I even try to visualise how a word is spelled in the middle of a conversation, as this ultimately helps me improve my reading too albeit obliquely. This is easier than it sounds because many of the languages I have learned so far are entirely or pretty phonetic unlike English. Because of this I felt a lot was missing from a course that didn't tell me how to spell words. I found it quite hard to remember words suggested to me when I couldn't see how they would be spelled, and several times I simply had to pause the audio and find the word in a dictionary to see what it looks like.
When you hear an unfamiliar language, it can help to put it in a familiar context, and since Hungarian luckily happens to use the same writing system as other European languages, I would like to take advantage of that.
Although this technically isn't a criticism of the Pimsleur method, since it openly embraces focusing on the sounds of a language for the purposes of prioritising the basics of conversation , I have to admit that I do depend on being able to read a language, even if my focus is clearly to speak it ultimately. In any language mission, reading is a crucial aspect for me — I'd be as good as illiterate in the target language otherwise. So I would personally have to adapt myself more to a purely listening course, and that's just a frustrating extra step for me.
I heard words several times in this course that I had no way to make any mental association with. They were just noise to me — but this just shows my own reliance on non-audible-repetition to learn words. Since so many successful learners use Pimsleur, perhaps it isn't an issue for them.
Or perhaps they combine it with other courses in such a way as to progress in a useful way. But I still can't see this content getting you anywhere beyond the absolute basics. It is perhaps an excellent way to help you get by albeit in very restricted situations for a weekend trip, but if you have long-term plans with your target language you will absolutely have to combine it with another course to make any real progress. That sounds fair enough, as many people do use several courses at once.
But for the steep price, you would expect it to be more encompassing. Like any course, no matter how flawed, this can teach you something. It helped me with my sentence intonation for example, and did teach me a couple of basic words. This exaggeration of its contribution is one reason I feel a lot of successful learners mention it as useful. It is indeed a nice way to start a language, and the comfort involved and the feeling of achievement can be important to many learners, so this emotional boost could actually be a big contributor to success and even make it a very useful way to begin learning a language.
But in terms of actual content, it falls short. So, taking the advantages from this, I do think I should integrate audio learning more into my approach, but using phrases that I am likely to need. This is how I would do it:. There you have it — your own personal Pimsleur without spending a penny. For hardcore users: try Gradint , with which you can craft your own 30 minute, pimsleur-style podcasts from your own audio.
A fair warning: it is very far from a nice user experience, but the idea is great. I still think actual exposure to natives would get you way further meet up with them , or talk with them online , and I have yet to find a single advantage to course materials that you listen to or read alone, which another human being can't provide. Due to how little this particular course helped me progress beyond the basics, I can't recommend Pimsleur to serious language learners.
If you are a businessman on a weekend holiday however, it was made for you! Don't agree with my frank review? When I have the money I invest in some reduced price Pimsleur programs or I just get them from the library. I have tried French, Italian, Portuguese, and Japanese. Hi Donovan: thank you for the review-very well written.
I am an old American who likes to travel around and have developed a routine of taking the Pimsleur intro from the library San Francisco has them all before I go to a new place-currently doing Japanese. Yes they have many shortcomings but all in all its a good tool for my purpose. I have never really been good at languages so essentially it stimulates my brain and allows me to say a few words and phrases, find the bathroom and generally get a smile and chuckle from the locals-all good.
I'm jealous that you have all those languages! I've been using the Thai language set. Thai is a very difficult language, as it is tonal as I'm sure you're aware , and therefore small mistakes in pronunciation are actually large mistakes in conversation and very confusing for Thai people. My wife is Thai, and most of her family lives in Thailand. I've been trying to learn so I can converse with her and her family more in their heart language. Thai folks are very friendly, so learning is easy once you have the proper framework for learning.
In my limited assessment, the Thai set is very good for a beginner to the language as opposed to other methods that may try to teach the alphabet and writing in addition to vocab and sentence structure. That said, sometimes things are a bit "over-pronounced," and sometimes much slower than in reality. In my experience, having studied 10 languages over the years, Pimsleur is the only one that works. It doesn't teach you every word in the language, but it gets you started so that once you arrive in the country, you can start speaking and are taken seriously as someone who can "deal" in that language.
Then the rest follows. Your accent and rhythm are superb -- and added vocabulary comes with time. For languages with hard vocabulary, I make notes on the lessons, look up the words and make flash cards.
On the Indonesian CDs, maddeningly, the time they give you to speak is often a bit too short, so I have the pause button ready so I can collect myself. On a recent trip to Amman, Jordan,, I only had time to cover four Pimsleur lessons, and even with just these I was functioning fine with street, shop, taxi and hotel Arabic. This is the system that works. There is also a big secondary market in used CDs, plus libraries often have them.
Understanding is very often harder than speaking. When you speak, you use only words you know and go at your own pace. When someone else speaks, you have no control. They could have a normal conversation and then slow it down progressively until the words became clear.
THIS is the frontier! You need to transcribe the minute part of the audio. Where do you start time stamping? I use my audible to get Pimsleur lessons. You can get 5 lessons for 1 credit or the whole 30 lessons for 5 credits. Your membership for audible is Much cheaper than getting Pimsleur from the websites or on Amazon. Also, buy purchasing 5 at a time, I don't feel overwhelmed.
I can do the lessons once or twice before moving on. Love it! I agree with most of your review, and while I agree that the speakers in Pimsleur Spanish aren't native sounding, I need this; I couldn't understand anything native Spanish speakers were saying, and can only slightly now, after a year of study. I tried half-a-dozen "learn from native speakers" cd sets before I found Pimsleur, and to me they were utterly useless; I find the less-than-perfect speakers and dialogue in Pimsleur perfect for my level, I think Dr P.
I listen to Pimsleur in the car, and use Mango languages at home. At this point it's a good combination; I'm sure I'll try other things as I improve. I want to learn Castilian Spanish and had Pimsleur recommended to me. Your review suggests Rocket Spanish but they only do Latin American. With those factors in mind, which do you think would suit my goals best? Hello, what a great review indeed, BUT you dont give any information about an important topic, which is what i came looking info for, and its this one.
Now, i know this is not an easy answer, but i need to know this because, the main reason im gonna study french is to apply for a visa in montreal, and one the requeriments its to take a french test, now i dont remember what level is minimun requirement, but i guess it would be B2-C1. I understand that if i use this program, i would have to learn more vocabulary aside from the one they give me, and thats fine, no problem there. BUT what about grammar, really, what do you think it would be my best option?
Great article. It gives me access to the app and Spanish courses 1 through 5 at that price. I had never tried it before because it was so cost prohibitive. As someone who uses duolingo and rosetta stone I must say im making mich better progress with pronunciation with Pimsluer. My daughter in law is a native spanish speaker and she agrees. I agree with many of the comments.
Having some familiarity is helping me to learn faster. However, as I'm also paying attention to the road, I do pause the CD to have a little more time to think of my response. I will also repeat a lesson at least twice. I wish they would give us a bit more time to think of a response, as sometimes I'm halfway through when then give us the answer!
This would speed up my learning, because as one responder noted, the two narrators don't always say words the same way and sometimes it's difficult to catch what they are saying. But maybe that will come in later lessons.
And last 8 I am also using Duolingo, which is a good complement. Probably other apps are as well, to get to see and write the words to go with Pimsleur's listening component. Overall Pimsleur has been the best at helping me to be confident in Spanish than anything else I've tried. I'm now bringing my speaking outside of the car to real people, which has been a great confidence booster.
Just wanted to make a point about the price. Pimsleur is available on Audible, and you can get a whole level for 5 credits.
It's a good way to get it, since you can return audiobooks for credits or subscribe to get a certain number a month. Definitely made it affordable for me,.
The multi-pronged approach works best, with Pimsleur as a base. Native Germans tell me my pronunciation and vocabulary are excellent. I highly recommend Pimsleur. It is challenging and effective. I also pause a lot to practice something that is difficult for me before moving on. Hope this helps. It was a different company than Pimsleur. It had some minor differences and some fancy packaging, but was almost exactly the same program.
The licensing eventually was discontinued. It wasn't a scam, it was legally licensed. Last year, I decided to pull them out and finally go through the lessons. I wanted to download the reading booklets and tried to get them on the website, but the web sight for pimsleurapproach. After searching that site, I called and I was told that the company licensed to sell the product as pimsleurapproach. I found them to be a great companion to the course.
College language courses are very grammar and textbook focused, while these CD lessons are all about listening and speaking. I did the 30 lessons in Spanish I and the 30 lessons in Spanish II, but not the supplementary reading lessons. I would love to get the booklets to do the audio reading lessons, but I can't find them online anywhere. Pimsleur is my favorite method because it is not the standard memorization and dissection of sentences. That has never worked for me. I like to get a good feel for how a language works and learn some vocabulary along the way in context.
That works for me. Whatever your native language is, you learned it this way. You picked up a few words and then started learning how they go together. Over time, you just get a feel for what sounds right. You learn the exceptions naturally. It isn't until you are quite comfortable with speaking and well equipped with vocabulary that you finally go to school and sort out the grammatical details.
I also find that 30 minutes a day is sufficient for the beginner. Down the road, you may want to pursue other methods or resources to expand your knowledge and acquire more words. However, this audio only method that engages you to constantly respond from day one is probably the best way to start off in my opinion. It gets you past the hump of being able to have simple conversations, which I believe is when you are able to learn and retain new words, concepts and expressions in context.
Again, this works for me. Some would insist that wrote memorization of vocabulary lists and sentence diagrams is the only way to go. Maybe this is true for those people so to each their own. Actually my understanding is that the Pimsleur Approach CDs are not "spammers" I am so sorry, but I find it very difficult to distinguish various sounds in the Pimsleur Irish language CDs I'm listening to: B, Th, T, and V are especially hard to distinguish, so I would be learning words wrong.
Also, the audio files are very difficult to understand and repeat. I listen, I repeat, and the next day, nothing remains. I am not a rote learner. My method of learning is to build on small bits. A child learns by seeing a cat and hearing somebody say "Cat. I've spent a lot of time listening and trying to repeat, and I'm just very frustrated.
BTW, I taught elementary linguistics on the college level as part of a communications course. Is there any actual science behind the idea of trying to memorize whole phrases rather than starting with single words? In addition, your review was intelligent and very helpful.
Your review is great. I loved your review! I don't have the Facebook etc.. Thanks for the tips. I travel to Mexico every year and yes the money is more than equal to airfare and Airbnb. I learn more by speaking and listening Spanish. I have trouble with complete sentences. I can say words and understand signs , so again thank you. I just about fell for the To me, living in Vietnam for around 10 month in total I must say I didn't like Pimsleur.
First of all because it's using a language the locals don't. It's to formal and come on, let's hit straight to meeting women, in fact old men meeting women. The method of course is ok, no doubt, but the lessons are too short and the book included is really vaguely written.
I would be interested in what you think of the French in Action course. It contains audio, video, a workbook and a text book. And it has a continuous story that keeps it interesting. I'm using Pimsleur now for kiswahili which I generally like but also feel like it's filled with pick up lines i.
It's really been throwing me off and given some of the tourist prostitution that happens it feels downright weird! Thank you for your comprehensive review. After I started learning Mandarin Chinese by taking a beginning Mandarin adult-eduction class offered on Saturdays on the campus of our state university for about 4 months, I have worked through 5 of the Pimsleur Mandarin language courses over the past few years and have found them to be excellent.
My gauge of my learning is listening to Mandarin language news podcasts and evaluating how much of the information I am grasping. I'm surprised at how much I have learned from the Pimsleur courses. I do realize that to truly master Mandarin I will need to return to regurlary attending more structured language classes and ultimately I will need to spend tme living in Taiwan or mainland China.
Based on my personal experience, however, am definitely a fan of Pimseleur language courses. As to the expense, I have found courses available for purchase on the secondary book market at reasonable prices.
I bought a set of Pimsleur Spanish CDs several years ago. Audio only makes sense so you don't try to read the language first and end up with a funny accent. Which brings me to the fact that the male tutor right away pronounced "Habla" incorrectly. He pronounced the first "a" as you would the "a" in "apple". There is no "apple" "a" sound in the language.
Duolingo is one of the most popular websites to learn a new language for free. Rype: Get a Personal Instructor. Babbel: Pick a Topic that Interests You. Pimsleur primarily focuses on oral language which can help learners develop their conversational skills very quickly.
Learners using Babbel would have a more well-rounded knowledge of the language, but lower speaking and listening skills compared with students using Pimsleur. Can you become fluent with Pimsleur? Category: technology and computing programming languages. One of the biggest selling points of Pimsleur is that you only need 30 minutes a day to become proficient in a language. As someone who has learned many languages and failed some , I can attest that this definitely not true.
To learn a language well in a reasonable amount of time requires hours a day consistently. What do I do after Pimsleur? What to do after Pimsleur. Join a Language Exchange Community. Does Pimsleur teach grammar? Pimsleur won't teach you grammar directly. Is Pimsleur worth the money?
What is the Pimsleur method? How many Pimsleur levels are there? How long does it take to finish Pimsleur? Subsequently, after laying this foundation, it becomes easier to add new words. Pimsleur believed the brain is hard-wired to process speech as well as anticipate correct responses, allowing the method to establish new connections.
This singular tool can activate a new pathway in the brain of the learner. While the program was initially available on video cassettes technology available at the time , it was subsequently downloaded onto CDs. Today, there are MP3 versions that you can listen to on the move.
There is also a subscription option online. Despite this, the program is delivered in a visualized format; in ways that create a mental imagery- all of which are great for learning.
So, you hear the recorded voice narrating a story to you, engaging your mind and taking you into a world where responses are elicited. This is a convenient and effective way to learn a new language.
Learning a language with the Pimsleur Method is a process, often broken down into stages. This would give you an FSI-1 rating. This contains another set of 30 different lessons for 15 hours. That is an FSI-1 rating. At this stage, you should be able to avoid cultural errors and share information about yourself, background, family and associates. This is a more advanced stage where the language learner is expected to take 30 more lessons over a cumulative period of 15 hours.
It wraps up the comprehensive program of 45 hours, and puts the learner at the ACTFL Intermediate-high proficiency level. However, it is important to note that Pimsleur, like most other language learning methods, cannot make you fluent in a language. What it does is give you a strong foundation and teach you all you need to know. Fluency comes from practice and engagement.
All the things you do outside of the Pimsleur Method and after your lessons, such as engaging native speakers and reading lots of books, will determine your fluency level. Among the other market leaders in Language learning Methods, Pimsleur ranks pretty high. Pimsleur requires purchase or subscription to use their methods and products while Duolingo is available for free.
That said, it is only normal, like most other free things online, for duolingo to not offer as much learning aid as Pimsleur does. Meanwhile, Pimsleur focuses more on the oral aspect of learning. Furthermore, it has been proven over time that, although boring, Pimsleur works and will get you speaking significantly well within the stipulated period.
Duolingo, on the other hand, probably only prepares you to take up courses from other platforms like Pimsleur. Nonetheless, Pimsleur is quite pricey.
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