Thread: Pimsleur

Guys,

I recall seeing a thread about the Pimsleur method of learning. Some folk seemed to think it

It doesn't teach grammar. This course teaches you how to say common words and phrases by pure listening and repeating. Their method is something like this:

Say:
1. вет
2. при
3. привет = Hi

or

1. ла
2. де
3. дела
4. как
5. как дела = How are things?

Originally Posted by MasterAdmin

It doesn't teach grammar. This course teaches you how to say common words and phrases by pure listening and repeating.

I think I would disagree with this.

True enough, there is no real formal presentation of clinical grammatical concepts, but the material is presented in a manner that allows a listener to "intuit" a great deal of grammatical information. It's not just a recitation of static and unrelated phrases; they build on previous information with "substitution", "negation", "expansion", etc. so that you can often anticipate and correctly come up with phrases you have not previously heard.

there have been raging debates here about the usefulness of pimsleur, you should have a look and see what came up

I have never seen any learning approach that hasn't been criticized. And I'm not a cheerleader for Pimsleur (there are several legitimate gripes about its approach -- but also lots of unfair ones). In short, it's just one tool in your arsenal; don't rely too heavily on it just as you wouldn't rely exclusively on any other resource. Tools are best used in concert to compliment each other.

I will say one thing though: My Mandarin Chinese pronunciation is pretty dang good -- and I give Pimsleur a great deal of credit for putting me on the right path early on.

Originally Posted by RavinDave

I have never seen any learning approach that hasn't been criticized. And I'm not a cheerleader for Pimsleur (there are several legitimate gripes about its approach -- but also lots of unfair ones). In short, it's just one tool in your arsenal; don't rely too heavily on it just as you wouldn't rely exclusively on any other resource. Tools are best used in concert to compliment each other.

I will say one thing though: My Mandarin Chinese pronunciation is pretty dang good -- and I give Pimsleur a great deal of credit for putting me on the right path early on.

Thanks, guys!