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Response to past Pimsleur discussions | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| zenmonkey Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6555 days ago 803 posts - 1119 votes  1 sounds Speaks: EnglishC2*, Spanish*, French, German Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew | Message 145 of 148 15 November 2009 at 12:35am | IP Logged | |||||
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Yes, I've read VS R. works and the genetic basis that he uses to postulate that - it's interesting. He's an brilliant author.
Nothing you've said is wrong but nothing you've noted excludes the idea that visualizing does not help to further acquire the spoken language - for me it creates an additional clue and set of rules / hints not in reference to English or another language but self-referential. It's a new set of inference rules. I already know tha 'bai' has many sounds and in Basque I would associate to 'lai' more thay 'bay' or 'bahia'. That is the other thing I've never liked about Pimsleur is that you spend too much time translating, and that is something you eventually need to break away from - Pimsleur done for too long prevents rather than enhances the rupture from L1 into L2 thinking, in my view. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6014 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 146 of 148 15 November 2009 at 12:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
OK, I stated it to strongly, but remember that you've been learning languages long enough to have developed strategies to do this. I can normally do it too, but sometimes there will be a particular sound or word that trips me up. I find, though, that when I learn from the written form, I use my knowledge of the phonetics of a language to teach me to speak -- I am converting the written form to the spoken form and learning it by its sound -- whereas many new language learners will memorise the spelling and "sound it out" every time that they want to say the word, slowing them down. The big problem here is that as far as the teachers and course designers are concerned, we are all doing the same thing -- learning from reading -- because more often than not they limit themselves to looking at the superficial task design, not what goes on inside the learners' heads. So it can be done, but if you don't teach someone to do it, they won't be able to do it. Doing a complete course on phonetics before even starting to learn your first language is going to be very difficult and supremely boring to most people. The alternative is to design your language courses as a walk through of a proven successful strategy. I think most of us here (except maybe for the guys who only want to read a language) will recognise that we learn a word by remembering the sound. Yes, remembering the sound can often help us remember the sound (a mnemonic device, as slucido says), but if all we remember is the spelling and not the sound, we would never learn. It's impossible to force someone to adopt a particular strategy if you give them a choice, and a course with text and audio gives three choices: remember sound; remember sound & spelling; remember spelling. The only way to eliminate that third choice and get the beginner following a successful strategy is to drastically reduce the ratio of written language to spoken language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| zenmonkey Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6555 days ago 803 posts - 1119 votes 1 sounds Speaks: EnglishC2*, Spanish*, French, German Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew | Message 147 of 148 15 November 2009 at 2:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
Absolutely, and that is why it is important to get the new language learner as soon as possible away from the L1 "sound map" and from translating. I was pissed-off with Pimsleur when I first tried it for German (my 4th language) exactly for this. I did not know I was taking a step back in terms of methodology and I clearly lost time rethinking this by going the wrong path.
I also agree with this. I think for us, that are not beginners, Pimsleur still has a role in, like you say, getting the sound and some basics. And even for beginners (I'm supporting the erratic learnings of 30 colleagues) my recommendation is to get through Pimsleur and Michel Thomas as fast as possible to move to other material and other methodologies. Move on and away from translation and L1 sound matrix. My (im)perfect example is Portuguese 'Onde', I hear and understand that this is pronounced for me by 'Onje' but it took me a while to figure out that a good shortcut is to often take Spanish words and just 'j' them; I was spending a lot of time trying to learn new words (and mental reprentations) when all I needed was to not worry, I was quite relieved to find out that 'onde' was not spelled 'onje' and 'restaurant' was not spelled 'restauranje' (or my equivalent reverse learning from German - restaurant is not written 'restaurand'(and pronounced with German ending d/t)). But, in any case, my biggest struggle with Pimsleur is the back and forth English (L1) to L2 translations. It remains awkward for me, I prefer to focus very early into sinlge language immersion work -- Pimsleur breaks that flow; to a large extent that is why I moved to Assimil for German rather quickly. For those that are like me, and are troubled by the L1-L2 back and forth of Pimsleur I can only suggest two methods: 1) Shotgun Pimsleur - get through it as fast as possible to use this material as basis maker but also to move to other methods 2) Drop Pimsleur - other material exists out there and does not need to start with the translation process. Assimil is my choice. Having said that, for me, Pimsleur beats Living Language most days. Talk about dry as a stone! Edited by zenmonkey on 15 November 2009 at 2:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| GoingGoingGone Newbie United States Joined 5671 days ago 28 posts - 39 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Swedish, Mandarin | Message 148 of 148 18 November 2009 at 7:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
Great post and I agree wholeheartedly. I appreciate the fact that he took the time to post on here. It is interesting to hear what he has to say whether he answers all of the questions I have or not, and it is his perogative to say what he wishes. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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