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Why I think the Pimsleur method is good. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| mr_chinnery Senior Member England Joined 5755 days ago 202 posts - 297 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 48 14 January 2011 at 4:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Just thought I'd give my two cents worth as to why I like Pimsleur, and why I would
recommend it to people starting to learn their first second language. The Pimsleur method introduces vocabulary very slowly. It focuses on ingraining the new language into your long term memory, by lots of repitition and revision. The course is broken down into half hour lessons, doing one a day in sequence. I like this relaxed approach, because I always have time to do one a day, and if I have more time, I can do some reading and listening practice as well. It's important to look at the bigger picture with Pimsleur. At first it will seem you are learning basic tourist phrases, but you are also being given a firm grounding in prepositions, pronouns and conjugating verbs: the basic building blocks of language. I especially struggled with these at school, and now, only 18 lessons into Pimsleur Italian one, I have a basic, but most importantly, a firm grasp on them. Pimsleur can seem slow, but the lessons are paced differently. Some seem to draw heavily on previous lessons, whereas others introduce lots of new material. The premise of not proceeding to the next lesson until you can give 80% correct responses in your current one is sound. Just don't be tempted to use the pause button when asked a question. The short time between question and answer is there for a reason: it encourages you to recall information at a conversational pace. I'm new to language learning but I've found Pimsleur to be an ideal introduction. Once I've achieved my goals in Italian, I'll be moving on to other romance languages, and Pimsleur might not be so important. I know that lots of experienced and sagacious polyglots on here have quite a low opinion of Pimsleur, and I totally respect and understand that. They've developed their own techniques, that work for them. But for any new language learner, I would recommend they try Pimsleur. It is molto caro, but I've heard it can be found through 'other channels', not that I'd endorse or recommend that kind of behaviour. 12 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Michael K. Senior Member United States Joined 5727 days ago 568 posts - 886 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto | Message 2 of 48 14 January 2011 at 6:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Good review.
Have you ever used Pimsleur for something more exotic than Italian? Some say Pimsleur is best when it is used for an exotic language and that it isn't so good with a more common languages. I disagree, I found it useful for German, for what I've gone through so far. I think as long as long as you haven't studied the language before it is useful. I first started off with Pimsleur Spanish, while I was taking Spanish in college, and I felt like I really wasn't accomplishing anything. Of course, if I would have used levels 2 and 3 I probably would have felt differently. Of course, if you come across a really difficult lesson, you could just repeat it until you feel confident that you know it. I did the first lesson of Mandarin, and found it frustrating because they didn't really explain tones, or even say what tone the words are for all the words. Maybe they'll explain it better in later lessons. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Po-ru Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5478 days ago 173 posts - 235 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Spanish, Norwegian, Mandarin, French | Message 3 of 48 14 January 2011 at 6:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am a big fan of Pimsleur. I think it is a great way to get introduced to a language.
The advanced courses also do a good job of looking at slightly more intricate grammar(past, future, comparisons) and at 30 minutes a lesson, I feel you get a lot of good material from it. However, the lack of grammatical explanations really forces the user to seek elsewhere for grammatical concepts. Especially in languages such as Korean or Mandarin, where particle use and the sound system is much different from that of English. I remember doing Pimsleur Korean for the first time and not having a clue what the words actually were. And since the use of particles were not explained, I was left even more confused. The best way to deal with these problems are to just work through the lessons. Pimsleur is definitely a great resource but it leaves a lot to be studied elsewhere. I'd honestly like to see a Pimsleur course that went to lesson 150 or even 200 or so. That would really build a persons vocabulary and grammatical understanding, I'd say to an intermediate level. Going just to lesson 90, I feel that it stops right at a time when the user is just beginning to grasp the language. I also think that a course to lesson 150 would greatly improve a persons speaking abilities. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kmart Senior Member Australia Joined 6122 days ago 194 posts - 400 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 4 of 48 14 January 2011 at 10:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think Pimsleur is fabulous for Romance languages - it was my first tool for learning Italian and my pronunciation has always been complimented. I've done a bit of Spanish with it, and checked out the French, and I intend to use it for both those languages when I get around to them.
But like Michael, I found it impossible when studying a tonal language. I couldn't get past the first 2 lessons in Vietnamese. They did mention paying particular attention to the tones, but without explanations of what the tones are and how to create them, I couldn't "get it". I found Jake Catlett's "Vietnamese for Beginners" much better, with audio recordings of the tones as well as written explanations. I'd also like more lessons, but with further grammar exploration - I bought Italian Plus, an additional 10 lessons, but I found it fairly useless - the extra vocabulary related primarily to the specific scenario of a publishing conference, and there was no further development of grammar. Unlike the previous 90 lessons, I found it boring and had no enthusiasm to repeat the lessons. The vocabulary in the initial courses was all useful, but at the level of learning that Plus is aimed at, only a small handful of people would have any practical use for the vocabulary introduced - for the rest of us, there are far more important words to be learned. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5128 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 5 of 48 15 January 2011 at 12:45am | IP Logged | |||||
I used Pimsleur Turkish and found it VERY useful. I knew absolutely nothing about the language when I started with Pimsleur. As noted by the thread starter, it gave me a really solid grounding in the mechanics of the language, if not the vocabulary. But with the foundation, I was then able to continue on to a more advanced course, which concentrated on vocabulary. I'm a big fan of Pimsleur as well as Michel Thomas, which does the same thing in a slightly different manner. R. == 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| TerryW Senior Member United States Joined 6355 days ago 370 posts - 783 votes Speaks: English* | Message 6 of 48 15 January 2011 at 8:41am | IP Logged | |||||
This has been discussed elsewhere on here, and I disagree. If you can't respond in the blank space given, hit pause and crank it out however long it takes. But don't consider it a correct response for moving on to the next lesson until you *can* answer in the given time. Taking the time you need to respond is much better than just skipping over it and saying "I don't know," and is kind of a "stepping stone" if you didn't grasp the material that well yet. 8 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5563 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 7 of 48 15 January 2011 at 12:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I fully agree with TerryW - especially as Pimsleur method of 'teaching' grammar is by inference rather than by explanation. The thing about inference is that the brain has to have time to draw the inference - if that is done by pausing and thinking through, then the rule has been acquired rather than parroted. This may not cohere with Paul Pimsleur's ideas about language acquisition, but most of those were discredited in the late 60s and 70s, so I don't particular care for the so-called 'science' of the Pimsleur method.
To be honest I think of Pimsleur a either a glorified phrase book method, or a good practice drill for when you already have a basic grasp of a language - In both cases I think it does its job in that regard, but all 90 lessons only provide a very basic start (i.e. it is probably about CEFR A1) to a language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6009 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 8 of 48 15 January 2011 at 1:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm with TerryW and Elexi.
My experience with various listen-and-repeat and prompt-and-response courses (including Pimsleur) is that if I don't answer within the allotted time first time round, I don't second time round. Or third. In the end, I get to practise the stuff I know, but never learn the stuff I don't. However, if I pause the tape I usually manage to spit it out, and next time I can do it quicker. Knowledge and abilities aren't digital -- you can know something well and you can know something badly. "Learning" means going from "not knowing" through "knowing badly" and eventually "knowing well". Regardless of whatever anyone says, the reason these courses have pauses in them is nothing to do with learning -- it's about technology. There is no pause button on a gramophone, so the first generation of courses needed pauses. Excessive pausing ruins cassettes. It wasn't until the CD came along that pausing became a sensible option, and people are set in their ways.
Personally, I don't think you can balance one with the other. My feeling about Pimsleur is that some lessons are too easy and some lessons are too difficult -- that's a problem in my book. A lesson that is too difficult will not be learned, and a lesson that is too easy doesn't command the learner's attention. All lessons should be just hard enough.
I disagree. The difficulties people will have with a Pimsleur lesson are quite predictable. If they can be predicted, they can be accounted for in future lessons, and you don't need to repeat. If I'm having problems with 30% of a lesson, then 70% of a repeat listen is a waste of time. Worse, because that 70% is too easy, I get bored and by the time the important bit comes around, I've stopped paying attention. The pacing in Pimsleur is very poorly thought out. Pimsleur is a "translated template" course, in that they use a standard plan for all languages, without respecting the individual differences between languages. All those phrases you've been learning in Italian with semi-familiar words and grammar and with nice clear vowels and consonants -- you'd be learning the same in a far eastern language with completely alien words and grammar, tones and with consonants the like of which you've never encountered before. Pimsleur isn't really "good", it just looks that way compared to a lot of the other rubbish on the market. And I find that a bit depressing.... 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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