BS: Pimsleur approach any esperience?

Subject: Obit: Pimsleur approach any esperience?
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 28 Nov 03 - 08:46 AM

One of the bottom screen ads that came up this morning was for a failsafe (sic) system for learning Greek: The Pimsleur Approach.
Allegedly usd by the CIA (may explain no WMDs found!).
Has anyone used this system of language teaching (any language) and have a view on it?

RtS
(Efharisto poli)

Subject: RE: BS: Pimsleur approach any esperience?
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 30 Nov 03 - 03:33 AM

Refresh! Mia fora.
RtS

Subject: RE: BS: Pimsleur approach any esperience?
From: Jeanie
Date: 30 Nov 03 - 06:49 AM

By strange spooky flukey coincidence, my daughter brought home from the library yesterday a set of 5 cassettes of Pimsleur "Speak Spanish in Eight Easy Lessons" - it must be pretty effective, because she got down to it straight away and stuck at it, with my evening viewing of "Have I Got News For You" etc. punctuated by lots of "Entiendo un poco" and "Hablo espanol" and so on.

The blurb on the back of the cassette box says:
"The Pimsleur method will have you speaking Spanish in just a few short, easy-to-use lessons" - well, it certainly got her speaking straight away. The fact that she knew she was pestering me added to the incentive and enjoyment, no doubt !

"No books to study. No memorization drills"
Even with Lesson 1 (and I have no idea how far she is into it), she was wanting to write things down and went online to find a Spanish site to look up the words.

I think the lack of written language *may* be a drawback to this method. I trained and worked as a French and German teacher, and one of the biggest drawbacks to the entirely oral, total immersion method is that quite early on, the students will be writing things down, whether you want them to or not. This can cause problems later, when you introduce the written forms of a language, which are likely to be very different from the students' own phonetic/anglicized attempts at spelling.

If you don't write anything down, then I would think that the Pimsleur method would be a good introduction, especially if your memory is more aural than visual.

From what I have heard of the cassette, it seems to have a sensible mixture of the foreign language and English. Being totally non-visual, it has to !

I would avoid at all costs any language teaching method which relies entirely on the use of the foreign language: this used to be the trend (in schools and for adult self-taught courses) but thankfully it is going out of fashion now. If everything is in the foreign language, you have no way of knowing whether you have properly understood it or not (and the teacher has no way of knowing whether the class has "got it" or not). There is an apparently true story of a "total immersion" French teacher, who spent a whole year having the following conversation in perfect French with his class "Good morning, class ! How are you today ? "Good morning Sir ! Very well, thank you". One day, something prompted him to ask what it was they had just been saying. "Well, you come in all flustered and say 'Hello, sorry I'm late again' and we say 'Oh, don't worry, that's OK, Sir, we're used to it."

See if you can get the Pimsleur Greek tapes from your public library, Roger, before paying out any money. It seems to me that it could be a pretty succesful method.

- jeanie

Subject: RE: BS: Pimsleur approach any esperience?
From: Amos
Date: 30 Nov 03 - 10:13 PM

Here are some prices and descriptions, Rog.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Pimsleur approach any esperience?
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 04:03 AM

Thanks, the full course looks pretty expensive. I think I'll stick to my existing tapes to improve my accent and my various phrase books and dictionaries to improve my vocabulary. It's been a long time since we did evening classes and I think my grammar is getting shaky -tenses especially, must get back to the books!

RtS

Subject: RE: BS: Pimsleur approach any esperience?
From: Big Mick
Date: 02 Dec 03 - 12:36 AM

Roger, I can vouch for this method. I learned to speak Spanish while living in Baja California after I got out of the service. My daughter wanted to learn Spanish, so I got the introductory course for her described above. I listened to it, and immediately wished I had had it available when I was learning. The intro set, actually the first 8 lessons from the full set which cost about $200.00 US. I ended getting the full set and it has improved my Spanish, and the wunderkind is doing very well too. It will be easier if you have some background (easily obtained by picking up a book) in conjugating verbs.

I would recommend this system.

All the best,

Mick