14 messages over 2 pages: 1 2
kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4895 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish
| Message 9 of 14 14 June 2013 at 5:14am | IP Logged |
I'll add my voice to the majority: Pimsleur works for me when I'm in motion: driving,
walking, biking, doing laundry, etc.
I also think it helps to ignore the pause button, and to re-do the lesson if needed.
This was frustrating for me in the beginning, but I found that I became too dependent on
pausing, and that the pressure to respond helped me a lot once I got used to it.
Final thought: I wouldn't necessarily do Pimsleur > Assimil in order. They hit very
different aspects of language learning, and if you have time I'd overlap them.
4 persons have voted this message useful
| ljones29 Triglot Newbie United States Joined 4803 days ago 35 posts - 59 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Arabic (Written), Greek
| Message 10 of 14 15 June 2013 at 10:13pm | IP Logged |
kanewai wrote:
I'll add my voice to the majority: Pimsleur works for me when I'm in
motion: driving,
walking, biking, doing laundry, etc.
I also think it helps to ignore the pause button, and to re-do the lesson if needed.
This was frustrating for me in the beginning, but I found that I became too dependent
on
pausing, and that the pressure to respond helped me a lot once I got used to it.
Final thought: I wouldn't necessarily do Pimsleur > Assimil in order. They hit very
different aspects of language learning, and if you have time I'd overlap them.
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Good idea. I use Pimsleur as well as other things too. I'm probably mid-intermediate
in Spanish at this point, but I'm still only on Pimsleur III. I just find that using
Pimsleur helps me develop automaticity. Also, I kinda like the little storylines they
have. :)
1 person has voted this message useful
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4260 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish
| Message 11 of 14 20 June 2013 at 5:54am | IP Logged |
Does anyone else use Audacity to remove the silences from Pimsleur courses, and then shadow the target language speech rather than repeating them after they're spoken?
I've found it much more effective for me as it halves the time, and makes it easier for me to focus (my mind drifts during the pauses). The first time I do a lesson like this I'm usually unable to do active parts of the lessons at first, since there's no time to think before the native speaker gives the answer. But I've found being able to do courses in half the time more than makes up for this loss. And when I'm reviewing courses, nothing sticks the words in my brain like trying to summon them up before the English speaker finishes his instructions.
1 person has voted this message useful
| Halfdan Newbie Canada Joined 4190 days ago 13 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Danish, Mandarin, French
| Message 12 of 14 20 June 2013 at 9:24am | IP Logged |
YnEoS wrote:
Does anyone else use Audacity to remove the silences from Pimsleur
courses, and then shadow the target language speech rather than repeating them after
they're spoken? |
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No, but I've been wanting to try it for quite some time. I, too, find my mind wandering
during the pauses.
1 person has voted this message useful
| jerrypettit Groupie United States Joined 6032 days ago 79 posts - 103 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 13 of 14 26 June 2013 at 3:35am | IP Logged |
I use a program like (free) Audacity (although in my case I use Sound Forge) to chop out
the phrases I don't know and I import them into my Spaced Repetion System (I use
Supermemo, but Anki would work). That way I only listen to each lesson once, but the
phrases several times per the SRS.
1 person has voted this message useful
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4915 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German
| Message 14 of 14 30 June 2013 at 2:39pm | IP Logged |
ragnar1230 wrote:
Pimsleur fluctuates from super easy to really difficult from one minute to the next. One moment, I'm letting my mind wander, answering the questions easily, then it pops out some long construction and I think, “Wait, what was that?” and before I can hit the “Pause” button, much less rewind it, it's given me the answer. How can I stay focused? (I know some people do a repetitive manual task while listening, but if I do that, I won't be able to get to the “Pause” button when I need to.) |
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I have finished Pimsleur French II, and I often found the same problem: you're going along and everything seems fine, then you hit a much more difficult phrase. Over the course of the year I've been using Pimsleur, I've begun to work on a Pimsleur lesson in sections rather than as a whole. I work on each section (5 or 10 minutes) twice before moving on to the next section. When I finish the whole lesson by segments, I then do that lesson the whole way through, sometimes 2 or 3 more times. Also, if I still come across something that really throws me, I usually rewind a minute or two so I can have another try at it.
I know it's rather boring to work on the same lesson 3-5 times in this way, but it makes Pimsleur more effective for me. I use several things to learn French. The purpose of Pimsleur in my learning arsenal is to gain fluency: the ability to have certain phrases just roll off my tongue easily. So if I end a lesson still struggling to come up with or pronounce some of the phrases, it suits my purposes better to repeat that lesson before moving on.
By the way, I usually use Pimsleur in my car, and I say the responses out loud, usually louder than normal conversation. I find my mind wanders a lot less with Pimsleur than it does with an audiobook or Assimil audio.
Finally, I second Kanewai's suggestion: use Pimsleur and Assimil at the same time (or alternate them somehow). They do work on different aspects of the language, and it's helpful when something you learn on one comes up in the other soon after.
Edited by Jeffers on 30 June 2013 at 2:43pm
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