Pimsleur progression

[arshavin23]

A newbie here trying to learn putonghua.

Been using the pimsleur course and onto part 2.

Was wondering if I need to be able to answer all exercises correctly without pausing before moving onto the next unit?

[shivasprogeny]

Usually language teachers go by the "80% rule". If you think you can understand and respond to 80% of the language material then you are ready to move on.

The idea behind this is that in a real L2 situation, you are rarely going to be able to understand 100%. But 80% is enough that you can grasp the meaning of the speaker's words and ask you can ask clarifying questions if needed.

[renzhe]

I thought that the point of Pimsleur was that you do one lesson per day, no matter what.

They use spacing similar to SRS to remind you of new vocab at correct intervals, that's the main strength of the approach.

[Lawal]

Harsheness not intended, but why go to unit 2 if you are still on 80% comprehension, dont you think its a bad habit you'l carry on onto unit 3 and possibly when you come to learn the language properly?

My advise is go over unit 1, if u have a very good base, 2 will be easy for you, though if u learning it for fun n to impress, then i guess you can get by with the 80% comprehension all the way through.. Its always good to be 99%. All the best.

[renzhe]

I seem to remember that this is the way that the Pimsleur authors have intended it. I might be wrong, though.

Its always good to be 99%. All the best.

I don't want to derail the thread, but I diasgree. 20% of the effort will get you to 80%. Learning a language is inherently lossy, and you will forget some things. It is a part of learning. In my experience, you will learn much faster this way.

You will pick up the parts you've missed as you progress.

N.B. IMHO, you should not do this with tones or basic pinyin pronunciation, which should sit from the very beginning. But repeating a lesson until you know 100% or 99% of the vocabulary in a lesson is probably a bad use of your time, especially if it takes you one day to memorize 80% and 5 days to memorize 100%, as is usually the case.

[Khotan]

Based on my experience with Pimsleur in a couple of different languages, I would say this: While there's certainly no harm in repeating a lesson, especially if you feel that you don't have a very good handle on the material in that lesson, there's SO much repetition built into the Pimsleur courses that, if you have gotten 80 percent or so of the answers right, you can probably move ahead in confidence that there'll still be plenty of going over the materials you weren't so sure of, and thus an opportunity to reinforce some of the items on which you may feel a bit shaky.

I also think it's important to keep in mind that YOU'RE running the show; you aren't in a race with anyone else, and if you decide to move at a slower pace by, say, doing every lesson twice (or even more frequently, if you like), who's to say you're doing it wrong? Pimsleur just provided you the materials, for you to use in a way that you think makes the best sense for your own needs. As long as you're moving forward, whether slowly or quickly, you're learning successfully. The "one lesson a day" approach over the whole 90 lessons is in fact pretty ambitious, especially for a true beginner, and it's possible to burn out. A more leisurely approach might prevent burnout, and thus be more productive in the end. But it's your own judgment that counts.

[Neil_H]

I am on section 3 lesson 9 of Pimsleur and I have been taking the slow practice approach.

70% of the words they teach you I already knew before starting it. The main reason for starting was to make me start speaking sentences and to build up the speed and grammar.

If I find I can't respond to the questions straight away I have retaken the lesson. I listen to the lesson at least 3 times a day with one two of them just as listening (in the car to work and back) and the other at lunch where I speak back.

Some lessons are more difficult than others as more words get introduced where as other lesson are more of a repeat of the previous words.

If I were you I would take my time and go for the 90-100% approach. It is not just the word but the speed you can say the sentence, your grammar and the practice makes perfect approach.

Write down the new words on a notepad to assist with your learning.

[Neil_H]

I should also point out the amount of time they give you to answer a question is sometimes very short. If you can answer the question correctly with or without pausing then you have learnt that lesson.

[Lawal]

I guess my 90% statement that Renzhe raised was answered by Neil, there is no harm in trying to nail it. I do see the point of Renzhe about the way it was intended but Khotan pointed it out clearly when he said an absolute beginner might not be familiar with all words.

Again wasnt it intented for beginners? Yes it seems so but the little background you come to it with, the faster you pick up. There is no harm going through a whole unit on 80% but if after you finish and earlier lessons are still at 80% will that be progress? I guess its down to the individual and the pace of learning.

When I was taking a two hrs a week class and on pimsleur, my pronunciation and grammar was far far superior than that of my class mates, the grammar especially came and felt natural thankx to pimsleur. I was on a 100%, though in later lessons some were harder than others. I enjoyed Unit one thoroughly.. There is no Shortcut in languages.... only the harder way!

Do the best you can and dont let me/us slow you down.. Good luck.

[renzhe]

There is no harm going through a whole unit on 80% but if after you finish and earlier lessons are still at 80% will that be progress?

Just to clarify my position...

If you achieve 99% retention on a lesson, this doesn't mean that you'll still have this 99% retention rate half a year later.

Similarly, if you achieve an 80% retention rate, this doesn't mean that you'll never learn the remaining 20%.

I've made the experience (especially when learning characters and vocabulary) that some things stick much easier than other things, and that it is wrong to try to force them to be learned at the same time and at the same pace. Very often, moving on to new material will be much more efficient, because the tricky word will show up in a number of different context later, which will make it easier to learn than if you sit down and insist on memorising it right there and then.

I'm just saying that the way the brain learns is sometimes very illogical, and we must accept that we won't remember everything, and that some things will bother us for a long time. By moving on, you will often find that if you revisit a lesson a few weeks later, you'll remember the tricky words much easier than if you'd insisted on learning them in the beginning. Often, moving on will keep you motivated, while staying at the same spot will make you frustrated, which can also affect memorisation. The brain is strange like that.

On topic, I don't know what the best way to approach Pimsleur is, I only seem to remember the recommended approach by the makers of Pimsleur. You have to understand that finishing the entire Pimsleur Mandarin course will land you somewhere in the absolute, total, complete beginner territory, with a command of about 30 words. IMHO, Pimsleur should be done quickly, before you move on to proper learning materials

[Lawal]

I think all this is based on personal experience and I guess that means there isnt right or wrong way to it because many have tried it differenntly and succeded.

Above I said I was on 100% but I remembered on lesson 22 or 23, i was asked how to say excuse me... and I froze! It wasnt that I didnt remember it but at very moment, either I didnt expect the easiest question or my concentration was elsewhere, duibuqi man com'on, it took me a while to recover. Maybe I gave up and pimsluer reminded me. But it never happened and that word I never forgot again. For me that sums up pimpsleur's method and principle of anticipation.

Language when not used, you start to forget, not to speak of one you are learning. This is from experience of a language I grew up with and spoke fluently only to realise after 10years of little contact, I am not as versed as I was before and i'm getting to develop the language skills again, though it took very little time, i still am catching up. I learnt Japanese lesson1&2 5years ago and Cantonese Lesson1&2 3years ago, due to few number of words I remember them both and speak it with speed and confidence... (Just the 2 lessons not units) I have listened to Korean to lesson 3 few months ago after hundreds of hours of watching Korean drama, and I just about remember lesson 1. The point of all this? Its all relative to the individual and level of interest and enthusiasm.

So Renzhe dont feel your opinion is undermined, I agree with you 80% I take it all aboard, just that it varies from one to another, some work well within the rules, some push the boundries outside the rules and still succeed. Maybe we will be having a different conversation had the thread been a request to tell experiences with pimpleur rather than the best way to... I just wish there was a blue pill to take or some kind of MATRIX type upload. 20 languages will suffice me

[Neil_H]

Renzhe,

Completing Pimsleur 1-3 leaves you with far more than 30 words. More like 150+.

[renzhe]

That kind of makes my point

150 words is not a lot.

But it's a good tool to get a feel for the tones and pronunciation.

[ocrtech]

It’s approximately 150 words per unit or a total of about 500 words for all three units combined. I employed the 80% is good enough to move on philosophy. However, I also started using Anki midway through the 3 units to make sure I didn't forget any words.

IMHO the big issue isn't whether you move on at 80%, 90%, 99%, or whatever. It is what do you do independently of Pimsleur to retain what you learned and probably more important what do you move to after you are finished with all of the Pimsleur courses.

After completing all 3 units, I could only pickup 1 out of every 30 words in a Beijing streaming radio talk show. Forget about watching any TV shows or listening to a conversation between two fluent participants.

[querido]

To arshavan23:

When I used Pimsleur for Spanish years ago, I chose to memorize everything before continuing. But, in general, I now agree with renzhe's opinion above. The rest of this post might be off-topic, but it does try to bring together Pimsleur, renzhe, and flashcarding. Here is how it ties together: the flashcard program enables you to move ahead by trying to guarantee that you won't lose anything once you've flashcarded it. I argue below that the right kind of flashcard program can be very much like a continuation of your Pimsleur program, something I had never thought of before. This is interesting because after Pimsleur there is more, yet you can still get a similar "ask me when needed" strategy, instead of "fail and start over".

If you like renzhe's 80+% principle, and the Pimsleur idea generally...

If, instead of failing missed cards back to zero as most flashcard programs do, the scoring were something like this: demote(/2) / hold(x1) / promote(x2), and if overall scoring is 80%+, then it looks like this maintains an auto-Pimsleurization of the flashcard deck: Instead of failing to zero, the cards vie for attention, being brushed-off as far away as you're able to keep them. In effect, each card has a floating "degree-of-memorization/priority", and is seen as often as it needs to be. I just realized that the practical concession in renzhe's principle is the justification. This system acknowledges and implements something like "80+% and move on" in the flashcard realm. It is also more harmonious with the usual scenario in which you keep seeing older items in your studies, and not just on schedule in the flashcard program. That fact is an inescapable monkey wrench in the Leitner/Wozniak system with consequences hard to ponder, which motivated my thoughs on this.

Edited November 21, 2009 at 04:26 PM by querido

[chrix]

anki does too, it has "failed", "hard", "good", "easy", and it lets cards mature...

[querido]

Oops, I forgot: anki has an option to demote instead of fail. Thanks.

I'll edit that last line.

[chrix]

I'm quite new to this SRS business, and I'm very curious if it will have a noticeable effect over the next months

[taylor04]

I will pull some of my economics and apply it here:) You should do something up to the point the marginal benefit equals marginal cost, otherwise said, its not worth trying to get 99% out of the pimsleur lessons, it takes too much time. You can use that time with other materials and get a bigger benefit from it. You should use pimsleur along with flashcards to get the most out of it, but don't listen to the same lesson over and over if you remember more than 80% of it.

[Neil_H]

I have finally finished the 3rd module and can close the door on Pimsleur

It has taken 3.5 months to go through all 3 modules thoroughly taking approximately one lesson per day.