Just a bit of exciting on-the-grapevine language learning goss from Glossika this week.

As many of you know, I love the Glossika platform for accent and structure training. I recently sang its praises in a Linguascope Webinars talk, and was chuffed to see the enthusiasm spread to others. It’s almost counter-intuitively simple, but it works.

Well, this week I received a newsletter from them with what might seem initially frustrating – a change to the pricing structure. But there’s more to it than the ubiquitous cost-of-living rises. The prices are changing in line with App Store pricing – because finally, there’s going to be an app!

Hoorah, I hear you cry. (At least that’s what I’m doing.)

The thing is, Glossika already works perfectly fine in a mobile browser. But there’s something about a dedicated app that makes the whole experience a bit stickier. The reason I so religiously serve my terrific twosome, Anki and Duolingo, is just that: an app simply makes platform access less of a hassle.

And as for that pricing change, it’s fortunately only a very small increase: 99¢ on the monthly tier, and 11¢ (yes, 11¢!) on the annual. That miniature hike is more than understandable if the team is covering extra development costs too, of course.

And – hopefully –  that valuable student discount will still be on hand to keep the platform within the reach of more than just the most comfortably off.

That’s one way to make a great platform even greater. Bring it on, Glossika!