Glossika: Language Learning

Can you add Finnish language

All this app does is repeat sentences to you. Better to go on YouTube and listen for free. It also refuses to let you delete your account.

Frequent stopping of recording sequences. Used to load automatically from one recording to the next, but now there is frequent instances where I have to replay several times the recording for it to load the next one

I've been using Glossika for a few weeks now and have very mixed feelings about it. I think the Glossika approach to language study is very useful for me and plan to stick with it, but for the price I feel they've delivered a very sub-standard app and user experience. It is a constant frustration to use the app on an iPhone. Sometimes I have to restart the app because there is no sound. It doesn't pause when I press the pause button on my Airpods or take them out. Sometimes it fails to stop, or even alert me, when I've reached my daily goal. And so on... The default settings also seem less than optimal, I had to do a lot of fiddling to get things to work in a way that made sense to me. (Adjusting the pauses, which language is played first, etc.) However, I could never get "full practice mode" to work properly for my target language: Hindi. Even when I type text perfectly in Devanagari it sometimes still fails to acknowledge that it is correct. (I think it should allow me to mix transcription and Devanagari, especially for writing names.) Finally, in listening only mode it is unable to tell how well you know each sentence, so it can't really used proper spaced repetition methods. It would be useful if it let you manually rate how well you know each sentence after each review session, so that it could adjust the spaced repetition algorithm accordingly. For all of these reasons I can only give the app three stars, though if I was rating the content and overall approach separately from the UX, it would be rated much higher.

This is the worst app I have ever used. They repeat 5 useless phrases- here were the first 5 that was repeated: 1 you’re as fit as a fiddle. 2 stop bellyaching3 this way is really up 4 we cannot get here 5 where can I stand totally useless sentences- nobody speaks like this. Totally unrealistic and ODD

And it opted to start me off at A1 low. It’s never a great thing to start the app with bugs. First it said it would start me at B2 low, then it glitched and said it would start me at A1 low. I’ve used this app in the past and remember it was buggy, tried again to see if it improved since last year. It has not. Clozemaster is a far superior app and I’ll be sticking with that.

I noticed that the more endangered languages are being offered for free, which is great for language preservation. Was really hoping to see Baba Malay; I’ll keep waiting before I find a language here that is worth the splurge.

UI is like a puzzle, no instruction on how to advance to new lessons. The sentences are only translated to English and there’s no explanation of individual words to help you learn the grammar.

This really works. I used a variety of tools to prepare for my recent trip to Italy, but it was Glossika that proved the most valuable. I found myself using grammatical constructions and key phrases intuitively that I had encountered on the app. Repetition truly is the trick. The sentences are artfully selected to expose you to the most high frequency vocabulary and syntax. I will double down on my use from now on.

Felt inspired to write a review based on another user who edited their previous review, commenting with a dark mode request. Yes, please add dark mode. This would be especially useful for those of us who are using Glossika for reading practice and are staring at a white screen for long periods. It could be a very simple toggle “Dark mode” toggle in the settings that activates dark mode. I will promise to edit this review to five stars if this is done, because although Glossika is a great product, right now I’m rating the application.