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So you’re missing Pimsleur...

  Tags: Listening | Pimsleur
 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes Post Reply
30 messages over 4 pages: 1 2 3
Wulfgar
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United States
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 Message 25 of 30
26 February 2012 at 7:52pm | IP Logged 
atama warui wrote:
If you would produce Pimsleur-style 30 minute lessons, incorporating the fact they're
supposed to be done at roughly the same time every day (thus, the time between 2 lessons would be 24 hours),
it would take a few months to learn all the words featured

I'm not sure this is addressed to me, but which words are you talking about? If it's Core6000, surely it would
take longer than that.
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atama warui
Triglot
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Japan
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 Message 26 of 30
26 February 2012 at 8:18pm | IP Logged 
I wonder how many words the original "Pimsleur comprehensive" courses actually teach. They're split into 90 lessons each taking 30 minutes.
Of those 30 minutes, how much was actually "can you remember how to say.."? Not that much I guess. Introducing a word alone took a while:
"now say ra" (speaker repeating "ra" 2 times)
"say "nara" (again)
"say younara" (again)
"say sayou" (again)
"say sayounara"
You could count how often the word has been introduced before Pimsleur marks it as "initially learned" and kicks off the SRS process, then acct accordingly, only without splitting up the words by syllables, but plain repeating it for x times, with x delay, so you can "listen and repeat" to first acquire it properly.

Now just "fill the blanks" of time between the repetitions with new words, and you will learn in 1 week what Pimsleur taught you in 90 days (I just made this figure up to show what I mean). The repetition algorhythm manages your retention.
Y
You basically strip the Pimsleur course off everything not "learning words" and fill it with new material (words of course), up to a limit of newly acquired vocab per day, to not overload you with new information.

It doesn't even have to be 24 hours. You could let the computer calculate repetitions for, let's say, a rhythm of "way to work from 7 to 7:30, way back home from 17 to 17:30, leisure time before sleeping between 22:30 and 23:00", if you made the UI flexible enough.

How fast can you learn and KEEP the words learned without further useage (for several reasons, such as time constraints, lack of people to talk to, whatever may come to mind) by other means? I don't know, but the Pimsleur method worked for me. If they worked for someone with the skills to improve one of those existing tools, or create a new one, this would be perfect.
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Wulfgar
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 Message 27 of 30
26 February 2012 at 8:41pm | IP Logged 
atama warui wrote:
I wonder how many words the original "Pimsleur comprehensive" courses actually teach.
500 in 45 hours, like I said. I have confirmed this with transcripts.

If you try to jam more words in, or decrease the interval between lessons, the material probably won't stick as
well as it does in Pimsleur. 6000 words would take 540 hours at the Pimsleur rate.
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atama warui
Triglot
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Japan
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 Message 28 of 30
26 February 2012 at 9:08pm | IP Logged 
Why wouldn't more words stick? I can see what you mean regarding intervals, they're the actual reason it works, but the number of words you could learn and the number of words the original course taught differ by a large margin.

But the original course not only taught you words. It also made you learn grammar structures, drill them, attempt to automatize the usage and so on. This is stuff I don't need anymore (and if I'd need more grammar exposure, there would be other resources I'd use, like Tae Kim's Guide, or practice at Lang-8, and many more).

There's no indication whatsoever that 500words/90days=5,55words per day is the maximum a human being can memorize. In fact, I strongly doubt the brain is limited to 5,55 words a day. Following the correct algorhythm, you can easily make that 25, 30, maybe more. I heard people claim they'd pick up 100 words and more a day (Kaufmann, for example), but I can't really believe that.

However, 5,55 words a day, I can't believe that that's the limit. Now, if you make it 25/day, that would be 240 days or 8 monthsa. This sounds like a realistic and reasonable goal for me.
6000 words within 8 months would be very good progress.
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Jeffers
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United Kingdom
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Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German

 
 Message 29 of 30
26 February 2012 at 9:20pm | IP Logged 
atama warui wrote:
Why wouldn't more words stick? I can see what you mean regarding intervals, they're the actual reason it works, but the number of words you could learn and the number of words the original course taught differ by a large margin.

But the original course not only taught you words. It also made you learn grammar structures, drill them, attempt to automatize the usage and so on. This is stuff I don't need anymore (and if I'd need more grammar exposure, there would be other resources I'd use, like Tae Kim's Guide, or practice at Lang-8, and many more).

There's no indication whatsoever that 500words/90days=5,55words per day is the maximum a human being can memorize. In fact, I strongly doubt the brain is limited to 5,55 words a day. Following the correct algorhythm, you can easily make that 25, 30, maybe more. I heard people claim they'd pick up 100 words and more a day (Kaufmann, for example), but I can't really believe that.

However, 5,55 words a day, I can't believe that that's the limit. Now, if you make it 25/day, that would be 240 days or 8 monthsa. This sounds like a realistic and reasonable goal for me.
6000 words within 8 months would be very good progress.


One of the reason all the words in Pimsleur stick is because the words are used in sentences and short conversations, and when they are brought back later, they are used in slightly different contexts. This is why Pimsleur teaches a relatively small amount of vocabulary over a large amount of audio, but it is also why the vocabulary so taught sticks so well.

I like the idea of an audio vocabulary SRS; it would suit my lifestyle very well. But it sounds like it would be isolated words, possibly some short phrases or sentences, rather than the carefully built up dialogues Pimsleur uses. That is why you would have to listen to it a lot more to make the vocabulary stick.
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atama warui
Triglot
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 Message 30 of 30
26 February 2012 at 9:36pm | IP Logged 
Well, you could adapt to that. Take for example ALS, you could make it play 2 speakers, one for L1 and one for L2. If you could add a 3rd speaker, you could make it perform L2 sentence, L2 word, L1 word in this direction.

But actually, you're wrong, "the Pimsleur method" is really only SRS, not "presentation in varying context" and other forms of exposure:


Listening to "L1 - L2 - L2" should be enough, if the intervals are setup correctly. I mean, you can learn with ANKI, and that's not different at all, just visual (even tho you can add other stuff, like audio or video, if you so chose, but then you can't carry it with you while commuting).Wikipedia

Edited by atama warui on 26 February 2012 at 9:39pm



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