English
Polygloat is a comprehensible input app for English. You watch short videos in English, hold any word in the subtitles to see what it means in that sentence, and the app keeps track of the words you have met so it can pick videos you are ready for.
The meanings come in your own language, not in English: word meanings and sentence translations are available in 17 languages, from Arabic to Ukrainian. There is no deck to review and no grammar drill. The learning happens while you are watching something you can follow.
There is more English to watch than anyone could get through, and that abundance is the trap. Films, series and YouTube made for native speakers move at native speed, full of slang and idiom, and watching them before you are ready teaches you very little beyond the fact that it was hard.
Spoken English also looks different from textbook English. Words run together and shrink — I'm, can't, let's, gonna — and the most common verbs are the most irregular: went is go, thought is think, was and were are be. A word list does not prepare you to hear any of that at speed.
Comprehensible input is the middle ground: English you can follow most of, with the unknown words close enough together that you pick them up from context. Polygloat's job is to find that material for you, video by video, instead of leaving you to guess whether something is at your level.
Subtitles are word-by-word, timed to the audio. Hold a word and you see what it means in this sentence — not a dictionary entry listing every possible sense. The full dictionary entry is there too, when you want it.
If a whole line goes past you, hold the translate icon and the sentence appears translated. The point is to stay in the video rather than open a translation app and lose the thread.
The app records which words you looked up and which you watched past. That word-by-word picture of your vocabulary is what it uses to pick what you see next.
A word you are due to see again comes back in a different sentence from a different speaker, days later — the spacing of a review schedule without a deck to work through. The subtitles colour each word by where it stands: new, learning or due for review.
Set a daily goal of a few minutes for each language and keep a streak going. Rest days mean one missed day does not have to end it.
A contraction is linked to every word inside it: I'm leads to I and be, let's to let and us, can't to can and not. Irregular forms lead to their dictionary word — went to go, children to child — and British and American spellings count as one word, so colour and color are not learned twice.
Much of the English library was made for learners: a beginner course told in short episodes, one-minute explainers of everyday idioms, and short lessons on grammar and pronunciation. Science and nature videos and animated short films are there for when you want English that was not made for a classroom.
Yes. The app starts from the most common words in English and works up, and the library includes a beginner course in short episodes. You do not need to have studied English before — you hold the words you do not know, and the feed adjusts to what you have picked up.
In 17: Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Turkish and Ukrainian. Word meanings and sentence translations both come in your language. There are no English explanations of English words: the app teaches English through the language you already speak, and the app itself is available in 18 languages.
Mostly American. Much of the library was recorded in the United States, and the dictionary uses American spelling as the main form. British spellings are recognised as the same word, so colour leads to color rather than to a second word to learn.
Not as a course: there are no grammar exercises and no syllabus to work through. Some videos in the library are short grammar lessons, and you watch them like any other video. What the app adds is a lot of English you can understand, with every word form tied back to its dictionary word.
Polygloat is not an exam course and does not teach to a syllabus. What it builds is listening comprehension and vocabulary from real speech, which is the foundation exams test. Use it alongside exam preparation, not instead of it.
Polygloat is free to download and use on the App Store and Google Play.
