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Can Bright help you learn BSL without a class?

Israel Lai

Vocabulary exercises
Amount of content
Language structure
Cultural awareness
Pricing
App design

Summary

Bright BSL is unique not just among sign language apps, but language learning apps in general. It follows the Duolingo paradigm, while adding genuinely creative exercises to introduce you to the inner workings of sign language and Deaf culture.

The free trial has a surprisingly large amount of content — give it a go!

4.5

A few months ago, I started taking learning British Sign Language seriously.

Before that, I had done an online self-learning course, but quit halfway through, because it felt more like a dictionary than a conversation course. This year, I started taking a class at my university.

But I can’t help but wonder what other materials and resources exist out there, that can supplement my learning, or even give me a good foundation in the language.

You might be in a similar scenario, wanting to learn some sign, whether to communicate with someone you know, make new friends, or just learn a new language within a unique medium of communication. Perhaps you aren’t sure it’s for you, so you want to try it out, before committing more time and money to BSL.

I’ve got good news for you. Bright BSL might just be the Duolingo for British Sign Language — except better.

First of all, I’m obliged to remind you that there are many different sign languages in the world, and BSL is what’s generally used in the UK. There are also a lot of variation across regions, but what you’ll learn here will be understood in most places.

Let’s just jump to the conclusion: this is one of the best language apps I’ve ever tried.

It’s still recommended to take a class, but this might just be the next best thing. If you’re learning BSL but aren’t able to go to a class, or if you’d like to supplement your classroom learning, I wholeheartedly recommend you try this out. The only downside I can see is the price.

But if you want to learn more about why I think so, read on.

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I was going to include this as a section in an article about Welsh learning resources, but my frustrations ballooned into a post of its own. I’ve written a Duolingo course review before, so hey, why not.

Part of that original article was about how you can find a few seemingly different learning resources, from books and online lessons to interactive webpages—but they’re all based on the same written textbook that is used for in-person group classes.

And what do you know, even Duolingo’s Welsh course is designed around the very same classroom curriculum. It is emphasised many times in the course notes, and it shows.

The course creators intended it this way so that Duolingo complements the publicly available Welsh classes and reinforces the materials taught in class. I assume they expect most people to learn this way, and I can appreciate the reasoning behind it.

But guess what? Duolingo was always meant to be a self-learning tool.

Every other course on Duolingo has its own design and progression. You learn through sentences and use the vocabulary and grammar in a variety of contexts. Subsequent lessons build on existing knowledge by using those words and phrases as context for new items. Your ‘strength’ in each lesson deteriorates over time so that you go back and refresh your memory. It’s not linear.

And because Duolingo Welsh is designed around a textbook curriculum, it is made like a textbook.

How is Duolingo Welsh just like a textbook?

Each lesson comes with a large amount of reading and grammatical explanations, before you even get to start. Even though I like reading about grammar, Duolingo courses generally teach using sentences that guide you to figure it out yourself through context and only ask questions (in the forum) afterwards. These lesson notes are usually reserved for interesting cultural facts and knowledge, or a reference table you can come back to, rather than required readings.

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Surprisingly, my review of Glossika was the most viewed page on my blog. Sadly, my favourite language learning resource was retired a while ago and replaced with an online version that I was initially doubtful about. Some part of me clung to the older version out of nostalgia…and the other part refused to pay for something I’d already paid for. (I was, and still am, a broke student above all things.) I intended to write this review after playing with the system for a bit. However, I thought it wouldn’t be appropriate, since I was using the free version, without full access to its features. Thanks to the global pandemic, I snagged myself a year of Glossika during a big sale for an unbeatable student price. So here we are.

First things first, money matters: the one-off payment for the old book-based courses is no more. Glossika’s website (also called Glossika AI), like everything else in existence, is a subscription-based service. You can get access to all languages for $30/mo, or $25/mo if you buy a full year. Students can get it for $13.5, or $11.25 if you pay for a year. Is it worth the intimidating price (and the sheer fact that it’s a subscription)? I’ll try to tell you my experience so far.

What I used Glossika for

I used Glossika AI for at least a year (I think) before I paid up. Glossika offers a 7-day free trial. Thankfully, the man behind Glossika, Michael Campbell, is keen on preserving minority languages. Therefore, you get unlimited access to certain languages like Catalan, Welsh, Taiwanese, and Kurdish, for free; the only limitation is that some features, like recording your voice, are out of reach.

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In my FIRST EVER stream, I show you how I do my daily Duolingo practice, how I plan my progress through the courses, and some fun facts about the languages.

I also reveal the SECRET language I’ve been dabbling in, using Duolingo!

Feel free to ask me questions in the comments anytime.

Happy 1st anniversary to this channel!

Join our LIVE PODCAST Q&A (Canto)

Duolingo Hebrew Review

My first ever video

Glossika online platform review

Interview with Daisy in Manchester

Podcast 021 (World language sounds)

Podcast 018 (Cantonese dialects)

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Duolingo is probably the most well-known language learning website out there.

It’s fun, it’s stress-free (most of the time), and it helps build a regular habit. Oh, and it’s free.

But as we mentioned on the podcast, Duolingo’s quality can vary greatly from course to course. While the gamified learning system is based on the same principles and exercises, the course design, lesson content, types of exercises, audio, etc., totally depend on each course’s creators.

For example, the ‘biggest’ languages have gained crazy hi-tech features like AI chatbots and learning from stories, while smaller languages…aren’t as lucky.

I’ll assume you know how Duolingo basically works: you slowly make your way through a tree of skills, do lessons with translation exercises, and it sends daily notifications to threaten you into practise. If you want to know my thought on the site as a whole, come join my livestream! In this review, I’m focusing on the design of the Modern Hebrew course.

Course Structure

What is Duolingo most known for? Wacky, fantastical sentences.

Well, not in Duolingo Hebrew. At least, not to the same extent.

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Lenovo Yoga keyboard with AltGr key

I type in quite a few languages.

I used to install a new software keyboard on my computer for each new language I learn, because I wanted to type like a native. I even insisted to get a UK laptop, so that I would get the same number of keys as German or Swedish keyboards. But eventually, they added up, and it got tiring to switch between them—especially since I mostly switched between Chinese and English keyboards.

I noticed that a lot of people know how to type accented characters easily on their phones—by simply switching the software keyboard—but have problems once it comes to computers.

On Windows, some people copy and paste characters from sites or ‘online keyboards’, while others resort to the ancient Alt+numbers trick (which doesn’t even work on notebook computers without keypads).

And then I discovered the Compose key, and since then, computer keyboards have never been a hurdle in my language ambitions ever again.

What is the Compose key?

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Inject Jyutping is a new Chrome extension that simply does what it says: it adds Jyutping romanisation onto Cantonese texts you see on the internet. This comes in the form of Ruby characters, i.e. small pronunciation guides on top of characters, which are common in all languages that use Chinese characters except Cantonese—until now.

This extension is so simple that you can already see the result in the image above, so this will be more of a recommendation than a review. I love it so much because it does one simple thing so well, but can be immensely helpful towards learners. It’s exactly what I aim to do for the transcriptions in our upcoming Cantonese podcast for intermediate-advanced learners.

Since it’s a Chrome extension, don’t forget that the new Microsoft Edge can use it as well.

How it works

It’s just one button. Literally. Click it, and you get jyutping plastered all over whatever Chinese text that happens to be on your screen.

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I’ve been hearing a lot about this new app Drops lately. It sounded a lot like Memrise with a different business model, but my podcaster friends seemed excited about it, so I decided to check it out. After all, its premise is to spend just 5 minutes a day (hence the name), so what’s the harm?

When I first opened up the app, I noticed how beautiful it looks. I don’t judge book by their cover, but I do appreciate the importance of visual design—it helps encourage users to open them.

The basic premise of the app is its laser-sharp focus on vocabulary and nothing else. It divides all the words (which is a LOT) into 13 general categories like “food and drinks” and “travel and vehicles”, which are further broken down into finer topics.

For beginners, you have to start each general category with the first topic under it. Intermediate users have access to more topics right from the get go.

Home screen of Drops

For this review, I’ve been using the app to learn Polish vocabulary. I have a good foundation in the language, so I skipped into the intermediate level (which is an option that thankfully the app has). A few of my comments will be specific to Polish, but I believe the features are identical for other languages. I can safely assume that the vocabulary is the same across languages too: I noticed this from certain duplicate words in Polish, not unlike years ago in Glossika.

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Update: due to the release of Glossika AI, which replaces the now-defunct Glossika packages, this review is now outdated. A review of the new system has just been published.

Well I was preparing to begin writing in my new section on Chinese, but an important incident changed my mind: I’ve just completed the entire Glossika GMS course in Polish, all 3000 of the sentences! So, in addition to sharing my sense of achievement and joy on my blog, I’ve decided to also write a brief review on what I thought about and what I got out of this course, seeing as it isn’t one of the most well-known method out there, and there aren’t that many reviews from people having completed it either. So let’s delve in – and allow me to start by introducing the method, in case you haven’t heard of it.

What is Glossika?

Even though you can get a comprehensive introduction to the product on their site, I’ll briefly summarise it from what I know. Glossika, founded by the amazing polyglot and linguist (read more if you don’t know the difference) Michael Campbell, is based on input – a lot of it. The basic idea is to drill a set of 3000 sentences into your mind, in 3 ‘fluency levels’ from simple to complex, each containing 1000 sentences, and the brain will gradually figure out the language.

I said it’s the ‘basic’ idea because the method does not demand you to follow any strict pathway. On the contrary, it’s probably among the most flexible learning materials out there! When you buy it, you get a ton of files. First is a PDF for each level, complete with translation, romanisation (etc, depending on the language), phonetic transcription (more on that later), a complete index and some additional professional advice. These sentences form the basis of the entire course. I got the English to Polish package, so each sentence comes with the English version, the Polish translation, simplified spelling (to ease certain learners into the scary-looking Polish spelling, I suppose) and IPA, as in the sample below.

En-Pl sample

Sample sentence from Glossika English-Polish, Fluency 3.

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