Thread: Life after Pimsleur ?

Hi everybody,
well Pimsleur's behind me now and boy do I feel lonely without their lovely voices in my ears !
Seriously, I'd like to keep on learning, and I know there are many, many ressources on the net, but my problem is that I would like to keep doing this during commuting... I don't have much time for anything else, so the audio method was really great for me.

Do you know other audio methods, but for a more advanced level ? (Well for someone who just finished Pimsleur's ,you got it...)
Or audio stuffs that could be understandable for me ?

Good day to all,
Lyl.

Originally Posted by Lylandra

Hi everybody,
well Pimsleur's behind me now and boy do I feel lonely without their lovely voices in my ears !
Seriously, I'd like to keep on learning, and I know there are many, many ressources on the net, but my problem is that I would like to keep doing this during commuting... I don't have much time for anything else, so the audio method was really great for me.

Do you know other audio methods, but for a more advanced level ? (Well for someone who just finished Pimsleur's ,you got it...)
Or audio stuffs that could be understandable for me ?

Good day to all,
Lyl.

A lot of people have said that the 'Michel Thomas' method is better than pimsleur (I agree because I am doing both for French and Italian)

A Russian version of Michel Thomas is out in the U.K and should be out in the States next month. I am very much looking forward to it!

The next step is to talk to Russians as much as possible. If you've finished Pimsy, then you should have enough ability to carry on a conversation.

From now on, the best way to learn is through use (even if you have to refer to a dictionary often), with a bit of daily vocabulary work on your own.

Listen to Russian radio, watch Russian TV and movies, listen to Russian songs.

Congratulations on finishing Pimsleur, Lylandra. I've nearly finished myself, and I've been wondering the same thing. While Russian radio, TV, etc. are excellent resources, they're not really an option during the daily commute to work (and I haven't found a native Russian to carpool with yet ).

I have a 45 minute drive each way, and Pimsleur has helped to make that time productive. More importantly, no matter how busy I get, there's nothing else to do during the drive, so unlike my studies at home my Pimsleur lessons have never slipped. So, it would be nice to have something to fill that void. It seems that the best thing would be audiobooks. Preferably, it would be something at a fairly low level -- children's books, perhaps.

Why not make some Audio CDs for yourself? The course that was at Princeton University has plenty of conversations......... http://www.freelanguagecourses.com/ I'm also progressing through Level 3 of Pimsleur, (lesson #6). I have also returned to the Princeton course for review ( I was using it about a year ago), for vocabulary and conversations, I've downloaded the entire course; and I'm making CDs for use in my car -

Hi everybody !
Although I would love to, it might indeed be a little difficult to find someone to talk russian with during commuting...

I was considering finding a way to record russian radio, but I'm afraid I just won't understand a thing and eventually get discouraged.

Crassyo: is the 'Michel Thomas' method for complete beginners too, or does it exist for a bit more advanced students ?

Haksaw: now you may just be my saver for some time ! The download is so heavy (1.5 Go) that I havn't seen the content yet, but I'm pretty sure I will find material to feed me for some time again.

So, thank you everybody, and keep posting if you know any other audio ressources ! (So I don't have to come back in few weeks to ask the same question again )

Lyl.

Originally Posted by Lylandra

Although I would love to, it might indeed be a little difficult to find someone to talk russian with during commuting...

A) I didn't realize that the only time one can learn a language is during one's commute.

B) Do you commute by car? If not, you might be surprised to find Russian speakers on your train or bus. I'd bet that any decent-sized city has enough Russian-speaking immigrants, that you will find at least one riding public transport at the same time you do.

how long did it take you guys to complete all 3 levels of pimsleurs?

Matroskin Kot: that's an idea indeed... unfortunately, even if I do travel by metro, I have 2 connections and I therefore spend little time on the same line. Anyway...

Crassyo: I realize that I started Pimsleur only in mid-november! But I'm a kind of learnerholic (learning about 2 lessons a day); besides, I focused on speaking, and I merely learnt reading. I did not spend much time on grammar either, and I know it will soon become an inconvience.

Crassyo - I usually progress through 1 lesson a week, unless I find any individual lesson a bit more difficult (or I'm distracted for some reason). Or, I might take a little longer - it's just that I want to thoroughly learn
everything in a lesson before moving to the next. Perhaps I'm a bit slow?........but it really doesn't matter!

I was considering finding a way to record russian radio, but I'm afraid I just won't understand a thing and eventually get discouraged.

You will It's hard at first. But u just gotta keep doing it, and keep learning vocabulary. Its pretty much like a puzzle. The more words you learn, the more the pieces fit.

When I first started learning Russian I would get discouraged with all the words I didnt know, but I just kept learning them and kept telling myself, as long as I keep learning them, eventually people will run out of words to use that I don't know!

But that was just me.

Originally Posted by Dogboy182

I was considering finding a way to record russian radio, but I'm afraid I just won't understand a thing and eventually get discouraged.

You will It's hard at first. But u just gotta keep doing it, and keep learning vocabulary. Its pretty much like a puzzle. The more words you learn, the more the pieces fit.

When I first started learning Russian I would get discouraged with all the words I didnt know, but I just kept learning them and kept telling myself, as long as I keep learning them, eventually people will run out of words to use that I don't know!

But that was just me.

Originally Posted by Dogboy182

... but I just kept learning them and kept telling myself, as long as I keep learning them, eventually people will run out of words to use that I don't know!

I like your attitude.

Originally Posted by Crassyo

how long did it take you guys to complete all 3 levels of pimsleurs?

I started on January 4th last year, and I've finished 80 of the 90 lessons. Assuming nothing major changes in my habits, I'll be done by March, so call it about 14 months total. I tend to listen to each lesson 3-5 times before moving on, because I want to learn as much as I can. I figure that I may as well listen to each lesson as many times as I can stomach because, really, there's no going back to old lessons.

The fundamental problem with Pimsluer from a language acquisition perspective, is that it has you learn by rote ... imitation and memorization. So it's hard and probably nearly impossible to generate sentences on your own .... I mean, you're certainly equipped to recite what you've learned if you happen to be falling within the parameters of Pimsleur's meager handful of milieus at any random point (gas station, train complementing each other's language skills, asking someone to eat etc), and even this isn't a sure thing, as Pimsleur asks you to recall a phrase based on a certain input, i.e., what's been said or asked by the other speaker ... In a language as morphologically monstrous and labyrinthine as Russian (and syntactically flexible), the conflict is obvious. A Russian might say the same thing to you in a thousand different ways, at which point you, the Pimsleuree, are holding your pumpkin between your palms as your eyes bulge and rotate wildly and spittle flies out your mouth (they call this "офигеть" in Russian). The ability to actually generate sentences, in addition to being paramount in all languages, is especially so in Russian owing to its highly complex grammar. For this Pimsleur is ill-equipped. I will say, however, I've purchased Pimsleur for the sole reason that it can't be surpassed in its teaching of pronunciation.

Hi there
how is that different from any other method for beginners ?
No beginner will ever be able to understand a russian "say the same thing to you in a thousand different ways".
Any method has to start by something, and cannot teach everything at once.
Unless supposing that Pimsleur students are brainless parrots, I think they can (hope I did!) understand some logic with which the sentences are constructed, and thus make some of their own, provided they have the vocabulary, which again is a problem for any beginner.
So, in what book can I find this miraculous method which so quickly make beginners autonomous ?

Lyl.

I've just been trying to use as many methods as I can. One method that I've found helpful has been finding some "learner's texts". These are stories in Russian with the more difficult vocabulary translated in the margins of the page. If you can find these, they are great since it saves the time of flipping through a dictionary. I would work through much of a beginning grammar text first, since they expect you to know your grammar and approximately the amount of vocab you would get in one year of Russian study.

I think Pimsleur is honestly one of the best methods for assimilating grammar at the level it works at (since it gives you everything you need to know for the problems then makes you work to retrieve that info), but the total amount of vocab in the Pimseur course is not very large.

Just think about the four skills you need (reading, writing, speaking and listening) and try to make yourself do activities in each of those.

Here's a good resource for life after Pimsleur folks:

http://www.gwu.edu/~slavic/webcast/

With downloadable MP3's, a vocabulary list, and a transcript for each news story, this makes an excellent resource for improving listening comprehension. It's also great for building that particular (and generally not pleasant) set of vocabulary that seems to go with news stories.

I've been using this lately:

http://www.gefix.net/sazov/

Its a free online textbook. It has tests for each chapter also. I didn't get the audio though.

Scott