Glossika Review: Great for Natural, Contextual Learning, Though It Can Become Monotonous

Glossika applies spaced repetition and sentence practice to help you learn vocabulary and grammar as intuitively as possible. I had heard positive feedback about it some time ago, but it slipped from my attention until recently.

I spent some time learning Portuguese in 2020, and I recently felt motivated to pick it up again. So I thought this would be an ideal moment to determine if Glossika could help me resume my progress. Here is my genuine experience with the Glossika program.

What is Glossika and How Does it Function?

Glossika employs two primary methods for language instruction: spaced repetition and sentence-based training. With Glossika, you don't memorize individual words. Instead, you learn short sentences of one to three words (initially) alongside their translations, allowing your brain to understand each word's meaning within context.

You also never explicitly study grammar—it is introduced to you organically through sentences that progressively build upon each other.

Glossika provides over 55 languages, including nine minority languages: Catalan, Gaelic, Hakka (Sixian), Hakka (Hailu), Kurdish (Sorani), Manx, Welsh, Taiwanese and Wenzhounese.

Key Features of Glossika

Repetition-based sentence flashcards

The lessons are referred to as "Sessions." When I begin my Portuguese sessions, a flashcard appears with an English sentence at the top and its Portuguese equivalent below. The audio plays both sentences aloud.

You can select between "listening-only mode" or "full-practice mode." I have tried both, and I lean towards the full practice option. It requires me to type the Portuguese sentence after hearing and reading it, and includes a recording feature that allows me to repeat the sentence out loud.

As I progress through the sessions, the cards gradually become more challenging. After several repetitions, Glossika only displayed the English sentence and played the Portuguese audio, without showing the written Portuguese sentence. I then need to type it based on what I hear.

Daily reviews

Upon logging in, there are two choices: "Learn" and "Review." You can establish a daily target for each—I have mine configured for 25 repetitions for the "Learn" feature and 50 repetitions for "Review."

Initially, I assumed the "zero" on the review bar indicated I had no reviews pending. But after using Glossika a bit longer, I realized it doesn't actually show the number of cards due—you complete your reviews daily until you meet your set goal. It functions more like a progress indicator.

When beginning my reviews, Glossika allows me to select which cards I wish to concentrate on.

Priority reviews are tailored to my current progress. The session tests me on recently learned items, beginning with the newest to keep them fresh in my memory.

Weakest memories are the sentences I haven't reviewed in some time, meaning I am likely on the verge of forgetting them.

Collection includes all my learned items and the review session covers as many as my goal setting allows.

The reviews are essentially identical to the "learn" sessions. The program cycles through the flashcards you studied in prior sessions and you can choose listening-only or full-practice mode.

Progress and achievements tracking

Glossika offers multiple methods for tracking progress, easily accessible from the dashboard. The "Achievements" section monitors how many times you've reached your daily "learn" goal, your review goal, your total study hours, the number of repetitions completed, and how many sentences you've learned.

The "Levels" section displays a series of bar graphs illustrating your progress within each CEFR level.

Even though I studied Portuguese for three months in 2020 and reached a B1 level after an online proficiency test (likely aided by my Spanish skills—though that's another story), I chose to start at A1. After two days with Glossika, I'm 2.7% through the Low Elementary level.

Each CEFR level is divided into two parts: "Low" and "High." So after finishing the Low A1 level, I'll proceed to the High A1 level—which is still considered beginner.

I really appreciate this level of detail. Many language programs reference CEFR levels but often fall short by not being entirely transparent about how far their course actually takes you. For instance, I recall when Duolingo had a "percentage to fluency" feature—it claimed I was over 50% fluent in Spanish when I probably wouldn't have even passed a B1 practice exam.

For numerous languages—Portuguese included—the levels extend up to C1 "high."

Lastly, the "Progress" section provides a weekly overview. It uses graphs to display how many "Learn" and "Review" repetitions you've completed each day.

Personal library

To the right of the "dashboard" tab is the "library" tab. Your library contains all the sentences you've studied, along with their audio and memory strength. This lets you identify which sentences you are close to forgetting.

You can also "favorite" sentences. Honestly, I'm uncertain how practical this is—but I suppose it could be helpful if there's a specific sentence you want to revisit later.

The "recordings" tab is a collection of all your recordings. As I'll mention later, I have a minor issue with Glossika's recording feature, but I do appreciate that it saves them. The native speaker audio is displayed alongside your recordings, allowing me to compare my pronunciation with the Brazilian speaker's.

Finally, the "easy" tab is for all words you mark as easy. I've only done this with one Portuguese phrase so far. When Glossika presents a new flashcard, you have the option to mark it as already known. I did this with vamos (let's go) since it's the same in Spanish.

Advantages of Glossika

Grammar is acquired naturally through sentence exposure

I'll be the first to confess that I enjoy grammar when it comes to languages. After finishing my C1 Spanish course and having no new tenses to learn, I felt a bit let down.

But having said that, I'm actually quite eager to continue with the "comprehensible input" approach to grammar for Portuguese. I'm already picking up basic grammar even though I've only learned 15 sentences. For example, today I learned the phrase vai chover (it's going to rain). Just from practicing it, I can deduce that chover means "to rain" and using vai is similar to the ir + a + infinitive structure in Spanish.

The new sentences also increase in length as I learn more, so my capacity to form complete sentences improves (even if just slightly) with every session.

It provides a wide variety of languages

One aspect I really like about Glossika is the number of languages it offers. There are 55 in total, and one subscription grants access to all of them. Nine of these are minority languages as mentioned earlier.

I was also impressed by the depth of some language courses. For instance, Egyptian Arabic reaches high C1, similar to Portuguese. Previously, I noticed that most Arabic courses taking you beyond an intermediate level focused on the Modern Standard dialect.

I was curious about the extent of the minority language courses, so I added Hakka—a minority Chinese dialect from the Sichuan province—to my courses. And to my surprise, the highest level was still high C1. This might be another instance of a program overstating how advanced you become, but regardless, it's a substantial amount of vocabulary for a minority language.

The courses are straightforward and user-friendly

The simplicity of Glossika makes it easy to log in and study daily. You can set a custom daily goal, but Glossika's recommended minimum is 25 repetitions—which is what I use. I've found that completing my 25 reps takes only about 10 minutes.

This makes Glossika's training sessions almost addictive. It's very satisfying to see the number of cards I go through, and watching my progress bars increase after such a simple task makes me want to continue.

Finishing the course simply involves consistently showing up and doing just that—letting your 25 (or your chosen number) flashcards play and completing your reviews.

Excellent native speaker audio quality

Many programs claim to use native speaker audio, but it often still sounds somewhat robotic. Glossika's audio uses recordings of native speakers and the quality is genuinely high.

When learning new sentences, the audio plays twice with a brief pause in between. I just wish the recordings were slightly more spaced out because I like to repeat after the native speaker. With the sentences so far, I've managed—but I'm unsure if that will remain possible as they get longer.

One indicator of the great audio is that when I visited the "recordings" tab in my library, I was amazed at how closely my pronunciation resembled the native speaker's. I usually dislike my accent when starting a new language, but I actually felt quite proud—I attribute this to the clear, high-quality audio.

Many courses advance to a high intermediate or advanced stage

I avoid saying "C1 level" specifically here because there is debate about whether you truly achieve C1 proficiency by the course's end. But I can confirm that there are thousands of sentences available to study.

I searched online to see what other users were saying on forums like Reddit and found the general agreement is that Glossika will get you to at least an intermediate level.

Glossika has a Reddit account and responded to a user's question in this forum about why there weren't many sentences in the C1 levels. They stated that most sentences are in the A1 to B1 levels, but they plan to add around 10,000 more sentences soon—including expansions to the C1 courses.

You can also retake the placement test if the course begins to feel too easy (or too difficult).

Full practice mode allows you to practice writing, listening and speaking

I suggest using the full practice mode during your Glossika training sessions. The listening-only option is useful when pressed for time, but full practice offers everything—reading, listening, writing and speaking.

You start by listening to the English sentence once. Then, the target language sentence plays twice. It also provides a phonetic pronunciation guide and a literal translation below. After the native speaker recording finishes, you are prompted to type the target language sentence and then record yourself saying it.

There's one aspect I would modify. After a certain number of repetitions, I would have preferred a progression where I didn't hear the Portuguese sentence and had to write and record it from memory. About halfway through the session, they do hide the Portuguese sentence, but I still heard it. So the writing part is more like a dictation exercise.

Disadvantages of Glossika

Practice drills can become quite monotonous

Glossika is founded on repetition—and that's precisely what the training and review sessions involve. You learn five new sentences in each "learn" session and complete 25 repetitions, so you're repeating each sentence five times.

Although it doesn't take long to finish them, I occasionally found myself zoning out and daydreaming—I would just repeat after the native speaker without really concentrating on the sentence because my mind was elsewhere. That's another reason I'd appreciate some form of quiz where I wasn't just transcribing the recording—it's easy to lose focus.

Full practice mode may be challenging with languages using non-Latin scripts

As I mentioned earlier, the full practice mode is my preferred choice for Portuguese. But I wanted to test it with a non-Latin script, so I switched to the Egyptian Arabic course.

I found the writing exercises largely ineffective if you aren't yet writing in the actual script. Glossika considers the answer correct if you use your English keyboard to type the answer as the phonetic guide is written, but I found this more confusing. I kept getting the same sentences wrong multiple times because I wasn't accustomed to the script, even though I was pronouncing the word correctly.

After reading through the Reddit discussions mentioned earlier, I found that this is a common experience among other Glossika users.

My advice? Stick to the listening-only mode for languages with unfamiliar scripts until you feel confident typing in them.

The recording function does not provide correction for incorrect pronunciation or answers

Here's the minor issue I mentioned with the recording feature. While I think it's excellent that Glossika saves your recordings for comparison with a native speaker, it never corrects your pronunciation errors during the training sessions.

At first, this made me question the purpose of the record feature (until I discovered them in the library).

I wanted to test this before listing it as a genuine disadvantage, so when prompted to repeat a new Portuguese sentence, I intentionally said a completely different one. It didn't confirm it was right, but it didn't indicate it was wrong either. So I believe this is a feature Glossika could implement to enhance the program further.

What is the Cost of Glossika?

Glossika provides monthly and annual subscriptions in three tiers, plus a free version.

The free version is only for the nine minority language courses, but you get complete access to them—so no features are locked behind a paywall. I appreciate this approach of motivating more people to learn languages that are either endangered or at risk.

The basic plan gives you unlimited access to one language course. However, you can switch the target language once every 30 days. It costs $16.99 per month or $159.96 per year.

The pro plan gives you unlimited access to all language courses. It's $30.99 per month or $300 per year.

Finally, there's an enterprise option for businesses, educational institutions and families. The access is customized and you'll need to contact sales for a price quote.

Other Options Besides Glossika

Memrise

Similar to Glossika, Memrise teaches languages using flashcards and spaced repetition. They offer 26 languages including Arabic, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Hindi, Mongolian and more.

After selecting your language, the course is divided into smaller courses and "paths" covering specific topics, such as Activities, Education, Basics, Opinions, Relationships and others.

You are introduced to new words on a flashcard and then complete repetitions of various exercises until you've "mastered them." These include matching, translating, listening and other types.

Memrise also includes videos of native speakers in real-life scenarios. Depending on your level, they range from a few seconds to a few minutes, and conclude with a comprehension quiz.

If you want to learn more about Memrise, I recommend reading our full review here .

Lingflix

17 Minute Languages

17 Minute Languages offers an impressive range of languages similar to Glossika—it includes languages like Albanian, Belarusian, Latvian and naturally, common ones like Spanish and French.

It introduces new vocabulary using flashcards like Memrise and Glossika, but instead of having you do multiple repetitions of different exercises, it shows you the English side first and if you don't know the translation yet, you mark it as new.

The courses concentrate on teaching the most frequent words first. They are frequency-based, enabling you to start having and understanding conversations more quickly. However, this means some words are random and don't follow a specific theme.

The name reflects the method—the program suggests spending 17 minutes daily reviewing flashcards, but you can set a custom timer as well. Once you start a study session, the timer begins counting down and doesn't stop until you've reached your time goal.

Finally, the spaced repetition algorithm revisits your learned words after specific intervals to enhance their retention in long-term memory.

Concluding Thoughts: Is Glossika Right for You?

I've thoroughly enjoyed my experience with Glossika thus far and strongly recommend it, particularly for beginners seeking a more natural, immersive learning method.

Utilize the full practice mode to maximize your study sessions. However, if your target language uses a non-Latin script, it's advisable to use only the listening mode until you've mastered its alphabet .

While there are a few areas where I believe Glossika could enhance—such as the recording feature which I think has great potential—its reasonable cost, extensive sentence library and straightforward study tools have made it one of my new preferred language learning applications and I intend to keep using it for Portuguese.