Glossika: Language Learning 4+

Best language app that made me progress the fastest

I have used glossika for 1 week during the free trial, I basically did nothing but listened to it when I walk/drive/cook, but have already magically preogressed so much, being able to understand many articles and podcasts. Definitely recommend it to all language learners.
Things I hope Glossika can improve:
1. Subscription fee is too expensive, I hope there would be a cheaper option for those who only want to learn one language
2. The app always stop playing when in backend operation
3. I hope there’s a button to see the previous rep in case I missed it or want to listen to it again
4. The level test is too simple so that the test result is higher than my real level

Developer Response ,

Hi idgdmovpsuqgvrkpoa,

Thanks for your kind review and feedback - we hear you.

We are in the process of drafting a one-language subscription option and look forward to sharing more information with users when everything is finalized. Regarding #2, #3, and #4, would you mind getting in touch with us to share more about your user experience?

Feedback from users like you helps to make Glossika better for everyone. :)

Thanks!

A few questions

Hi,
I’m new to Glossika after 2 years learning Mandarin, Hsk4+ very happy with reading/writing but struggling with listening and talking. I started Glossika from 0 (no placement test) to be sure not to miss anything and have a more consistent practice this year. I have trouble to force myself doing shadowing / chorusing on free materials everyday. My famous lack of volonté… 😅

I noticed a few bugs in lsessions on iPad and iPhone but I will probably get in touch directly with tech support when I can reproduce them. No deal breaker.

But a quick question : is the badge on the app not supposed to display the number of reviews / new items to do today? It doesn’t seem to work here, and I was hoping that it could give me a kick in the b… every morning the same way Anki shows me remaining reviews. I did activate them in iOS settings but didn’t change anything.

Also, i never really used the website version but it seemed from tutorial videos that you recommend doing reviews BEFORE learning new materials (obviously not on the first days). Yet new materials show first in the app, you have to toggle to review mode to see what’s there. And is there a way to change that by defaut?

Anyway, I wish you can soon release some videos dedicated to the new Glossika especially the iOS/iPad OS apps, it seems a few things have changed over the last couple years.

Thanks !

Buggy app doesn’t work

TL;DR: this app is buggy and also doesn’t work when the screen is locked. Glossika is such a cool concept but they really need to just hire a good developer to make their app match the quality of their whole program.

For such an expensive subscription, this app functions quite poorly. It simply stops playing audio when the screen is locked, displaying an error message about losing the network connection (even though it was just working fine with the same connection while the screen was still unlocked).

There are some other features that it really should have as well such as a back button for when you want to return to the previous sentence, and better options for toggling off parts of the display text so that it is not so crowded. For example, the “Pronunciation” transcription includes the original target language text, even though it’s already displayed above, and it’s not possible to remove this duplicate text without removing the romanized pronunciation as well. Offline capability would also be very useful.

Developer Response ,

Hi csbguitar! We're happy that you appreciate our approach. Expanding to a new platform is hard, but our developers have been actively working out kinks with the app. Many of the things you addressed here were things we had already been working on. -----

The screen-locked error message seems to be related to power-saving settings. Please go to your iPhone settings, then disable "low-battery mode" and enable "background app refresh" — testing internally, these two changes made it possible to use Glossika even while the screen was locked. If that doesn't work, we'd appreciate if you reached out to us via support@glossika.com and provided more information about your phone model. -----

I appreciate the suggestion about adding a toggle to hide the target-language text, and have made note of it in our "ideas" board. Generally speaking, we want to give users as much leeway as possible to personalize how their sessions work, and this is totally in line with that spirit. -----
As for offline capability, I'm happy to say that this feature is now live!