Pimsleur progression

[renzhe]

How would you rate your level after finishing it? Can you say the phrases you've learnt fluently? Can you hold simple conversations?

I've found Pimsleur to be good for getting a good feel for the sound of the language and a decent pronunciation, but somewhat limited in how much you actually learn. Then again, in 3 months, you can't expect too much anyway.

[Neil_H]

I have been studying seriously since summer 2008 so Pimsleur was not my first training in Mandarin. In the last 3 months I have also spent 1 hour every evening practising conversation with my Chinese wife. We try to incorporate the words learned from Pimsleur into the training.

I would say that this along with the study I had already done before this has been very beneficial.

Yes I can hold conversations now. In some of our practice sessions we pretend to be her parents in China with me being the father and carrying out daily tasks like travel, going shopping, meeting friends, meals out, health problems and most of the important stuff you need to get around.

My wife switches characters from being her mother over to the shop assistant or the character I am talking to. An example a few nights ago was first

1. Deciding what we wanted to do that day

2. Going to the clothes shop

3. Specifying size and colour of some men’s trousers

4. Negotiating on price with an offer to buy some more if cheaper

5. Rejecting the first item due to a fault

6. Buying both trousers and jumper at a discounted price

We spaced this out to last 45 minutes

Another day would be buying meat and vegetables for a home cooked family meal

Travelling from one city to another via train and taxi. Meeting someone at the other end.

We go over these sort of essentials every day and try to continue it like her parents actual lifestyle. This helps me to visualise it from my time in China and makes it more interesting.

[wrbt]

I agree with that. Pimsleur great to get the basics of how it sounds and fundamentals of grammar but it's very weak as a tool for building vocabulary so why bother with the time to get the vocab if you're likely going to have to move on to another tool/method that will be building your vocab anyway?

What's your goal? If it's to learn Chinese you'll surely be picking up a textbook or something next and you'll cover the words again.

[Neil_H]

Her brother runs his own business so I have played the part of him to incorporate the very business like style of the Pimsleur lessons.

Customers, meetings, hotels, booking, travel etc

We add new words to the vocabulary when they come up in conversation.

[renzhe]

Sounds like you have a very good practice routine down!

[Neil_H]

Yes Thanks,

I am wondering what would be best to start with next. I am only interested in the speaking and listening side at the moment. I will be going back to China in September 2009 and want to be able to speak to my parents in law and relatives at a reasonable level.

I keep getting the feeling it would be best to work on the 800 + words I know and practice speaking with them rather than adding more words and forgetting words I have recently learnt.

I also think working on grammar and the ability to speak faster would be more beneficial.

Once these are all tied down I can go back to learning more vocabulary. Does this make sense and if so what should I do first?

[taylor04]

Best way is for your wife to not speak or understand English. It would force you to use Chinese all the time. It would be frustrating at first for both of you but it would lead to the best speaking and listening skills within such a short time period. Of course continue to add words the two of you are using.

It also depends on your goal. This is fine for basic conversations but if you want to get to advanced stages you need to work on your foundations, pronunciation, tones, etc.

[dfunkyfresh]

Pimsleur is fantastic, but best if you can find the Chinese-pinyin-English script for each lesson on line.

I remember finding this transcript in this forum somewhere, just search around and you should be able to find it.

I was much like Neil_H in terms of my study habits - one lesson each day.

When I was studying Pimsleur I didn't know any Chinese, I just arrived in Shanghai "fresh off the boat". All I had was Pimsleur and a Pinyin book.

Because I didn't have the Pimsleur script, I actually painstakingly wrote it out in pinyin with correct tones and everything. I did this for every lesson.

I was speaking to myself for those 1st three months and probably looked like a crazy person, haha.

But my pronunciation and speaking and listening are badass because of Mr. Pimsleur.

Get a script, and speak to yourself when the tape tells you to! Do 100% comprehension, not of this 80% BS, haha ;)

[Lawal]

This is only for the sake of clarification, And backin up the last post. The mention of 100% comprehension got alot of dissaproval, for me personally, it came easy, so i wont have it otherwise, if it didnt the perfectionist in me will want to giv it a try until i fail, which doesnt say much about how far i can get in the language. I doubt tho, any route you take will get you prosecuted, it workd wel for me and increased my pronunciation tenfold with with the 100% comprehension.... Does that mean class is going to be easy... I hope so but dont assume it will be an easy ride for one moment.

Just give it ago - get stuck, move on, get stuck move on til you find what works for you, it definately aint the blue pill and hard work is ahead. Its fun tho... with all the pimsleur languages i tried..