A breakdown of the different types of training you can do on Glossika. This guide will explain:
How to learn new items
Our promise
This article is a bit longer, so we're going to get something important out of the way first: even if you know nothing about linguistics or teaching, you only have to do three things to learn as efficiently and optimally as possible for your unique situation:
Log into Glossika each day
Review the content our algorithm has prepared for you
Do new sessions at a daily pace you feel comfortable with
If you can be consistent for about a year, Glossika will handle the rest.
How to learn new items
Glossika web app
From Glossika's dashboard, click the "Learn New Items" button
Glossika iOS/Android app
Tap the "Course" icon and click the "Learn New Items" button
This will place you into a training session.
In each new session you will learn 5 new sentences. Each sentence gets practiced 5 times, meaning you'll be doing 25 repetitions (reps) per session. Assuming that your placement test results were accurate, you should be seeing sentences that are "just right" — they're a little challenging, but not too hard.
Sentences within each level start very easy, with things like X is or Y does. As you progress through a level, the sentences will get more difficult. As you move up levels, you will begin seeing more difficult vocabulary words and unlock more difficult grammar structures. Basically, while it might seem like you are seeing random sentences, you are not. If you follow our progression, you will improve. We promise.
Two things to think about:
1. If your sentences seem way too difficult, retake the placement test and start Glossika from a lower level. You shouldn't need to be going to great efforts to break down every single sentence you see. Glossika will feel intuitive.
2. If our easiest sentences are too difficult, wait a little bit to start Glossika. Skim through a textbook, watch an intro series on YouTube, or try another app. You don't need to memorize all of this information. Just try to get an idea what you're working with.
How to review already-learned items
From Glossika's dashboard, click the "Review" button. (Glossika web app)
Tap the "Course" icon and click the "Review" button. (iOS/Android app)
This will place you into a training session. In each review session, you'll review a maximum of 25 old sentences at a time. If you've just started a new course, you'll likely have very few reviews. This is normal. SRS algorithms take time to build up a backlog of reviews.
The first time you click the white review button, you'll be asked what type of review you want to do. Glossika currently offers five different ways to review content:
[Algorithm-supported] Priority Review — Our algorithm will present you with sentences to review, prioritizing the items you've learned most recently. If you don't have much time, we recommend using this mode.
[Algorithm-supported] Weakest Memories — Our algorithm will present you with sentences to review, prioritizing the items that you're most at risk of forgetting.
Collection — Review all the items you've learned in Glossika order, starting with the easiest ones and gradually working your way up.
Favorite — Review the sentences you have favorited by clicking the "heart" icon while in a session. You might favorite sentences that you find interesting, that you feel are difficult, or that you expect to use in the near future.
Levels — Review all of the sentences from a specific level.
If you change your mind, you may change your review mode at any time by clicking the review mode icon while in a session.
Reviews stack up over time and can become overwhelming, so we strongly recommend starting each Glossika session by reviewing an algorithm-optimized review list.
How Glossika's algorithms support you behind the scenes
Forgetting is a natural part of learning — you will forget no matter how smart you are, how seriously you take your learning, or how much you're focusing during sessions. We begin forgetting virtually immediately after learning something, and from there, our memories are constantly weakening.
Thankfully, each time we review information, we are nudging our brain and saying this thing is important and worth remembering. As we review over longer periods of time, information gradually becomes entrenched in our long-term memories.
Glossika specializes in automating this review process.
In a nutshell, we do something like this:
We crunch a bunch of numbers to determine:
What you should review today, because you're about to forget it
What you can wait to review, because your memory is still strong
As time goes on, you'll gradually see each card less often because you know it better
As a result of this filtering process, Glossika ensures that you spend more time reviewing things you need to practice, and waste less time reviewing things that can wait.
This filtering process is very powerful, it takes time to get up to speed. Our algorithm will push you to review each sentence you learn ~15–20 times over the course of a year, and its goal is to space those reviews out as far as possible (without being so far that you forget). We recommend learning 10–15 new items per day, and advise that it will likely take about a month before Glossika your reviews catch up with you.
Eventually, you will reach a point with each sentence where you're only being prompted to review a given item once every couple of years, and at this point, you've effectively learned it. So long as you are actually using your language (having conversations, reading books, watching YouTube, and so forth), you'll almost certainly see that particular word again before two years have passed. You'll never forget it again!
Once you reach this point with the majority of the content on Glossika, you will have graduated from Glossika. We encourage you to move on and begin learning by doing.
For a more technical dive into how Glossika works, see The Glossika Method.