A More Powerful and Integrated Learning Solution
The next generation of language learning is here.
We've been building an integrated approach to language learning that includes speaking, listening, reading, and writing, with plans for ever more functionality in the months to come.
3 Most Important Updates
- Integrated Skills Training: 4 Training Modes
- Learn New Items or Review Previous Content
- Long-term tracking of memories and anticipating when to practice them again
1. Integrated Learning Solution: 4 Training Modes
Jumping into listening and speaking training right from the beginning can be too intimidating for most people. We've built a text-based system (visual) to assist the learner on their path to sound awareness of words within sentences.
And we now offer four training modes:
How does it work?
You enter the sentence, whether it's dictation or translation, as accurately as possible. Incorrect answers tells the algorithm that this item is more difficult for you, and you'll get plenty of practice in getting the answer correct.
With each rep, you'll also get speaking and listening training.
Our tests show that moving from passive to active training, greatly increases recall and retention. And now you can keep track of everything you've learned.
2. Learn New Items or Review Previous Content
Many Glossika users have expressed that they prefer doing review and new sentences at different specific times since their head is in a different learning mood. We've decided this is a great idea, so we've split review and new into separate training areas.
Every time you return to Glossika, clear as many of your review items as you can. If there's nothing left to do, you'll be prompted to start new items. Or you can start new sentences any time you want.
Learn New Items
We give you 5 items to learn every time.
Review Previous Content
Since we all experience forgetting over time, Glossika now helps us review at the most opportune time. Our spaced repetition has always had an up-front mastery focus and these new algorithms will continue this tradition but also fill in the gaps when review is needed, whether that's 2 weeks or 2 months or 2 years in the future.
Some apps ask you when you'd like to review this item again. We've taken a different approach, at least from my personal experience, how am I supposed to know when I should review this item again? Does it feel weak to me? Maybe... Is reviewing it in 1 week enough? Or should it be 2 weeks? Or should it be 2 days? I DON'T KNOW! That's the frustration I've felt. There must be a better way to calculate the answer based on sound principles.
So Glossika 4.0 has automated the "thinking" required for such a decision. Not only that, if Glossika guesses "wrong", we've designed it to adjust with each item and each rep, and tailored this for every individual!
As you perform better or worse on each item, Glossika learns from these performance patterns to assist you in learning faster and more efficiently. It also knows what kinds of syntax and semantics patterns are more challenging for you. Based on this difficulty, Glossika anticipates when your item should be reviewed.
These are the major changes that are getting released:
1) no need to think of when you need to review something – review items will appear when it's "time",
2) integrated training of reading, writing, speaking, listening,
3) a more user-friendly and intuitive interface, and
4) a back-end system to develop custom stacks of learning content such as vocabulary/collocation courses.
3. Long-Term Tracking of Memories
How do memories work? They're created through the hippocampus, a separate horseshoe shaped organ located in the middle of the brain at the top of the brain stem. Elderly people may have a hard time making new memories, but can still recall a lot from earlier recalling memories that just happened this morning, but they may have no trouble speaking their language or remembering the names of family and friends. This is because the hippocampus is failing to create new memories, which go through a chemical reaction in the brain called long-term potentiation (LTP). These memories are essentially strengthened synapses, or connections, between nerve cells in the brain. They're very tiny, and there are billions of them. The more sensory organs that record a memory, such as sight/smell/audio or even a whole immersive experience do a much better job of recording memories because in simplistic terms, they create a much larger variety of synaptic connections.
Most of our memories are generic daily occurrences generated from routine like what we ate for lunch or dinner. If we participate in different, unusual, or travel more frequently, and tie what we learn into the place and time where that learning occurred, then our learning becomes more greatly enhanced, the synapses stronger. Our body uses the sleep mechanism to dump unimportant or dull daily occurrences from our brain, as if treating it like throwing out the garbage, as a way to recharge for a new day. It's hard to control what our brain decides to throw out. But we can control it somewhat by re-engaging those synapses day after day, which is especially powerful when divided by sleep intervals. Think of the synapses as connections of fiber that have weakened and become very thin after one night's sleep. When you actively recall and re-use those memories the next day, the synapses recharge and strengthen into a stronger bond than they were before. But the same decay will then commence again.
From inception, Glossika has created an up-front repetition-heavy spaced repetition that focuses on the first four days of learning a new item. We've always said that it's important to practice a memory between each sleep session, but we had no way to enforce this. In fact, many users were flying through sessions quite quickly and complaining about poor results. Now, we've tied all reps to timing mechanisms based on the assumption that every human sleeps at some point every 24 hours. I can't tell you what the time intervals will be, because they are algorithm based.
Your reps will re-appear based on the following criteria: How stable is your memory? How hard has this memory been for you? How long has it been since you last practiced this item? How much priority does this item have? Any of these answers will affect whether that item appears tomorrow, two weeks from now, or two months or longer from now.
We're excited about these new algorithms as it allows us to expand the variety of courses and content available to learn.
Long-term tracking of memories and anticipating when to practice them again
Start experiencing Glossika for the first time again, with a completely new generation of syntactosemantic sorting, filtering, and algorithms to provide you with the most efficient training results!
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