What's up everybody? Всем привет! Welcome back to another episode of the Tsar
Experience today I'm going to be reviewing Glossika. Cue the intro let's
get into today's video!
So what is Glossika you're probably wondering as I mentioned before it's a
little bit similar to Vocabooster in terms of its styles basically you have a
series of sentences that are chosen to help you in terms of vocabulary and if
they see you need and you listen to a native speaker pronounce those sentences
then you repeat this and through a process of osmosis you get to learn vocabulary
that's it's gonna be space repetition because the same vocabulary it's
gonna come up at critical points for you as you learn it now they have a
subscription system now that you can access is an amazing array of languages I
don't know how many languages they have because they keep just keep adding to
them but they're it's like so many there's like over 100 there and I only
actually tested out fully in Russian they did give me access the Catalan and
Swedish but in the end I didn't end up learning those languages to any great
extent I already really tested it for Russian which of course is really
important for where I actually am because I obviously you can see behind me there's
the Statue of Richelieu in the center of Odessa I'm actually sitting on the
Potemkin steps so let me get into the pros and cons for you about Glossika
and how I found when I was learning Russian so what are the pros and cons of
using Glossika now as I said it's also works in the same principle as
another software program that I'm using for me more for the beginners which was
how I learned my first 500 words in Ukrainian earlier this year which is
Vocabooster they have bilingual sentences the
text that have carefully chosen words that are going to come up in different
intervals depending on how difficult or how useful they should be for you that's
the principle behind it and it allows you to absorb the vocabulary and a lot of
the syntax and grammar based on just reading and inputs you actually don't
have to do that much when you work this is one thing I like about it is that
it's intuitive now another thing to think about is that it has actually got
good intonation and natural pace so even if the audio at times is a
little bit fast the fact that you have the text in front of you allows you to
follow along of course you can always repeat it a second time so I really find
that's useful to hear that natural pace and intonation because in a lot of
courses it's a little bit unnatural to say things too slow but in this it's
really like you're gonna hear in real life like here in Odessa which was one
of the reasons I learnt Russianto be able to speak it in this city
another advantage of course is time utilization because this is something
you can just click on for a few minutes when you have some dead time that's
always great to be able to use your time that you have another huge advantage of
this one is just simply the number of languages like there's so many like it's
crazy how many languages thing out there it's just like anything I think like
you're never gonna run out if you're a big language enthusiast then this is
an amazing resource to use so onto the weaknesses the platform doesn't have
voice recognition so you can't actually compare your pronunciation to that of a
native speaker and that's a little bit of a disadvantage there are other
platforms that compensate for that that will do that for you I'll link it in the
description below my review of say Speechling because that actually does
this also Glossika doesn't ... I know what they're doing is substituting like the
words so for example maybe you see a sentence and it's like then five minutes
later yes sooner what it just changed me with a verb or maybe change the
noun you're substituting in and out that is why intuitively you're able to
understand and learn new vocabulary but at the end of the day there's no real explanation
about what's going on so you know you're gonna have to do a little bit of
googling you know you're gonna notice a trend and that's what I always do I go
to Google say hey there's something fishy there there's something that's
going on so that's something to bear in mind you're gonna have to do extra
work outside like it's not integrated into the platform unfortunately and like
a lot of these language platforms too it's not culturally specific it's kind
of kind of a copy the same structures more or less across all the languages and
in some languages you just need to learn stuff about the country like if here I
am in Ukraine and if you're learning Ukrainian it would be nice to have the stuff
relevant to this country because this is why I'm learning it it's of course to be
here and in particular vocabulary I need here is going to be different to say if
I went to China or France or Italy so that's something to bear in mind with all
of these I haven't seen really too many programs that deal with every day culture
specific stuff unfortunately because that means that they have to go and do a new
course it's just a lot quicker for them to do it if they copy it and keep it
standard across all the languages and they have so many on this platform I guess
that's the reason but it's still a great resource in spite of these negative
points just bear them in mind that's what I say so as I was saying I
originally reviewed Glossika for Russian at the time I had actually spoken it a
little bit I wasn't a beginner I was like intermediate I found Glossika perfect
for that level now I've gone back and looked at it a second time and actually
used it for Belarusian and I started a Belarusian project in Minsk in June this
year and I found it really good actually for beginners as well bear in mind that
I do understand a lot of Belarusian from also having learned Ukrainian and
Russian of course so that helps me a bit so I'm not really sure it's for a
complete beginner but definitely like if you've had a little bit of experience
with language then I can definitely say it also now works so you can actually
subscribe. There's a subscription model and you get access to all these languages and
like where else you're gonna be able to learn Belarusian online it's really
really rare so they have this amazing array of languages for you to choose
from there so I found it really really surprising and great that it's actually
also good for say a high beginner as well as those that intermediate now and
then once you've paid for your subscription you can choose language
after language or really really great the changes they've made about
Belarusian gonna be going back to mints to finish up on this Belarusian project
unfortunate weather was really bad when I went for the 10 days to learn
Belarusian I had three hours of class per day but I'm gonna be going back
there very soon see the weather is amazing I'm sitting here in my balcony
in Odessa just off the main street which is over there Deribasovskaya and it's
October ready and this is the weather we are absolutely stunning hopefully this
time I'll be looking in Minsk and I get to actually film outside
we hang for the complete entire 10 days that I was there that's coming up pretty
soon planning to spend most of November mints
gonna be shooting the travel vlog from there also lots of language related and
travel pertinent advice for you guys looking really for it and giving you a
little bit of a taste for this like to go to Minsk the capital of Belarus so
big question the answer do I actually recommend that you buy Glossika I
think it really depends on whether you are a beginner or if you're an
intermediate or if you're advanced because this is not really a platform
for very beginners like if you don't speak a related language like I tried it
out in Swedish I said for a little bit before I did this review in Russian and
what I found with Swedish is I didn't speak really any similar languages I
know German is a little bit similar but I really found it hard to understand
everything because of that whilst with Catalan I did speak ... I do speak
Spanish and French that was actually a lot easier and I think that's really the
key you need to have at least the basis in the language or speak a related
language like for Russian if you spoke and other Slavic language like they
Serbian, Croatian or Ukrainian of course to probably be fine with using Glossika
straight off but if you are learning a completely new language and you don't
speak a related one it's gonna be tricky so anyways I have it alinked below
in the description go check it out they do obviously have a membership has since
you get access all these languages I just think it's you're pretty good I
found a really useful for my Russian because my Russian was already out of
beginners level like a high beginners so I really got a lot of value out of it
Today is Wednesday [Russian]
Today is Wednesday [Belarusian]
I feel good [Russian] I feel good [Belarusian]
So that is the end of my review of Glossika if you've used it then drop us a message below in
the comment section always great to get your comments it's not just about my
opinion always if you have your own experience then please let everybody
know we're creating a great community of people down in the comment section if
you've enjoyed this video give it a big thumbs up and strike the like button and
of course as usual if you're not a subscriber then I guess you're gonna
miss out but yes there is that red subscribe button so give it a squeeze
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so just hit it because otherwise you don't get notified of new uploads here on
YouTube of course so much great stuff coming in the next few weeks
especially from here in Odessa in Ukraine some of the other videos have
kind of gone viral in the last few weeks like five reasons never to date a
ukrainian and also its sequel 5 reasons never buy more reasons never adjudicator
Ukrainian and of course my Odessa girls what do they think of foreign guys
Summer 2018 version we have two or three more videos already that we're gonna
film they're gonna really really be interesting for you as in addition to
these review videos and stuff to help you with language if you come here to
Ukraine so with that said it is до свидания до побачення! See you in
the next one ciao ciao!