Glossika method

[imron]

How does everyone else deal with this problem?

It's perfectly ok to have this stuff on in the background, but I wouldn't count that as part of my study.  I prefer to do mindful study.  Especially if you are shadowing or drilling, it's important for your mind to be connected for the whole process.  This means you have to give it something to do.  Try visualising the characters for the words as you are listening to them and speaking them.

 

Do you SRS the sentences or the words in them that you don't know before you go through the audio?

I don't SRS them.  I've just split all the sentences out in to individual files, and then I listen to them first, then make sure I know all the words and that I can make them out clearly, then record myself, then repeat until I'm happy, then move on to the next sentence.

 

If you're seeing a large amount of new vocabularly per sentence, then it probably indicates you've chosen a course at the wrong level and should drop down a notch.

[gato]

The current version is a bit too 嗲 for my taste... Maybe I'm picky, but I find this kind of accent a bit unpleasant to listen to. The intonation reminds me of that American accent where people raise their voice at the end of every sentence.

To my ears, the female voice in the GSR recording (youtube link below) sounds "Valley-girlish". It would have been better if they had a more standard male speaker on the recordings. I would guess that the target audience is mostly male.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uimza56wMJA

Glossika GSR Daily Life

Listen to this talk show podcast from Taiwan to see what I mean. The speakers are pro-Taiwanese independence activists, so they have no love for Beijing. If you listen to podcast, you will notice that the host and the guest Puma have very different accents, with Puma's accent, I would characterize, as being more "standard" Taiwanese Mandarin. Just like in mainland, there are quite a number of different Mandarin accents prevalent in Taiwan.

http://deepsound-twfuture.podomatic.com/

TWFuture製作播出的「深音」終於正式上線了，「深音」是與「聲音」諧音，期許我們製作得是深入的、是深沈的，是深邃的，是深耕於台灣土地的聲音。

[OneEye]

The current version is a bit too 嗲 for my taste... Maybe I'm picky, but I find this kind of accent a bit unpleasant to listen to. The intonation reminds me of that American accent where people raise their voice at the end of every sentence.

 

I'm really having to fight down the temptation to click that red button. But on to your questions...

 

There are two specific methods outlined in the books: GMS (aka the Mass Sentence Method) and GSR (Spaced Repetition). I've tried slight variations on both methods and I don't generally find a need to do anything like SRS in addition. I mean, of course it wouldn't hurt, but it seems unnecessary. For me, at least. The GSR files have a lot of repetitions built in over the course of several days. If you've been paying attention throughout, you shouldn't have much trouble remembering what you've learned. As I said a few pages back, what I've learned using this method has really stuck with me.

 

But you seem to think the idea is simply to listen to the file. That's not it at all. Here's the description of the methods:

 

 

 

INTENSIVE METHOD (GMS Files) 

 

A Files: Source language (cue) - Target language 2x

B Files: Source language (cue) - space to translate - Target language

C Files: Target language only 1x

 

Typical Day's Routine

 

(If it's your first day, you skip the review steps.)

 

1. Review the recordings you made yesterday. Anything you want to improve?

2. Before starting today's new recordings of the new sentences from the last four days, first listen to the GMS C files to find any pronunciations you want to improve.

3. Now record the sentences from the last four days as review.

4. Now listen to the B files for the oldest review sentences (interpretation training). Try to translate each sentence without using your text in the space provided. If you fail, don't give up. Mass practice is better than perfect practice. Don't let one or two sentences keep you from progressing.

5. If you feel tired or burned out, then there's no need to do new sentences today.

 

(If it's your first day, you can start here.)

 

6. Prepare 10-50 new sentences, depending on your time limit and what you're comfortable with. Look them over in the book, then listen to the accompanying GMS A File.

7. Now use either the A files or C files to write down your new sentences. Try to do this without looking at the book. If you're learning a new script, make sure you can do this in IPA or phonetics before trying to master a new script so you don't miss any sounds.

8. Listen to the sentences one more time, then record them yourself. Come back tomorrow and check your recordings.

9. For added benefit, use the accompanying GSR files.

 

If you're actively recording 200-400 sentences per day, you should reach conversational fluency in about 100-200 days depending on the person.

 

RELAXED METHOD (GSR Files)

 

All repetitions and review are self-contained. This is for people who do not have time to use a book, do dictation, or do recordings.

 

For best results, try to repeat as much as you can. Don't worry if you miss a sentence. Repeat it when you start to feel comfortable with how it sounds. Always have at least one deep sleep between each session, and no more than 2 sleep session between each recording. If you haven't listened in a few days, back up a few lessons and start again.

[JustinJJ]

Thanks for that, just wondering where you found the instructions from. I know previously he had a description of his method on both youtube and it was also mapped out on the 'how to learn any language' forum, but both appear to have been taken down. 

[imron]

The instructions are in the beginning of the Daily Life PDF, but not at the beginning of the Business 1 PDF, so if you previously didn't have the PDF, it would have been easy to miss.

[OneEye]

Hm...I got them from the beginning of the Business 1 PDF. Maybe you should email them and ask for the newest version.

[imron]

Yep, definitely not in my Business 1 PDF, downloaded on May 2.

[simplet]

I was willing to give this a try but that website is already pissing me off. Does anyone know how to become a member? In the "membership" section I can only select "already a glossika member" or "your affiliated area", not "become a glossika member".

[OneEye]

I just went to the website, clicked Membership, and "Become a Glossika Member" is right there. I'm not a member myself, but it's there if I want to join.

[simplet]

Well the sentence is there, I just can't click it.

[OneEye]

Er...I should have tried that. 

[imron]

You don't need to become a member to purchase the content (I didn't).  Just choose what you are interested in, add it to your cart, then pay for it.

[simplet]

I think I managed to register through some misunderstanding, now on to try to naviguate the site...

 

Looking at the facebook page it seems that they have russian files with chinese translations? That'd be great if I can find them...

[imron]

Perhaps this?  But that's learning Russian with Chinese.

[simplet]

Great! That's what I wanted, thanks.

 

edit : oh nice they even have Korean from Chinese, this is starting to get interesting.

[OneEye]

I think Mike's goal is eventually to have all of his courses available in every possible combination of language pairs that he offers, meaning you could feasibly learn Tamil through Seediq if you wanted.

[simplet]

That's nice but hopefully he'll be careful to make sure that all the sentences are still relevant to each other in every language combination, to avoid the "google translate syndrome" where everything travels through english and becomes mangled in the process.

 

So I bought some stuff from the site, am I supposed to receive a download link by email at some point?

[Yang Chuanzhang]

gato:

 

To my ears, the female voice in the GSR recording (youtube link below) sounds "Valley-girlish". [...] If you listen to podcast, you will notice that the host and the guest Puma have very different accents, with Puma's accent, I would characterize, as being more "standard" Taiwanese Mandarin.

 

Totally agree! I generally quite like Taiwanese Mandarin...

 

 

OneEye:

 

I'm really having to fight down the temptation to click that red button.

 

I'm sorry if what I said offended you. In all languages that I can understand, including my native language, there are some accents I like more than others. I thought it was like that for everyone. Do you not have any preferences when it comes to Chinese or English accents?

 

In any case, thanks very much for posting the instructions! His routine is much more active than I realised. To me, it still sounds like having the sentences scheduled by an SRS system would make studying them more efficient, but maybe there's a point from which pure quantity trumps intelligent scheduling...

[OneEye]

No, that's just me being overly sensitive when people talk negatively about Taiwanese accents here. Pay no mind.

 

I always try not to make more work for myself than necessary to get the result I want. If I need an Anki deck to retain what I'm learning, I'll make one. If not, I will avoid it at all costs. I've gone through periods of 700+ flash card reps per day and periods where I don't even have a flash card deck. Right now I'm in a period of very moderate flash card use, and all for Japanese, not Chinese. What I'm saying here is not to use Anki just because you feel like you should be using it. If you find it to be necessary with the Glossika method, then by all means use it. If not, then why go through the trouble of making a deck and adding one more thing to your daily list of things to do?

[wibr]

So I bought the Chinese basic lessons and found the whole customer experience lacking:

 

- confusing website

- after purchase you will get an email with links within 24h and you have to download the files within 24h

- the links in the email are just text you have to copy and paste yourself, shouldn't be too hard to add a tag with href into the html

- if you copy too much you will get a raw xml file as a response, saying that something is wrong with the signature, well I figured that out in the end

- the Chinese text in the pdf is not selectable, probably embedded as curves and not as text, this might be for copyright protection but it's annoying if you want to work with the sentences, look something up or create flashcards from them

 

The approach seems interesting but I hope that they will consider creating an app for this, solving the problems above and providing additional functionality for recording, SRS, etc...