do is start your session and that's about it. There are still a few small issues to iron out as well (there are usually a couple posts about it on the Facebook group) but that's getting much better.

[eddyf]

Oh ok. Well that's disappointing if they aren't personalizing the SRS at the sentence level. Probably they were just trying to launch a minimum viable product and now they can keep iterating on it. But I guess if I'm perfectly honest, I don't really see myself going for this either. No matter how good their feature set is, it probably won't be good enough to compete against the DIY approach. It's less flexible, more expensive, and you're dependent on their servers. In return, you get a system that's ready to use right out of the box. That's probably not worth the trade-off for anyone who's already used to doing the whole DIY thing. Which is most people, when you're talking about learning a language through self-study.

 

What would make more sense would be if Glossika could provide their courses in the form of Anki cards, instead of reinventing yet another SRS system. But I guess they are hoping to turn this new system into a revenue center.

[Mati1]

To be fair I think Glossika never aimed to be the ultimate super intense self learner service being used by everyone. (Though you can of course use it for very intense learning blocks, but compared to other self learners you'd have a less rounded approach.)

Instead it is / was advertised as course for self learners with limited time. And that's good too. All self learners are losing time here or there (overall I lost a lot), which could be put to more efficient use. As a self learner it's good to have choices.

 

I never expected some languages to become free. Can they be accessed without having a paid account for another language?

[Crush]

7 hours ago, Mati1 said:

I never expected some languages to become free. Can they be accessed without having a paid account for another language?

Yeah, i believe you still have to sign up for an account (which i believe also signs you up for their newsletter), but after that you should be able to use all the ones marked "free" in the course list without paying for a subscription.

 

21 hours ago, eddyf said:

it probably won't be good enough to compete against the DIY approach.

Yeah, well the main attraction i suppose is that it takes a set of sentences (they say they now have 4-7,000 sentences for most languages) that cover a wide range of grammar and structures, presents them to you in (supposedly) colloquial ways, and all with audio. What i like about it is that you can study outside, while walking to work, going to the store, walking in the park, etc. Right now it's not really ideal for me as there's no "offline" mode, with native apps that process should be relatively simple to implement, i'm not so sure how that'd work as a web app though.

 

I used the method to learn Cantonese (after studying Mandarin for about 4 years, and using the old mp3 + pdf format) and i found it really enjoyable. I'm going through the Cantonese course again in the new format and so far i like it, apart from having to always be connected to the internet. It's much less flexible than the old format where you could pick and choose which files/sets of sentences to study, how many, in what order, etc. but i think those things will be coming eventually as well. Is it worth $30 a month? No, i don't think so, especially not if you're learning a language with a good amount of materials available (which i believe includes Mandarin), but for many languages (the Chinese dialects, for example) i think you'd be hard-pressed to find another resource with as much material covered. And offering those courses for free is a really nice move, in my opinion, and i'm happy to support that project with my $30 a month, hoping as well that it helps get native apps out sooner.

[Tomsima]

am I missing something? I've been wanting to try out wenzhounese but glossika had been out of my price range. if it is free now that would be amazing. but I just checked the website and it seems like it's the same as usual (ie its still downloadable, and still got the high price tag)

[wibr]

@Tomsima You have to use the new ai.glossika.com link I posted above, register and then it's available as a course.

[mouse]

It's worth pointing out that the new site is very buggy and has obviously not been beta tested. If you pay to use it you are basically paying to work for them (or support the site, whatever).

[Flickserve]

I registered and tried it out. I am not sure how it works. Sentences in English and Chinese come up. There was not much pause but I think it can be altered.

 

The ability to discard sentences is a bit confusing. There is a rubbish bin icon and when pressed on, it changes a shade. However, it is not clear if that indicates that the sentence is actually taken out.

 

Maybe the program is still on basic development. What I would really find useful is to test listening skills with just the audio and then the Chinese words popping up and then after another pause the English translation. 

[Crush]

The trash can is indeed the button to delete it, but if you accidentally hit it (or flag a sentence as containing an error, which also marks the sentence to be deleted) you can click it again to "untrash" it. If you move to the next sentence, that sentence is now deleted. I don't look at the screen while going through the sentences, only if it's a new sentence or i want clarification on a tone or something. It's basically the old Glossika (supposedly with a new AI/SRS system) but with the current sentence being shown so you don't have to look through the book for it all the time.

 

The site as it is works fine for me, my main gripe is that there is no offline mode anymore. There are still some bugs coming up, but the major things for me seem to have been fixed. It's still very barebones, however.

[Flickserve]

3 hours ago, Crush said:

The trash can is indeed the button to delete it, but if you accidentally hit it (or flag a sentence as containing an error, which also marks the sentence to be deleted) you can click it again to "untrash" it.

 

Ok. Thanks. If there was some counter to indicate how many sentences deleted that goes up when the rubbish bin icon is pressed, then that gives a more secure verification. Changing shade just wasn't intuitive.

 

3 hours ago, Crush said:

I don't look at the screen while going through the sentences, only if it's a new sentence or i want clarification on a tone or something

 

I am not so disciplined. LOL.

 

3 hours ago, Crush said:

There are still some bugs coming up, but the major things for me seem to have been fixed

 

It's got a lot of potential. 

 

Anki , although flexible, needs a lot of work. I can see glossika 

[stoney]

I'm revisiting Chinese after a number of years away from it. I was always curious abut Glossika, so since it's on sale right now, I decided to get it and try to relearn some of this stuff. So far there is one thing in particular that I'm not sure about. The following sentences are taken from the first few lessons.

 

I'm not washing my hair.   我 没 在洗头 。                  wǒ méi zàixǐtóu. 

He's not writing a letter.    他 没 在写信 。                  tā méi zàixiěxìn.

I'm not studying english.   我 没 在学 英语 。            wǒ méi zàixué yīngyǔ.

I'm not reading the newspaper. 我 没 在看 报纸 。   wǒ méi zàikàn bàozhǐ.

 

I'm thinking 不再 is more appropriate than 没在.

It just doesn't sound right from what I remember.  Isn't 没 used to indicate didn't or wasn't ? 

 

 

[lips]

7 hours ago, stoney said:

不再

and

7 hours ago, stoney said:

没在

do not have the same meaning.

[stoney]

Yes ...  I meant 不在