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Pimsleur vs Podcasts | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Akao aka FailArtist Senior Member United States Joined 5271 days ago 315 posts - 347 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Toki Pona | Message 1 of 39 07 May 2011 at 11:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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Pretty simple. I was looking through pimsleur and realized that it is very similar to
organized podcasts in language learning. What are your thoughts? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5946 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 2 of 39 08 May 2011 at 12:21am | IP Logged | ||
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The various podcasts I've seen suffer from one specific flaw:
Podcasts always seem to try to emulate radio programs, with a little "programme announcement" before the start, then a theme tune, then a chatty introduction, then the lesson (sometimes peppered with pointless distracting banter), then a chatty ending with a "what we're doing next time", a short outro tune, and then a superfluous announcement of the URL (just in case you got it from iTunes rather than direct from the website). The shorter the podcast, the more intrusive this unnecessary fluff is. Also some (but by no means all) podcasts segment themselves in a way Pimsleur never does -- the vocabulary in "today's lesson" is sometimes left unrevised in the rest of the course. I've listened to some that say "just listen to this lesson again", but the whole mock-radio thing can begin to grate, and it's all just wasted time. 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Akao aka FailArtist Senior Member United States Joined 5271 days ago 315 posts - 347 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Toki Pona | Message 3 of 39 08 May 2011 at 12:26am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for your input!
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kmart Senior Member Australia Joined 6059 days ago 194 posts - 400 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 4 of 39 08 May 2011 at 1:59am | IP Logged | ||
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I agree whole-heartedly with Cainntear. I used to have a love affair with language learning podcasts, because they were shorter and easier to understand than say radio or TV, the speech was slower, they translated the dialogues, usually had transcriptions on their website etc. But I was immensely frustrated by the wasted "chit-chat" time, and actually started cleaning them up in Audacity, when I discovered Assimil.
Assimil is actually the program that more closely resembles podcasts, in my opinion - short dialogues at less-than-native speaking pace, transcription and translation, explanation of grammar points. However it does it all so much better - it is well-structured to repeat vocabulary and grammar throughout the course, the volume of dialogue and grammar covered far exceeds any of the podcasts I've encountered and if you are paying a subscription to a language learning podcast site for the "extras", it's much, much better value. Pimsleur is for a different purpose - it's an introduction to the language for a complete beginner, it's about gaining basic conversational skills and developing good pronunciation. I voted "they cannot be compared", but I would also say that "Pimsleur is better" - it achieves it's language goals effectively and efficiently (if you agree that the most important goals of Pimsleur are pronunciation and an achievement of basic conversational skills, not vocabulary and grammar), but for podcasts, there are better tools out there. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Akao aka FailArtist Senior Member United States Joined 5271 days ago 315 posts - 347 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Toki Pona | Message 5 of 39 08 May 2011 at 2:53am | IP Logged | ||
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From what I've read it seems that the only problem is people don't create their podcasts
as a course, but more random and they don't organize it enough at all. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6374 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 6 of 39 08 May 2011 at 3:57am | IP Logged | ||
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It's a bit of an unfair comparison. Pimsleur is one product; podcasts are not.
Podcasts vary extensively in quality. Their creators vary widely in their linguistic backgrounds, writing skills, presentation skills, and production values. The worst of them are horrible; the best of them are rather good. I'd point to Germanpod101 as an example of a podcast done quite conscientiously. I do have to agree that the excess fluff in most podcasts is annoying - but it's also easy, though tedious, to edit out. I prefer Assimil to podcasts - but podcasts do cover a much wider range of topics, and are quite valuable at times. Whether Pimsleur or a podcast is 'better' depends on what you want to achieve. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5894 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 7 of 39 08 May 2011 at 6:08am | IP Logged | ||
I tend to use the podcast dialogs/stories, without the chit-chat, for echoing/shadowing. If the podcast site doesn't supply separate dialog/story only files, then I won't use that sites' material. Plus with the stand alone dialogs/stories, if needed, I can read the text on my iPod while listening. If the chit-chat is in the language being studied then that becomes part of my listening comprehension work. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Akao aka FailArtist Senior Member United States Joined 5271 days ago 315 posts - 347 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Toki Pona | Message 8 of 39 08 May 2011 at 6:13am | IP Logged | ||
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Glad to have some contrast in the responses.
On paper, podcasts are better, simply because of the wealth of resources and native speakers providing whatever information they wish. However, it is true to find a very effective podcast, but there are many out there. I'm more for podcasts, but pimsleur has been REALLY good so far. I'll probably need to listen to more pimsleur before I make any decisions though. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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