Gymglish Review: Customized Creative Lessons with Limited Topic Selection

If you're learning English, you may have encountered Gymglish, a service that provides tailored English lessons sent directly to your email.

After using it consistently for two weeks, I discovered that Gymglish offers an enjoyable, innovative, and customized approach to learning English. However, its highly structured format might be limiting for learners who prefer to direct their own studies. It could also pose challenges for absolute beginners.

Main Characteristics of Gymglish

Customized English lessons by email

Gymglish distinguishes itself from other English learning platforms by sending daily lessons directly to your email. Just click the link in your inbox to access the day's Gymglish lesson.

A standard Gymglish lesson begins with reading an illustrated story and answering related comprehension questions. The illustrations are attractive and amusing, making each lesson visually stimulating and stylish.

This is followed by an audio segment that advances the story, and then a grammar exercise. After finishing a lesson, you receive comprehensive performance feedback, including corrections and explanations.

Lessons often finish with a video or music excerpt, typically from an English-language film, in a segment named “Today’s Dessert.” This optional part of the lesson includes a quote and/or an interesting fact about the video, helping you broaden your general English knowledge and understand cultural references.

All lesson narratives center on the Delavigne Corporation, a fictional San Francisco perfume company established by cosmetics expert Bruno Delavigne, who studied Kung Fu in China and enjoys tango dancing and playing with his dog Stink.

A complete fictional universe has been developed around the Delavigne Corporation for Gymglish lessons, including a business website where you can read about each employee's life and adventures. The eccentric characters and humorous workplace situations are likely to draw you into the story.

Beyond the engaging ongoing narrative, Gymglish also sends daily reminders to maintain your learning momentum and motivation.

As previously noted, Gymglish employs an adaptive learning system. After approximately 10 lessons, it identifies your strong and weak areas, and subsequent lessons are tailored to your proficiency level. If you struggle with complex questions, the program will adjust by providing simpler exercises.

Aimigo, the AI tutor

Additional vocabulary emails

Following each spoken or written section of a lesson, I received a transcript of the audio or text. You can then select unfamiliar words or phrases, which become highlighted.

Later, you receive a special vocabulary email containing all your selected terms. You can review these words and hear them pronounced in either British or American English.

Advantages of Learning English with Gymglish

Gymglish offers a distinctive learning experience with many unique features. To determine if it's the right platform for you, let's examine its strengths.

Adaptive learning ensures each lesson is effective

A frequent issue with language schools and courses is their assumption that all students share the same proficiency level and learning capacity.

In contrast, Gymglish's adaptive learning method guarantees that every lesson addresses your personal requirements. You avoid spending time on material that's either too challenging or too simple—thus accelerating your skill development efficiently.

From the initial lesson, I sensed that Gymglish was assessing my abilities as a learner. After reading the first chapter about Delavigne Corporation, I could select unfamiliar words from the transcript.

By choosing these words, I received detailed explanations in my feedback email, including definitions, example sentences, and audio pronunciations. This approach not only helps Gymglish evaluate my English level but also expands my comprehension and vocabulary.

Gymglish's adaptive learning method resembles having a personal tutor who provides customized lessons and feedback.

Amusing, eccentric characters, stories, and visuals

Gymglish clearly has a talented creative team designing its customized lessons. I quickly found their lessons to be enjoyable, entertaining, creative, and compelling.

The characters are well-developed, and the storylines are as engaging as soap operas, featuring intriguing plot developments and action-packed narratives. Highly entertaining.

I also appreciate Gymglish's distinctive visual style. It somewhat brings to mind Matt Judge, the creator of “Beavis and Butthead” and “Daria,” two intelligent animated series from MTV in the 1990s.

Brief inbox lessons simplify regular study

Many of us have hectic schedules and cannot devote long periods to English study daily.

With Gymglish, you only need a reliable internet connection and about fifteen minutes!

Gymglish's daily lessons are relatively short, typically requiring no more than 15 minutes to finish. They're ideal for your commute, lunch break, or any other spare moment. Additionally, since lessons arrive by email, they're easily accessible on any device—phone, tablet, or computer.

This approach helps maintain learner motivation by providing a regular prompt to practice English. Moreover, Gymglish's personalized review materials mean you don't require a notebook for taking notes.

If you miss a day, there's no need for concern! Your lesson will carry over to the following day. In fact, each day's lesson remains active in your lesson dashboard, and you can access it via the email link even on a different day.

Numerous chances to enhance English comprehension abilities

With Gymglish, you can confidently develop your listening and reading comprehension skills.

I found Gymglish's audio dialogues excellent for improving English listening skills, as I wasn't merely listening but also being tested on my understanding.

The audio dialogues feature clear, moderately paced speech, and helpful subtitles indicate which English dialect I was hearing. This benefits learners who wish to practice specific English varieties, whether American, British, Australian, or other accents.

As noted earlier, there are also videos and clips from English-language films that provide cultural insights and experience with authentic native English audio rather than purely instructional material.

Similarly, by reading the lesson stories, you'll naturally develop reading skills while learning English. Since the stories are humorous and captivating, it's more enjoyable and straightforward than reading a textbook.

Instead of simple corrections, Gymglish gives comprehensive feedback

Many English apps and online quizzes only indicate whether you answered correctly or not. So if you guessed correctly, you might not understand why—and if you were wrong, you'd never learn the reason.

However, one aspect I appreciate about Gymglish is that they not only identify errors but also ensure you understand how to avoid them in future.

When I opened my email, I was impressed by the detailed corrections Gymglish provided. Each question was analyzed, showing what I had correct and where I had made mistakes. For all corrections, Gymglish explained the reasoning, complete with grammatical examples, audio recordings, and numerous sample sentences.

Furthermore, if you make an error on a question, it will reappear in later lessons so you can practice avoiding the same mistake. Additionally, you can mark vocabulary and idioms that interest you in the corrections email, and they'll be added to a personalized review list.

Cultural elements in every lesson

Each Gymglish lesson includes cultural content. In my first two lessons, there was a music video with lyrics and a clip from a Woody Allen film.

Aimigo, their AI tutor

Aimigo is surprisingly enjoyable to use. What feels like a pleasant conversation with a friend is actually powered by natural language processing and machine learning algorithms that understand and match your language level.

Consequently, Aimigo can gently encourage you to learn new vocabulary without being so difficult that you become confused.

As I mentioned, I genuinely liked Aimigo and would suggest interacting with it regularly. It's an excellent method to gauge your actual knowledge (and identify gaps!).

Limitations of Gymglish

While the program has many positive aspects, there are some areas needing improvement. Later, we'll suggest options to complement your Gymglish studies for a comprehensive English program.

Not appropriate for all learners

If you're a beginner, this Gymglish course isn't suitable, as you need basic English reading and listening skills to complete the lessons.

I quickly noticed that the required language level for the lessons was quite advanced: the vocabulary used is fairly complex, and the grammatical explanations employ technical terms that might challenge absolute beginners.

Also, since English is the language of instruction, it would be helpful if Gymglish included a translation tool. For instance, if I were a native French speaker using Gymglish, I'd need to use an external translation service or dictionary to understand words in my first language.

However, there's an alternative! Gymglish offers a separate program for English beginners called Rich Morning.

Essentially, Rich Morning teaches basic English to absolute beginners in these languages: French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Chinese, or Greek. If you speak these languages, you can learn beginner English with instructions, tips, and translations provided in your native tongue.

Rich Morning follows the same methodology as the Gymglish English course: daily emailed lessons that learners complete and receive corrections for. The format is identical. Learners start by watching a video featuring Rich, an ostrich, then complete various skill-building activities like repeating English phrases, answering comprehension questions, fill-in-the-blank exercises, and practicing basic English grammar.

Limited focus on speaking and writing skills

While Gymglish has excellent audio, video, and written content that certainly engages learners and improves their English, the course design provides limited opportunity for speaking and writing practice.

Since learning primarily occurs through reading, listening, and exercise completion, I found that Gymglish lessons concentrate mainly on input. This means I spent considerable time understanding the language in written or audio forms.

This isn't inherently negative, but there was little room for output exercises where I could actively use the language independently. In the comprehension and grammar questions, I could only select the correct answer from multiple choices or write a word or two in blanks. This didn't allow me to practice constructing sentences, and certainly not longer texts like paragraphs.

Regarding speaking, that practice is entirely absent from Gymglish lessons. There are no opportunities to practice speaking, whether through recording sentences for voice recognition technology or using the language in real conversations with native English speakers.

This is problematic because output, particularly speaking, is a crucial aspect of English. Likely, you'll need to speak English in spontaneous conversations with native speakers. Without prior practice in such situations, it could prove very challenging.

Gymglish would certainly benefit from exercises that enable learners to write longer English texts and actually speak the language. For example, learners could answer comprehension questions requiring several written sentences, or practice repeating after native speakers, or record oral answers to comprehension questions.

Lesson structure could use more variety

While the Gymglish illustrations accompanying each lesson are excellent and fun, the lesson progression can become somewhat monotonous and overwhelming. The Gymglish lesson format is quite consistent: read content, answer questions, watch content, answer questions, finish. Over time, this could become repetitive.

Additionally, I found some readings quite lengthy, and their formatting was daunting. Reading long text paragraphs on a computer and being quizzed on them may become tiresome, and substantial text blocks could intimidate some learners.

Shorter texts, combined with more videos or animated clips, might make the platform more approachable and engaging, along with immediate feedback (rather than feedback provided at lesson conclusion).

Furthermore, it would be beneficial if feedback came from an actual person. While Gymglish's automated feedback is detailed, having a native speaker correct my work would enable longer writing and even speaking exercises.

Gymglish Compared to Other Language Learning Platforms

Gymglish vs. Lingflix

Since authentic video was a feature I missed while using Gymglish, I'll begin this comparison with Lingflix, which places video at the core of its program.

I've frequently heard from non-native English speakers who say they learned English through watching films (and TV series, and various online videos). In fact, I've heard this so often that I'm convinced of its effectiveness.

Lingflix suits me well because I already enjoy watching movies, TV, music videos, news, and vlogs. It feels like a sustainable and enjoyable method to learn and review a language, and it has proven effective for me.

I often spend hours on Lingflix while remaining engaged, whereas 15 minutes sometimes felt lengthy on Gymglish due to its more formal learning style.

Overall, I'd select Lingflix here, but I believe Lingflix and Gymglish would complement each other well, and the combined cost would remain reasonably priced.

Gymglish vs. Duolingo

I mentioned Duolingo in this review because it employs a similarly entertaining, vibrant, and gamified approach.

In this comparison, I believe both applications work effectively, but Duolingo addresses grammar more directly. In other words, Gymglish and Duolingo would complement each other nicely.

Read our complete Duolingo review here.

Gymglish vs. Rosetta Stone

Rosetta Stone features vivid photographs that significantly enhance the experience for me.

However, since Gymglish has compelling storylines and characters, Rosetta Stone can seem somewhat basic at times.

In this comparison, you might acquire vocabulary more rapidly with Rosetta Stone, but regarding organic contextual learning, I'd suggest Gymglish performs better.

See our full Rosetta Stone review here.

Gymglish Pricing

The Basic plan costs $12 monthly, providing up to three lessons weekly.

The Premium plan is $29 monthly for five weekly lessons.

The Gold plan costs $39 monthly for seven weekly lessons.

Here's the link to Gymglish's pricing page.

Final Assessment of Gymglish

Gymglish is a reliable learning platform for general learners at intermediate or advanced levels who prefer short, daily lessons. It works best for review or as a supplement to another language course. The detailed feedback, adaptive learning approach, and personalized review materials distinguish it from many other educational apps and courses.

However, it's not ideal for beginners or those requiring speaking and writing practice.

You can always register for a free trial and test it yourself!

While Gymglish is a robust and unique tool,