Glossika method

[renzhe]

You'll get used to the font very quickly.

This type of font is actually commonly used for teaching materials -- NCPR uses it, IIRC.

[roddy]

Since Auberon posted, I'm seeing: 

 

Tysond

JustinJJ

Unfadeable

Solarin

Realmayo

Imron

simplet

wibr

fabiothebest

xiaokaka

etm001

simc

crt32

Snuggles

 

having made purchases. That's over a dozen people, pretty impressive. Anyone else want to add themselves to that list?

 

I may need to re-think my aversion to affiliate programs....

[realmayo]

Can't speak for anyone else, but I've been interested for a long time in trying out this learning method of lots of audio, lots of sentences. Obviously it wasn't invented by this Glossika guy although I had seen some of his youtube videos on the topic. I was too lazy or not sufficiently convinced to spend the time creating the audio for myself.

[OneEye]

Add me to that list, roddy. I bought the Business Chinese course. I haven't had much time to work with it yet due to being overloaded with work at the end of the semester. but I do really like it. I'll also definitely be buying the Japanese course when it comes out, whenever that will be. And the Taiwanese course that was just released. And the German course once it's finished. And...

[ChTTay]

...i'm still on the fence but now i've got one foot on the "buying it" side.

After listening to the samples on the website about 5 times I already remember those sentences clearly haha

[tysond]

For those who are interested to turn the sentences into Anki cards for whatever purpose...

 

You can use a great program called WorkAudioBook to practice listening to sentences.  I haven't seen it mentioned on Chinese Forums before but I have lately been trying it and it's pretty cool.

 

It is really good for cycling on speech especially if there is no background noise (e.g. audio books, sentence packs).  So you can listen and re-listen to sentences, record yourself, etc, right within the program.  Better than using audacity because auto-detects sentences (based on silences) and it also understands that audio and text can match up.

 

It will import subtitle files and match text up with sentences, or if you don't have subtitle files, you can take text and match it up yourself by simply highlighting which sentence belongs with which audio (remember the audio is automatically segmented into sentences so this is much easier than you might expect).  Then you can save it as a .SRT subtitle file.  

 

So I just grabbed the text of the glossika business PDF, load one of the Chinese only .mp3 files, and match up each sentence.  Takes a few seconds each sentence.  Then I save an SRT file.  Then I load up Subs2SRS, give it the SRT file and the MP3 file, and let it break up each sentence and make Anki cards.   Takes about 5 minutes to make 50 cards.  

 

I don't really want the English right now, as I understand the meaning of the sentences pretty well, but if you wanted it you'd just need to do a second round of marking the sentences but this time mark the corresponding English sentences, save a second SRT file, add that as language 2 of the Subs2SRS, and it will create bilingual cards for you.

[simplet]

I'm going to rain on everyone's parade a bit here but I have to say that so far I have been... less than convinced by my purchase.

 

I bought what I think is a "fluency" package, which should be something like an intermediate level (?). But everything is really elementary, even for my current russian level. Moreover, I bought the srs format and there is really too much repetition for my taste, I really don't need to hear 50 times "the children are playing in the park". And finally the pacing of the lessons makes no sense to me, there is no way I was going to just listen to 2 minutes of "My name is Maria" in the first day and then leave it at that, so basically I'm haphazardly listening to a bunch of lessons at a time, usually losing track of what I did and starting back from somewhere before I stopped when I start the next time.

 

I thought this would be a nice low-intensity, low-investment language workout to complement my more "serious" language training, but it turns out it's really too low-intensity. Basically I can't really justify doing this when at home over more serious language work (plus it's really boring and I start day-dreaming or even sleeping while listening to it), so that leaves me with listening to the audio while walking some places, going to the gym or taking the train or bus. But then all the movement and sound around me distracts me even more from listening to the thing and I catch myself missing minutes of a lesson at a time. Finally like I said the sentences are really boring and they're really not holding my attention like a continued stream of speech would, I'm pretty sure natural uninterrupted speech is doing a lot more for my listening comprehension.

 

I'm also not convinced that the price is such a bargain. It's obviously not that expensive but I'm not absolutely sure that there is that much work going in it either. Someone just came up with a thousand sentences, the same for every language, and then payed a native speaker to spend a boring three days recording every single one. then all that was needed was to reorganize the sentences over a hundred lessons, maybe with the help of some kind of algorythm... It doesn't really make sense to calculate the price by the sentence in my opinion.

[ChTTay]

Are you learning Russian or is it Russian is your native language and you are learning Chinese?

[simplet]

I'm french and currently learning russian, and I thought learning through chinese would help me "keep in touch" with chinese...

[ChTTay]

So you are learning Russian through Chinese? Is that how the course is designed? For Chinese people who want to learn Russian?

Just curious. :-)

[simplet]

Well yeah you could say that, though calling the course "designed" is a bit generous in my opinion. It's simply one Chinese sentence, followed by the sentence translated in Russian, then another Chinese sentence, another Russian translation and so on so forth. I'm pretty sure it would work almost as well (or even possibly better) for someone learning Chinese from Russian. You'd simply have to guess the meaning of the Chinese sentence at first, then listen to the translation in Russian to confirm.

 

By the way you can tell that the sentence are not translated directly from Chinese to Russian, but that they are all translated from a common language (presumably English). The sentences are presented in a random order, and sometimes you'll have a sentence that is a question followed by another sentence that happens to be an answer, but the answer for another question. So for example sometimes the question-answer sequence will make no sense in Chinese ("Is the sky blue today?" "No, I haven't") but will make sense in Russian ("Is the sky blue today?" "No").

[etm001]

@simplet said:

 

 

I bought what I think is a "fluency" package, which should be something like an intermediate level (?). But everything is really elementary

This might go back to earlier criticisms of the Glossika website. Personally, I feel that the website does not provide enough sample material to allow buyers to feel confident that a) they understand the Glossika method, and b) that a given module will suit their language level and/or interests.

 

It sounds like you bought the "Basic Fluency" package. Based on what I see in the Chinese Mandarin Basic Fluency 1-3 package, I would say the level of difficulty ranges from late-elementary to mid-intermediate. To give everyone a sense of the difficulty of the material,  below are what I think are representative sentences from each module:

 

• Basic 1
  • I started my new job last week. 我上個禮拜開始新的工作。
  • Where are your friends going? 你朋友要去哪裡？
  • It rains a lot in the winter. 冬天常下雨。
• Basic 2
  • I know lots of people. You do? I though you said you didn't know anybody. 我認識很多人。真的嗎？我以為你說你誰都不認識。
  • The movie wasn't very good, was it? No, it was terrible. 電影不好看，對吧？對，非常糟糕。
  • Why were you so late? I had to wait half an hour for the bus. 你怎麼遲到這麼久？我需要半個小時等公車。
• Basic 3
  • They happened to come across an important piece of evidence, and now he's in prison. 他們碰巧找到了一個重要的跡證，他現在已經入獄了。
  • I've never met the woman in charge of marketing, but I've spoken to her on the phone a few times. 我沒有見過負責行銷的那位女人，但我跟她講過幾次電話。
  • You're an independent person and can make your own decisions. I don't care what you do. 你已經獨立，可以自己做決定，我不在乎你做什麼。

Within each module there is some variation in terms of the level of difficulty; there will be slightly longer sentences in Basic 1 than those above, and shorter/easier sentences in Basic 3 than those above, etc.

 

@simplet said:

 

 

I bought the srs format and there is really too much repetition for my taste, I really don't need to hear 50 times "the children are playing in the park". And finally the pacing of the lessons makes no sense to me, there is no way I was going to just listen to 2 minutes of "My name is Maria" in the first day and then leave it at that

The GSM audio might have worked out better for you - it contains no repetition. In fairness, the GSR files are designed to have that high level of repetition. But if the level of difficulty of the material was too low (or too boring) for you, then I can see how you'd go crazy listening to simple sentences dozens and dozens of times.

 

One of my frustrations is that, at least on the surface, topics don't appear to be logically organized within each module. I think this is deliberate and maybe there's a justification for it, but I'd really like to be able to focus on a given topic and drill on the sentences related to it. 

 

@simplet said:

 

 

I'm also not convinced that the price is such a bargain. It's obviously not that expensive but I'm not absolutely sure that there is that much work going in it either. Someone just came up with a thousand sentences, the same for every language, and then payed a native speaker to spend a boring three days recording every single one. 

 

I won't argue about whether the product is a bargain - we will all have different thoughts as to the product's merits, and thus whether the retail price is fair. But I actually think it took a lot of up front work to put this all together. And, in theory, the sentences were not arbitrarily selected, but were deliberately constructed to include a) vocabulary, grammar, etc., that would be useful in everyday settings, and b) natural, "how a native would say it" translations and pronunciation (for the Mandarin Chinese material, some people have expressed concerns that the material is source from Taiwan and not mainland China, and that the native speaker is a female; see the earlier posts in this thread for details). 

 

On a related note: we can see from other posts in this thread that there is demand to use the Glossika materials in SRS programs, and some people have posted the methods they've used to cut up the audio and written materials for use in Anki (a big thanks to @tysond for sharing his method which seems great). I'd like to see Glossika offer each sentence as a stand alone MP3 (with the sentence transcript embedded as an MP3 lyric), which would save people the time/effort of manually getting the material into Anki. (Others have suggested that an iOS/Android app be developed, which could be very useful too).

 

[realmayo]

I think there's two things: method or resource.

 

I wasn't sold on the "method" when I coughed up the cash, and nothing's changed so far.

But I bought it as a resource. In that light, the spaced-repetition audio is not so useful as the regular un-repeated audio,

 

As a resource, I'm content but there are definitely some things I'd do differently.

As a method -- as I say, I did not buy the stuff for the method.

[OneEye]

So, simplet is not the target audience for the course you bought, and you're not using it in the way the course is meant to be used. You're not really doing "the course," you're using the material and doing what you want with it. And that's fine if it's what you want to do, and I'm all for experimentation, but now we all know how much salt to take when you tell us that "the course" isn't working.

 

Edit: As realmayo posted while I was typing, there is a difference between method and material. The method may not be for everyone. Same with the material. That's fine. But it doesn't make much sense to criticize the course when you're not really doing the course.

 

Personally, I feel that the website does not provide enough sample material to allow buyers to feel confident that a) they understand the Glossika method, and b) that a given module will suit their language level and/or interests.

 

This. And I don't really understand why someone from Glossika doesn't join up here and participate in this conversation, answer the questions that have been raised, and create a bit of good publicity for themselves. Doesn't have to be Mike, because I'm sure he's very busy trying to crank new courses out. But somebody.

[roddy]

I did set up an account for Glossika, at their request, hopefully they'll use it soon. I could understand any reluctance though, venturing onto social media and forums can be a minefield for companies, especially if you're working across cultures or languages. So go easy on them ;-)

[OneEye]

Cool, hopefully they will!

[Yadang]

Roddy, add me to that list also if you wish. I've been quite busy lately and haven't been able to use it nearly as much, but hopefully I'll be able to crack down soon...

[giokve]

 

And the Taiwanese course that was just released.

 

Was it? I can't find it anywhere on his website.

[etm001]

I just had an experience that made me think about the Glossika method, and hopefully one of it's potential benefits. 

 

Previously I said:

 

 

Based on what I see in the Chinese Mandarin Basic Fluency 1-3 package, I would say the level of difficulty ranges from late-elementary to mid-intermediate. 

If I were to judge the Basic Fluency package based solely on the new vocabulary or grammar that it would teach me, then I might not have bought the package. I think it's worth mentioning - at least IMHO - that is should not be the sole determinant of whether or not the method is of benefit. A key goal of this method (and many others) is to ingrain in the student the ability to instantaneously and effortlessly respond using the same language as a native speaker. For me, it's the "instantaneous, effortless, natural language" aspect of the method that holds the most promise - not learning new vocabulary or grammar.

 

So here's a situation that just happened to me: a friend of mine used the Mos Burger iPhone app to place an order, and I went to the store to pick it up (for those who don't know, Mos Burger is hamburger restaurant chain). When the girl at the counter asked what I wanted, I said something like, "我剛剛用那個Mos Burger app點菜". There was no miscommunication - she understood what I said and what I mean; I paid and left. When I got back home, my friend actually asked me, "What did you say when you went to pick up the food?" and I told him. I asked him what he would have said. His reply: "I would have said 我來取餐". <sigh> As I often discover, there's usually a more direct, more "Chinese" way of saying something that what I come up with, and this is what I'm hoping the Glossika method can help me with. There's nothing challenging or advanced about my friend's suggested reply, but it's more efficient, natural, and frankly easier, than what I said. 

 

In short, when you evaluate one of the Glossika packages, don't just asses it on vocabulary, grammar, or sentence length/complexity. Those things are important, but it's only one aspect of the method. As best as you can, try to determine whether the package will improve your ability to spontaneously speak - without thinking, stuttering, or pausing - using natural language like a native speaker.

[simc]

I'm not really sold on Glossika. I decided to try it out of curiosity mostly.

Why do people decide to do it? Is there any theory behind it? Why bother to study N thousand random sentences?

Perhaps it is a question of priorities. I'm sure that if I recorded myself and tried to make my pronunciation more and more like the recording then I'm sure it would become more accurate. But I don't have the time or patience to do this, and having accurate pronunciation is not highest on the priority list.

If your main goals are listening and reading comprehension, does Glossika have anything to offer? If you have limited time it seems more worthwhile to do other things such extensive/intensive listening and reading, Chinesepod, watch TV and films. The sentences from these sources will presumably be meaningful, rather than just be a bunch of sentences selected by some guy who lives in Taiwan.