Rep is short for repetition, by which we mean the number of times you've practiced a given sentence.
What are reps used for?
Reps are used to calculate and evaluate your learning progress. They:
✓ Measure your learning progress
✓ Build up your muscle memory and confidence
✓ Improve your confidence when speaking
Reps help you achieve goals
We like reps because they provide a consistent metric in a world of unique learners with unique learning experiences. While I've studied French for a year may mean I spent a year without English to one person and I took a 30 minute course once per week to another, 50,000 reps is 50,000 reps.
Reps are very flexible, and you'll want to measure them even if you ultimately decide not to use Glossika. For example, if you like reading, one rep might mean "one page read". A rep is simply a small unit of concrete progress toward something that matters to you.
Reps are accumulated, and so long as you put in your reps, you will make progress.
Reps mark milestones in your language learning journey
Roughly speaking, here are the ballpark figures we've observed over time:
25,000 Reps → Sentences roll off your tongue quite smoothly—the language no longer feels foreign to you
50,000 Reps → Casual, everyday conversations are no longer scary
75,000 Reps → Refinement: you're building the technical vocabulary you need to handle increasingly specific scenarios
100,000 Reps → Mastery: you can say pretty much whatever you want without really needing to think about it
We also have a more detailed article on the progress you'll see over time.
(Note: We're referring here to cumulative reps throughout the course. For example, for a course like Spanish that has ~7,000 sentences, achieving 50,000 reps would mean doing an average of 7 reps of each sentence in the course.)