This is just a quick plug for the GMS packages currently being sold over at glossika.com. It is a fairly “heavy duty” method and it wont be for everyone. But I reckon it is a much superior introductory approach to things like Pimsleur and Michel Thomas - and the prices are very competitive compared to both of these. They also offer some unusual minority languages (like Icelandic) with more being prepared all the time. For some learners it would be very a good thing to do for the first three or four months, in my opinion, before continuing with other intermediate-advanced level methods (such as LingQ.)
Hey Prinz, nice to see you back, at least for one more party. I have used some of this stuff, and it is great! I have only used the free stuff that can be downloaded from itunes, since I had some trouble buying the package on the website, but as I found out later, that was entirely a result of my own ignorance and the stupidity of my bank’s fraud department. They flag up my card every time I use it outside of Britain, which is a pain in the ass since I live in Austria.
But it is a great product and not super expensive.
I know that the sentences are unrelated in general, but I can’t but smile when they string together to make something funny.
- Are you a teacher?
- No, I’m Canadian!
I reckon GMS is potentially a very powerful weapon - but I do think one would have to spend at least 2 hours passively listening to it every day for several months. Ideally it would be done while doing other activities (driving, walking, running, working out, gardening, DIY, etc.) The key is to be relaxed and just grasp and understand a little bit more with each pass at the material. It isn’t difficult as such, but probably still requires quite a lot of motivation to keep it up.
Yeah, I suspect that there is some deliberate psychology going on there. (Glossika is, after all, advised by 5 guys with PhDs in Linguistics!)
Apropos psychology: I’ve been back here for about 5 minutes and I’m already itching to bring down the metaphorical cudgel on Christophe C’s gleaming skull. This has to stop now!
Any good for intermediate-advanced learners? I’m curious.
I purchased the mandarin everyday life package. I think it’s good method overall, but my big issue is Mandarinization of Western names in a good number of the sentences which imo is useless and distracting. I imagine the other languages have the L2ization of names, too. It makes no sense to me why they’d do this. Any thoughts?
I think he has more advanced modules for Mandarin Chinese only. But even the regular GMS packages have 3000 conversational sentences on everyday topics (with probably about 5000 individual words of vocabulary) By truly assimilating all of this, one may already be well prepared to dive right into authentic native materials, like watching TV, listening to radio, etc? (I guess it depends on the language in question to some extent…)
Well…
The Japanese use katakana for foreign names and for thousands of loan words, too…but I guess I was already used to this before starting Mandarin.
Personally, I don’t think the foreign names are useless at all. The phonetic sounds of the characters are pretty much consistent, and I’ve gotten to know a lot of characters from it. If you think that’s hard, try reading a Biblical genealogy record in Mandarin!
I have to point out, though, that Glossika doesn’t just use Western names - they embrace many foreign names throughout the material (from an overview of 3 levels) - which is great, since not everyone in the world is named Tom, Jane, Sarah or Paul…
More non-English speakers are able to access Glossika materials as further languages are released. I think it’s cool that people are able to use material that’s not Western centric, including us… but just my opinion:)
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@Prinz
Can you describe this method?
On the site they offer to buy, but they don’t explain what is the key of the method and what is its difference from Michel Thomas or Pimsleur?
What it astonishes me is that it includes Taiwanese Hokkien , what it baffles me is that they apply simplified characters to this version of collection.
Hey Jay! We missed ya! Nice to see you back:)
It’s interesting that you mentioned Glossika, since I was surprisingly able to move 100 words to “known” today after spending the past few days using Glossika Russian (combination of GMS & GSR & writing out the sentences). I don’t intend to only use Glossika, which the method doesn’t intend for us to do anyway. We have a great LingQ library anyhow.
The cool thing is I’ve unintentionally learned to read a lot of the IPA just by comparing, as well as the script - and this helped to clarify the pronunciation and what I thought I was hearing.
Evgeny, if you go to iTunes and search under “glossika” there should be some glossika podcasts with examples in several languages. Also, if you go to glossika.com and scroll right down the page there are some examples from the Icelandic course.
The main difference between GMS and Michel Thomas and Pimsleur is that one isn’t required to construct sentences in pauses. Rather there is a continual input-stream whereby the learner hears his or her native language, then the target language, repeated twice and spoken at normal speed, before moving to the next sentence…and so on. It is pretty much relentless - like an artillery barrage in spoken language! (There are, however, three parallel sets of recordings: the first one is as described above, providing comprehensible input. The second one has gaps for translation - so that it can, in fact, be used Pimsleur style if one wishes to do so. And the third set of recordings gives the target language only - which is useful for reviewing sentences which have already been mostly assimilated.)
There are transcripts as well - available in physical copy or eBook format. But I would say that this is, first and foremost, an audio-only immersion approach. I think it is designed to mimic the experience of living in a country where the target language is spoken.
Thanks 
It’s good to be back - but maybe I’m only here for a “one night stand” this time?
(And I bet you didn’t miss those lame sleazy jokes! )
Who says? :)~~ Now, I need to go & get my beauty sleep!
Yeah, it is kind of odd that something as relatively obscure as this (and indeed Icelandic!) would be prioritised to be among the first versions released! And meanwhile versions for languages like Japanese, Arabic, Polish, Serbian, Farsi, etc, are still work in progress. (But they will all be published eventually - according to the website.)
It sounds to me like the courses from Langenscheidt or Hueber that I use for French. For example http://www.amazon.de/Langenscheidt-Grund--Aufbauwortschatz-Französisch-Audio-Download/dp/3468201532/ or http://www.amazon.de/Großer-Lernwortschatz-Französisch-Erweiterte-aktualisierte/dp/3190194939/
I’m not too familiar with those - but I think Robert Biegler has also recommended the Langenscheidt courses, hasn’t he?
Yes, he did. The courses have a high quality and they usually comes with an audio (not the “Wortschatz” courses but most of the others). I like the Hueber courses too. They are really affordable. I can get some of them from the library and the ebook library too.