Glossika: Language Learning

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.

I know the creators of this app are in the process of making a new product and I hope that works out for them because I like the concept of Glossika. I struggle to use flashcard apps but I know the benefits of SRS are real, I’m good at listening to things on the go and I do better with auditory memory. Thus, I finally caved and gave Glossika a try for Spanish. 5 minutes into and I was immensely underwhelmed. There’s no theme or clear progression to the words/phrases. You can go from “Is this spicy?” to “You look dreadful” to “Do you have insurance?” These are phrases I barely use in English (who even says dreadful), let alone would group together in Spanish. Now I’m not arguing for this to be a phrasebook, but the phrases are so nonsensical that the English stands out more than the Spanish. Keeping some kind of theme or pulling words previously taught into the newer sentences to help you build more connections between words would be useful. Even if it was just blocks of synonyms or similar demonstrating how sentence structure might change or stay the same when you swap out certain words, even when the sentences have close connotations. I guess what I want is context plus SRS and this isn’t it.

I don’t feel like they way Glossika teaches is very intuitive, and it doesn’t really help you learn the structure or how a language actually works. All it does is teach phrases which is fine in theory, but generally nothing sticks as well as content taught from other apps. Since you cannot break the sentences down into individual words and particles, your actual language learning depth suffers. Phrases are alright though even if they are sometimes very low-frequency vocabulary.

But pls add a dark mode! Is it really that difficult to have a dark mode? Come on!