Last June we announced that, having officially launched both of our mobile apps, we would be returning our focus to expanding/optimizing Glossika's core set of features. Put more casually, 2024 is going to be a big year for Glossika!
This update includes:
- Pronunciation Feedback, Glossika's first major "new" feature in some time
- A few smaller updates we teased in last June's announcement that have since been released
[New Feature] Pronunciation Feedback
With the January 4th update, Glossika is now able to give you feedback on your pronunciation. Simply record yourself speaking the sentence you’re repping while in a session, then we'll quickly do an analysis and let you know how you did.
For now, you should know:
- This is a beta release. It’s not the final version of the feature.
- This feature is currently available for nine target languages:
- The feedback provided is quite simple. We’ll let you know which parts of your speech we were able to successfully detect and map to sounds in your target language.
While testing this feature and doing research on how we could implement it, it became apparent that “pronunciation feedback” could mean a lot of different things and go in a lot of different directions. We’ve decided to first release a simple implementation of the feature in order to get a better idea of how people interact with it.
Ultimately, the end result should be something that (a) makes you more confident about speaking your target language and (b) nudges your accent in the right direction.
~ § ~
[Recap] Two smaller tweaks you might have missed
These two updates actually went live in the last few months of 2023, but we were quiet about them.
Feature 1: See/hear your target language before your base language
Traditionally, Glossika sessions have been quite fixed in format. You hear a sentence in your native language, hold it in your mind, and then hear a sentence in your target language and try to connect the dots. How do your native and target languages line up?
You now have the ability to swap that order, meaning that you can choose to see/hear sentences in your target language before you see/hear them in your native language. This is a more “intense” exercise that allows you to test if you understand your target language even without the “crutch” of your native language.
Feature 2: Repeat target-language audio up to five times
The initial stages of Glossika can be quite difficult — you don’t yet know anything about your target language and there are many new sounds to get your tongue around. For those times when you’d like to get just a bit more practice, you can now choose to have your target language audio repeated up to five times. (Previously, audio would only repeat once.)
And of course, this is only the first week of 2024! There will be much more to come throughout the year: more learning content, some important quality-of-life features, and a few major updates that we think will bring Glossika to the next level.
Thanks for taking this journey with us, as always.
