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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| turorudi Triglot Newbie Philippines Joined 3368 days ago 24 posts - 30 votes Speaks: English, Tagalog*, Japanese Studies: Hungarian, French | Message 1 of 35 17 March 2015 at 6:05am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Have you guys heard of Glossika?
http://www.glossika.com/what-is-glossika/ I have read some reviews about it and some bloggers I follow recommend the program. I want to get the Hungarian one because I like mixing things up with my resources; I get bored easily so I switch between books and resources. I would like to hear anyone's personal experience on Glossika and how best to maximize this program. Thanks! Edited by turorudi on 17 March 2015 at 6:05am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Nieng Zhonghan Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Antarctica Joined 3470 days ago 108 posts - 315 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Japanese*, Spanish, Galician Studies: Finnish, Icelandic, Armenian, Mongolian Studies: Old English, Russian, English, German, Korean, Mandarin | Message 2 of 35 17 March 2015 at 2:20pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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There is already one thread related to your post:
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=24730&PN=2&TPN=1 You can take a look at the Glossika website itself in case it has been a long time you haven’t accessed it. (Available on http://www.glossika.com/) I am suggesting you to take a look at the website because last time (8 months ago) I have taken a look, it was really messed up. I still remember that when I clicked through few links available at that time I ended up completely confused by the poor website layout and the lack of information not provided regarding his products. It doesn’t need to be colorful etc at all, but I thought it could be more objective by adding a FAQ, about page and shop/store page for starters such as me. By that time I have sent an e-mail to them and it seems that they have never cared to answer me, but at least I can see some improvement. That said, clicking on “about Glossika” you can read about “What is Glossika”, “GMS” and “GSR” I basically used the Glossika products following what was described on the pdfs. It is basically explained in the website. Read about GMS and GSR. On Korean I have borrowed the GMS Korean from an acquaintance of mine to check the audio as when I tried to listen to the sample sentences, the link was not working anymore. The version of Glossika I have it is their first edition (in case there are others). I'm unsatisfied with the Korean speaker, but this is a problem of mine. While I have had contact with Korean native speakers of different ages from different regions and have never trouble to understand them when speaking, I had trouble to understand his recordings. I don’t think the guy who recorded the audio speaks an accent from Seoul which is not a problem. I will check it soon. Unless I don’t borrow the Glossika Korean again, I won’t be able to tell you exactly which sentences could have improved. Sometimes I think that the company wanted to give us a literal translation while in other sentences they are not too literal. One way or another would be obviously necessary, but I think some of translations needed a review. Perhaps they have already changed it to a more natural way. From what I have seen so far, I do believe that Glossika’s content is very colloquial. For almost all languages they have been developing, I am sure that they focus on the spoken language (i.e. natural sentences that might come up in a conversation between family and friends, for instance). Of course, teaching a more casual Korean doesn’t mean that they are teaching us rude or very impolite contents. It just means much less the use of –니다 as I noticed the usage of the polite forms on a lot of sentences later on. It really depends on the situation when such are used. That said, I think the Glossika Hungarian can complement your study if you use a course book which usually teaches you more formal situations. It can perhaps be used together with Colloquial Hungarian in your case, but I cannot say much as I don’t know what kind of materials you have used so far. On Chinese As I am not a native speaker of Chinese, I cannot tell whether the sentences below sound natural. Situation 1 你会口渴吗？ Are you thirsty? 是，我口渴。 Yes, I am. I have learned this way: 你口渴吗？ 是的 or是的, 我口渴。 I am not sure if the current edition was changed, so I cannot compare. I have sent an e-mail but I didn’t get any response by the company. I don’t think they are interested in improving their products at all which is a pity. I am not saying that I am right and they are wrong as I am not a native speaker. However, I asked 19 high educated native speakers from Mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore and they have told me that the both question and answer aren’t the best example or the natural way (if Glossika considers so) to teach. Now, let’s take a look at another example: Situation 2 你结婚了吗？ Are you married? 不，我还没有。 No, I'm not. I remember that I have asked the exactly same question to my Chinese friends (because I wanted to use what I have just learned) and their answers were: 没有 or没有, 我还没结婚。 I would understand either “不，我还没有” and “没有, 我还没结婚”, but as a matter of curiosity, I have asked native speakers from Singapore, Taiwan and Mainland China which of them sounds more natural to a native’s ears and and they all have told me thatit is没有, 我还没结婚. Coincidence or not, I will ask my Russian friend whether Glossika Russian’s sentences sounds natural or whether she can find some weird translations. On Spanish Although the woman who recorded the audio has a clear accent, I think she exaggerated at the point I found some few sentences so artificial. I thought it was only my ears, but having been in contact with Spanish for over a decade and having Spanish native speakers from Argentina, Paraguay, Peru and Chile, I decided to ask them. They said that it was clear, but very artificial in certain sentences at the point they could not stand for a long time. There are sentences that no native speakers would say as well in their casual conversation (as the product seems to be focused on Colloquial language). While perhaps English native speakers would find natural, Spanish native speakers could find them weird at the point that you have to click on “stop” to figure out what the sentences or words used (not the best in the context) mean. I think Glossika products are really promising, but what’s the point to choose sentences that no Spanish native speakers would ever say? Actually the creator didn’t choose as he uses the exactly same sentences for the whole languages. On overall To summarize, since I paid for the products (except for Korean which I borrowed), I was expecting to see a higher quality product. Anyway, I pointed out here some questions that many people can disagree with me. As a matter of curiosity, I will take a look at Glossika Portuguese (it was given to me, I don’t know why!?) and I can also list one day an extensive list of problems I found on Glossika German if I have more free time and if more people are interested in. I am going to ask about Glossika Russian to my friends from different Russian speaking countries. PS: It is out of your thread question. What Hungarian resources have you used so far? Have you tried Assimil Hungarian? 9 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Glarus Girl Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4374 days ago 50 posts - 108 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Swiss-German | Message 3 of 35 17 March 2015 at 2:50pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I bought the German edition. It's boring and tedious. His voice which is used for the
English is whiny and irritating and there are too many pointless 'sentences' that consist of just answering 'yes' in your target language - really not necessary. Also the annoying intro and outro will drive you insane on every mp3! I spent hours cutting them out with Audacity. I haven't found it useful at all and wasn't able to stick with it. I'm not convinced it's an efficient resource. I got up to day 21 on the GSR files before I gave up but that's just me - you might love it! :o) Edited by Glarus Girl on 17 March 2015 at 3:05pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| chobbs Newbie United States Joined 4376 days ago 35 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 4 of 35 17 March 2015 at 4:26pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I have a number of the Glossika packages and have found them to be a decent resource.
However, as indicated by Glossika themselves, they are meant to be used in conjunction with other resources. I would go so far as to say as this point I don't think they are all that good for actually "learning" a language. My son began learning German with the Glossika materials and made it a little over a month in with the GSR files before he started to get fairly frustrated. I switched him over to Assimil at that point. I feel like the mouth and ear training he got from the Glossika materials was quite helpful though and we probably will be re-integrating those as he builds his base in the language. That said, I think the format of the materials leaves a lot to be desired. As Glarus Girl mentioned the intro/outro is annoying, however it took me only a few minutes to process those out. I also compressed silences while I was at it so now I have their GMS C files with pure target language and a faster rate for listening to the entire set sentences. My biggest complaint is I wish the sentences were packaged individually and utilized playlists - this would give us a lot more flexibility with how we could use the material. Right now it would be a really tedious manual process to break things apart. The other aspect I find frustrating is the pdf files. Getting display issues correct is something I completely understand, but I think they should at least provide the sentences in a unicode text file so folks who wish to use them in other formats can easily do so. Overall I still think the best aspect of the material is that it is available for so many languages, especially those which are fairly obscure. - Chris 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5664 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 5 of 35 17 March 2015 at 5:29pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I completely forgot about the intro, i wrote a simple script to remove them all. The intro is indeed super annoying. I posted my solution over at chinese-forums.com:
Also, every "course" is all based off the same script. It's also worth noting that the course does start to pick up as you go further into it, sentences get progressively longer. Regarding Nieng Zhonghan's post, yes, the first version of the Mandarin Chinese course was based off the Taiwan dialect (Mike "Glossika" has been living in Taiwan for over a decade now and the company is based out of Taiwan). The course didn't specifically mention that and i think it was intended to not be based on any particular dialect, but some of the things you mention are traits of colloquial Taiwan Mandarin. The use of 会 with adjectives (会口渴) is common in Taiwan, as is the use of 有 to form the past tense (她有去) instead of using the 了 particle. One of the more annoying things for the Mandarin course in my opinion was the use of foreign names. I'd rather learn some common Chinese names than have to remember how to translate Anabel, Enzo, Cecilia, Vanessa, Evita, Fabian, etc. into Mandarin. For most other languages this won't be as much of a problem, but it's a huge pain in Mandarin. On the other hand, when i had some questions about the course i received long and well thought-out responses from Mike personally. They mostly ignored the mistakes and typos i pointed out, though. After seeing the dissatisfaction with the course using the Taiwan speaker, they retranslated the entire course and recorded it with a Beijing speaker and sent the new course out for free to anyone who purchased the old course before they announced the Beijing speaker version. I think that was a really nice gesture on their part. So, many of your questions might have been solved in the new Beijing version of the course, i haven't had time to go through it yet though. I'm not sure i really buy the whole cookie cutter format, i'm also not convinced that you can (comfortably) learn a language from scratch using it, however if you've got a nice foundation it's a great way to get speaking practice. The sentences are useful. There are quite a few short "yes" "no" answers in the beginning, but for the most part the sentences are things you'd like to know how to say. There are things you might understand if you heard them but wouldn't have said them that way. For learning that sort of stuff, i think it's a decent course. I think the GMS (Glossika Mass Sentences) are the meat and bones of it though, i can see the GSR (Glossika Spaced Repetition) not working quite as well. In any event, they are working to produce materials for a lot of "smaller" languages and dialects commonly ignored by bigger companies. All based off the same set of sentences, though. Ah, and one last thing. The PDFs use vector graphics rather than text, meaning you can't copy/paste from the PDF. I think this was a huge mistake on their part, it's a big inconvenience to the person studying the course, you can't search the document, can't use a pop-up dictionary to check the meaning of a word, can't copy and paste a sentence into Anki, etc. They've said it's because of the commonness piracy in Asia and to make sure that the fonts get displayed the same way on every computer screen, though they could've just embedded the fonts in the PDF file for that. It's really just to stop piracy. The end result is this massive 100+MB PDF file that you have no way of searching or copy/pasting. So now pirate sites just host the huge inconvenient PDF file rather than a small convenient PDF. I doubt it made any difference whatsoever with regards to piracy. Actually, a pirated file is more likely to at least be OCR'd, have the annoying intro cut out of the mp3s, etc. In short, a much better study tool ;) Didn't mean to write so much, sorry about that. If there's anything in particular you've got questions about, feel free to ask. I guess i didn't really answer the best way to study them, but i'm not sure i can really answer. I've been wondering that very same thing. I can only share how i've studied them, and that's following the method described in the original course (they changed it to be less "intensive" in the new courses):
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| turorudi Triglot Newbie Philippines Joined 3368 days ago 24 posts - 30 votes Speaks: English, Tagalog*, Japanese Studies: Hungarian, French | Message 6 of 35 18 March 2015 at 2:22am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Thank you Nieng Zhonghan for your detailed response! Their website looks much better now.
You can even navigate by L1 and you can see which languages are available for you. I have been looking for samples of their Hungarian audio but the website only has text. I checked out a few blogs that do have samples but as I don't speak Cantonese or Portuguese, they weren't exactly helpful for me (at least for now). I also wish they offer the option to purchase individual levels instead of the entire "Fluency 1-3" as a set, just in case there are people who want to sample the method first. PS: Yes, Assimil Hungarian is one of my main resources. When I get stuck in a chapter (for example, when the vocabulary just won't stick), I find it helpful to switch to another book such as Colloquial or Teach Yourself. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| turorudi Triglot Newbie Philippines Joined 3368 days ago 24 posts - 30 votes Speaks: English, Tagalog*, Japanese Studies: Hungarian, French | Message 7 of 35 18 March 2015 at 2:23am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Thank you Glarus Girl! I was planning on getting this -- so now I won't!
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| redflag Senior Member Australia Joined 3641 days ago 123 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Danish, Indonesian, French | Message 8 of 35 18 March 2015 at 3:48am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I use the French one, have Indonesian on pre-order and would buy Danish today if it were
available. I find it a really efficient and worthwhile method to increase my fluency in the sense of how quickly words and phrases roll off the tongue and come to mind. It isn't for everyone, as this thread attests, but I have had a lot of success with it. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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