Pimsleur Foreign Language Training Overview

Pimsleur courses an audio-based, self-study program. The program is used by the FBI, CIA, and business professionals to learn a language before traveling to a country where that language is native.

Many languages are offered, from Spanish, Chinese, and German to Albanian, Croatian, and Ojibwe. Some of the courses only have a single level of compact training; others have as many as four levels of comprehensive. The theory behind the Pimsleur approach is that you learn a language by hearing it, and placing it in context. It helps prevent the student from developing an accent because the student just repeats sounds, but does not read it and try to "Americanize" what they are reading.

The training levels available are
• Quick and Simple: The first 8 lessons of the comprehensive course
• Basic: The first 10 lessons of the comprehensive course
• Compact: A 10 lesson program for some of the less common languages
• Conversational: The first 16 lessons of the comprehensive course
• Comprehensive (I-IV): A 30 lesson program that offers a basic proficiency in the language.

The Pimsleur program is great for travel to a country where you want to know the basics of the language. It teaches how to say hello, thank you, and basic courtesy statements, get directions, ask for things to eat or drink, and converse lightly with native speakers.

The course can be completed anywhere you have a CD player, such as in a car, or at home. It is critically important to speak out loud while completing a Pimsleur course, as that is the way to internalize the sounds.

The approach was developed by Dr. Paul Pimsleur, an expert in applied linguistics. One of the ideas he used was graduated recall, now used in the training courses. Graduated recall means that initially a word is repeated many times close together, and then slowly the time between the same word is lengthened. Eventually the word is thrown in at random intervals throughout the rest of the lessons.

Each lesson lasts approximately thirty minutes, under the theory that anything longer than that will be ineffective because we can only take in a limited amount of new information at a time. The lessons can be repeated as often as necessary, and when the student gets most of the responses correct they can move on to the next lesson.

The speaker that guides the student uses English, while the speaker in the foreign language is a native speaker, and includes both a male and female voice. This helps the student to understand a variety of people while in the foreign country, and also helps when speaking a language where the words are gender specific.

The comprehensive courses does also offer a small booklet to learn some reading basics, but the program mainly focuses on the auditory aspects of a language; that is, speaking and listening.

One of the worst parts of the Pimsleur approach is the limited vocabulary, especially when working with a language that only has a Compact or Comprehensive I training available. It is enough to get started, but another method will be necessary to fill in the gaps.

The other large problem I've had with Pimsleur is trying to learn the basics of multiple languages. The order words are introduced is the same for each language, so if the Pimsleur program is used for one language, and then is used for a second language, it is difficult to not mix the two languages together.

I have really enjoyed the Pimsleur method. I used the Egyptian Arabic program before my trip to Cairo, and was able to converse and comprehend a lot more than I expected to. My biggest disappointment is that they do not offer anything beyond the Comprehensive I level, so I am working with a different program to continue my study.