I decided to give Pimsleur a solid try while learning Romanian. Pimsleur is quite popular with many learners. I myself have Pimsleur courses for Portuguese and Russian. However, in both cases, I already had an intermediate level in the language and found the courses too boring. With Romanian, I have the chance to review Pimsleur as a true beginner. In this post, I’ll share with you my thoughts on Pimsleur and its value as a language learning resource.
Pimsleur: A Strong First Impression
The material is extremely well made. The quality of the recordings is excellent. The voices are clear. I like that the material is not too demanding, and it’s full of repetition. Pimsleur introduces you to simple words and phrases. You’re given the meaning in English and asked to use the new material in various hypothetical situations.
Each Pimsleur lesson consists of 30 minutes of audio. I’ve listened through 10 lessons. I mostly listen to the Pimsleur lessons while driving, exercising or doing the dishes. I like the flexibility. Every lesson starts with a short dialogue, and you spend the next half hour repeating and dissecting it in different contexts.
For example, the narrator will prompt you to ask and respond to a series of questions in Romanian.
Do you want to have lunch? Do you want to have lunch now? Do you want to have lunch later? Do you want to have a drink? Do you want to have a drink at my place? Do you want to have a drink at your place? I want to have a drink.
It just goes on and on like this for the entirety of the lesson.
Pimsleur Does Not Cover Enough Vocabulary
One of Pimsleur’s shortcomings is that it covers very little. There’s simply not a lot of vocabulary or variety across the lessons. The first lesson, which cost me $27, mostly covered the following phrases:
- Do you understand Romanian?
- Do you understand English
- Yes
- No
- Do you want to have a drink?
- Do you want to have dinner with my at my apartment or in a restaurant?
- Where is Bulevardul Unirii?
- Where is Lipscani Street?
Personally, I don’t consider Pimsleur a sufficiently rich resource for vocabulary. These phrases are arguably important, but I’d prefer to enrich my exposure to the language. Repetition is good, but such strict repetition quickly becomes dull and limiting.
Reading through a single lesson of Teach Yourself on LingQ, I’m already covering more vocabulary than what’s given in the entire Pimsleur course. LingQ’s mini-stories in Romanian contain nearly 2,000 different words. Pimsleur does not provide the learner with ample exposure to the language.
Pimsleur Lacks Reading Material
Why is there no transcript? I can’t understand why Pimsleur wouldn’t provide a transcript. Often, I’d hear a phrase and wouldn’t quite catch it. I don’t instantly grasp the sounds because I’m not used to listening to Romanian. If I could read it, I’d see how Romanian spelling works and have a better shot at remembering (and pronouncing) the word correctly. It’s a bit frustrating that Pimsleur overlooks the value of written material.
In fact, it’s a missed opportunity to not emphasize reading in Romanian. I downloaded some Romanian newspaper articles into LingQ. Looking up vocabulary as I go, I’m interacting with a much larger volume of the language and developing a better feel for how the language is structured. Also, I have to admit that the newspaper articles are much more interesting than the actual content on Pimsleur. The hypothetical conversations are not interesting.
Tip: While Pimsleur prioritizes listening over reading, LingQ ensures that learners can read and listen simultaneously. Many of LingQ’s resources come with audio. If there is no audio to begin with, you can automatically generate one.
Pimsleur is Akin to Memorizing a Vocabulary List
Pimsleur is based on the idea that you’ll learn the language through spaced repetition. So far, I’m not finding that to be the case. When I’m prompted to say something, I’m not able to say it. I’m not able to recall material from first lesson quickly enough. I don’t have any meaningful connections or associations with these random phrases.
My experience with Pimsleur leaves me wanting denser content. I just want to read and listen to the target language, but with more authentic material. Instead of spaced repetition, random repetition through ample reading and listening still exposes you to the most common words and phrases. The key differences are the greater contextual variety and higher level of personal interest.
Spaced repetition is for studying vocabulary lists. To me, Pimsleur just feels like memorizing a vocabulary list.
Pimsleur is Comfortable
There’s a large amount of English in each Pimsleur lesson. I’m sure that many users find this comforting, especially to those who are nervous about completely diving into the target language. However, if you’re in a hurry to learn the language, I don’t think Pimsleur is the way to go. Perhaps it works as an icebreaker, but the pace is too slow and the immersion is insufficient.
Now, despite the slow place, do I have a decent amount of go-to phrases in Romanian? Sure. There’s an advantage to repetitive listening. I’ve been able to pick up a lot of phrases successfully from Pimsleur. However, to quote Manfred Spitzer, there’s a balance to be had between repetition and novelty. The brain requires repetition, but it also needs novelty. Pimsleur offers no novelty.
Final Thoughts: Do I recommend Pimsleur?
In short, I do not recommend Pimsleur. I may get criticized for being too harsh, and I’m sure that there are lots of people whose learning style makes Pimsleur ideal for them. For me, it’s been beneficial. Ultimately, nearly anything you do to spend time with the target language is beneficial. However, would I buy more Pimsleur CDs to progress further in the language? No, I wouldn’t.
As an absolute beginner, I might give Pimsleur another try for another language. Maybe Hungarian. But the lack of novelty makes this a short-term resource. I’ll get bored with it very quickly. At best, I would buy one Pimsleur course to break the ice, but quickly move on to reading and listening on my own with LingQ.
Thank you for reading. Happy learning, and bye for now!
Don’t forget, LingQ is also available for both Android and iOS.
4 comments on “Pimsleur Review: The Good and the Bad”
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I tend to agree with you on this evaluation of Pimsleur. It may very well be because I have a learning style similar to yours, which involves massive exposure to reading and listening to new, and interesting content. Pimsleur is clear and well-produced, and I can see that it would be a good, non-threatening first exposure to a language, especially for those who aren’t really used to language learning in general as something they regularly pursue. For the small amount of actual language content Pimsleur, even with several volumes in a course, it is quite expensive. For the same financial investment you could acquire a lot of good materials from a range of sources. If someone has the money and the inclination, and is new to language study, I’d say “be my guest” and have at it. In a world with so many easily accessible and often free resources out there, I just think that Pimsleur is a steep investment for the return.
First 10 lessons of Pimsleur are a bad test, because they are deliberately making it easy so people feel happy about their progress. Also, those initial lessons focus on getting basic pronunciation down correct, rather than building vocabulary. Finally, Romanian will be an easy language for someone who speaks any other Romance language.
A better test is a language like Russian, where you do the full 90 lessons. For most people, who are beginners to Russian, Pimsleur Russian will kick their ass somewhere starting around lesson 15, and continue kicking it from then on with occasional easy days where you don’t feel mentally exhausted afterwards. Most people will need to repeat lessons occasionally for Pimsleur Russian after lesson 15 or so, and the last thing they will want is more vocabulary, since they will already be feeling overwhelmed. Without the happy feeling from lessons 1-10, many people would give up. And remember, for most people, Russian basic pronunciation, which is what lessons 1-10 focus on, is more difficult than Romanian pronunciation. Здравствуйте is in lesson 1 of Pimsleur Russian, if I’m not mistaken, and yes, they go over and over repeating that word and forcing the learner to repeat it too, as they should, IMO.
I really cannot recommend anyone bother with Pimsleur of they are only going to do 10 lessons, and I don’t recommend it other than for beginners who don’t know a closely related language (any Romance language in the case of Romanian). The right way to use Pimsleur is for beginners to go through a full 90 lessons in three months (new lesson each evening repeated next morning), to get a foundation of correct pronunciation and basic vocabulary in the language, then switch to building passive listening/reading skills for several hundred hours (several years if an hour per day), and finally switch back to making passive skills active.
I don’t think Pimsleur needs a transcript, but they should show a list of new words for each lesson, including their declined/conjugated variations. Then again, not all languages are have phonetic writing systems and even when the writing system is phonetic, it might not help to have the written version. Most Russian beginners are not going to be helped by seeing either Здравствуйте or Zdravstvuite, for example, especially not in lesson 1.
I agree with your review of Pimsleur, namely that it’s too basic, has too little vocab, etc. but at the same time that it’s a good, if too basic, intro to what the language sounds like. Just a hint about one the the difficulties you encountered, amely that you don’t feel you’re able to repeat what you’ve heard when Pimsleur says that’s what you have to. What I’ve found (not with Pimsleur but with any other sources of material) is that if at first you just try to repeat silently, in your head, then after a while (at most a few days), somehow it becomes easy to repeat aloud later. Plus, one added benefit (at least that seems to work for me) is that it helps improving both the accent and the delivery when you start speaking (this might be like those sentences which you said are still with you years later because you’ve heard them so often). Plus isn’t this just the way we learn our first language as children (listening without making a sound for roughtly two years before we venture saying our first word?)
I think your experience with Pimsleur may be jaded a bit by your advanced knowledge as a linguist. For one thing the full level one of Pimsleur Romanian is actually 30 lessons of 30 minutes each. You must have purchased some sort of starter pack. The full course does come with reading material guided during the lessons. I used Pimsleur Spanish along with other resources to help propel me from beginner to solid intermediate. The Spanish courses are provided in 5 levels each with 16 hours of material. As you progress through the levels, less and less English is used until all instructions are in Spanish. I used all five and would recommend them highly except for the expense. I now use LingQ as my primary source for continued learning but I credit Pimsleur with having been a great help along the way.