Thread: New Kid on the Block

Back to your original question, Pimsleur has its problems, but also merits.

IF ALL the conditions below apply:

1) you find it for... very cheap :P , or money is not a problem
2) you have plenty of time to devote to it, and it comes EXACTLY in half an hour chunks (or one, one and a half, two,...) every now and then, when you can listen to it and be ready to speak and pronounce too
3) you are too lazy to start a REAL studying like in school, but want some friendly voice to guide you and help you be active without you even noticing/thinking, but still being active by trying to remember words and pronouncing them often when prompted. You don't have to devise "memorization techniques" or any learning methods, the speaker does everything for you; you have to just pay attention and try to remember the asked words/phrases;

then Pimsleur is for you.

Its advantages:
- you learn to pronounce
- what you learn really sticks
- you learn the "mechanisms" of the language, even some of the basic grammar becomes second nature to you - and it sticks.
- you learn some every day dialogue.
- it is easy, provided you pay attention. Everything is repeated to death, in multiple lessons.

Its drawbacks:
- you learn very little vocabulary. Especially the 2. and 3. courses teach no more than about 5 new words a lesson - that makes for less than 500 words total
- it is not time effective. If you are devoted to studying Russian and learning more in less time, then Pimsleur is not for you. If instead you are ready to spend at least 60 hours (including some lessons repeated twice) at a leisurely studying pace, then it is good for you.
- while they stress "learn as a child: they first learn to speak, only after to read and write", you are not a child. Learning by a textbook is much more effective - and you'll have to learn written Russian anyway, sooner or later.
- they on purpose avoid explicit grammar explanations. You have to "grasp" it by their examples - again, like children. But sometimes it is much more effective to learn it by reading a grammar rule in a textbook than by devising a cumbersome example.

So, I wouldn't be so negative towards Pimsleur - as I confess it helped me more than I expected. But then, it suited me perfectly. I suggest you, if you want to use it, to supplement it with a more traditional textbook - both to learn to read and write, and to get that basic grammar which makes Pimsleur so much easier to use. Besides, every time you meet a word or construct in two different methods, you learn it much better.

The Princeton course is available for free and comes with PLENTY of audio - which is always good. Another free resource is the Sazov (?) textbook, but without audio. You'll find links in this forum. If your French or Italian or Spanish (?) is good, and you find it, many people, me included, swear by Assimil (but Assimil Russian for English speakers doesn't exist). And it is not legally free.

For sure, I prefer Pimsleur to Rosetta Stone. I am trying it for fun, but it is more of a game than a useful resource. With Pimsleur you actively learn the words and sentences, RS instead is more of guessing the correct words - and I see they don't stick with me, at least not actively. It's much easier to recognize (or guess) a written word when you have a few choices, than to actively learn to use that word.

Some people swear by Michel Thomas, but I hate the concept (and the Russian teacher's voice). Practically it is nothing more than a live recording of lessons with one (sure, good and experienced) teacher and two beginning students.

If you prefer "unorthodox" and challenging methods, you could try the Listening-Reading method outlined in the
How to learn any language forums. It requires you to find/create a parallel text (Russian - English) of an interesting for you novel AND its audio version in Russian. Then with multiple steps (reading in English to know what's it about; listening and reading in Russian to associate spoken and written language; listening in Russian and reading in both languages; etc.) you should start to grasp an intuitive feel for the language, without trying to learn every word. Doing it multiple times with a long book, you should eventually learn the language well - at least that author's language. But check in that forum for precise methods and success (or failure) stories.

That's quite a way to put it Leushka. I thank you for your input and your sources! I'm about to snag the Penguin guide from Barns n' Nobles, but I'll also look into the references you've provided. I've been running Tech Support on my computer the last couple of days so I haven't had much time to access my computer. Now that it's all working I can get back to learning!

I plan on taking a Russian courses in my graduate studies, since I need at least two semesters of foreign language to complete my degree. All over it!

Thanks again!