Pimsleur vs Glossika

[TheWind]

Hello,

 

I'm getting a 2nd wind on my studying and am looking for some input on some material to help with listening/speaking.

 

I've heard mixed reviews about Pimsleur. Some say it's great while others say it's tidious and didn't help there listening at all.

 

I actually just read about Glossika today in another forum. Not much was said about it, the name was brought up a couple of times.

 

I wanted to to know if anyone has any hands on experience with either of these and there personal thoughts. Pros & cons, etc...

 

Thanks.

Edited January 20, 2016 at 09:27 AM by imron
request for download links removed

[ChTTay]

There's a pretty extensive thread on here about Glossika. It's good if you're looking to drill/shadow sentences and sentence structures.

I'd recommend actually paying for it. It's not like they're a faceless corporation or something. Support the little guy.

[imron]

Just a quick note to remind everyone that requesting download links of pirated educational material is against forums policy.

[roddy]

Glossika topic. Should just take a few minutes to scan, it's not very long...

 

I think the two products are so different it's not really an A vs B comparison. 

[mouse]

Pimsleur CDs can often be found in the local library. Maybe try them first, then if you progress, buy something from Glossika.

[lechuan]

Pimsleur is a progressive course in conversational mandarin.

Glossika is a collection of useful, random, sentences.

I like both. Depends what you want and your level. I see you've done HSK3 already, maybe try the Glossika sample demo and see if it's about your level. Glossika recommends to first listen while writing out the sentences, compare with the booklet, correct any mistakes, then listen and verbally repeat (from what I recall).

I also went on a Chinesepod listening binge a number of years ago, which helped a lot with my listening skills.

[Pokarface]

Try the Pimsleur demo conversations and see if you are at that level.

Glossika is very random, unstructured, and only uses 1 girl to read the whole material!! If you are a man and like me, you'll feel insecure and think you'll sound like a girl when you speak Chinese (specially with the 1st tones) since you WILL mimic her through the whole program 
 

I think that if you're at HSK 3 level you are better off watching and reading 機器貓 since their conversations are easy to follow and everyone in China under 30 grew up watching it pretty much.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHZapPr7D9E&list=PLjEjFLu5R-GRkmcsY9EGnF7YK28qfL5uZ

 

Intermediate Chinese Pods should be good.
 

and if you want FREE and LEGAL access to Colloquial Chinese MP3, listen to CC 1, CC2, and OldSchool CC and see where you stand at. Then buy the book   
http://www.routledgetextbooks.com/textbooks/colloquial/chinese.php

[laowhiner]

Pimsleur is fantastic for pronunciation, getting the sound of the language into your brain, and introducing you to basic grammatical patterns. It forces you to interact with the material, either actively recalling a word/sentence or creating a sentence for the first time when prompted (the latter is less common). A lot of people recommend Pimsleur as an introduction to any language. If you complete it, you will have good pronunciation and know a short list of phrases and grammatical patterns inside out. 

 

Pimsleur is not a great tool for learning vocabulary. I just did a quick google search and found a few wordlists for Pimsleur Chinese 1 - 3. Then I threw them into imron's Chinese Text Analyzer and found the entire series, which takes about 45 hours to complete, has a mere 300 words. This makes sense since each lesson introduces about 10 words and there are 30 lessons in total. 

 

It's also not a great tool for listening. The actors speak at about 70% - 80% of natural speed and have flawless pronunciation. Their speed and pronunciation doesn't sound weird, but it doesn't sound natural either. Further, since you will only be learning around 300 words and very similar grammatical constructions, the listening isn't a challenge at all -- you can practically guess the meaning based on the limited number of things they can test you on. 

 

Pimsleur also is also fairly formal, both in language and scenarios. I hope you are a middle aged businessman who wants to go to the international department to prepare for an upcoming meeting. 

 

I'm rambling, so let me finish by giving you my real world experience with Pimsleur, albeit one from many years ago. I took an intro class in Chinese at university around 10 years ago where we only covered Integrated Chinese Level 1, Part 1. I supplemented that with Pimsleur. Several years after that, I traveled to China for vacation and business, and I still hadn't forgotten most of the Pimsleur material (but nearly all of Integrated Chinese had disappeared). No one had any issues understanding me (you get plenty of comments like "you sound like you're from the north" "your mandarin is so standard" and other compliments that probably aren't true but are nice to hear nonetheless). Problem is, I couldn't understand anybody unless they were speaking at about half speed and using a limited number of words. The best conversations I had were with taxi drivers who taught me words via charades or could lower their speaking level to that of a 2-year-old. 

 

So yeah, it's great for pronunciation, and it's great at forcing you to speak and being to actively recall those sentences later. Not good for listening, not good for vocabularly, not good for learning any grammar beyond a beginner/low low low intermediate level. It's excellent for what it is, but still not worth the 300 or 400 dollars the series costs. Oh, and since you are at HSK 3, you likely know everything in it. 

 

Glossika, in contrast, has at least 3000 words in Fluency 1 - 3  and all of the dialogue is at or around native speeds. Unlike Pimsleur, it doesn't introduce words to be used in dialogues. It really doesn't introduce anything at all. It just throws a few thousand sentences at you and let's you deal with it (not entirely true -- the GSRs use a spaced repetition system similar to Pimsleur, but there's no connection between the sentences, no words being introduced, no new sentences it asks you to form... just straight memorization). It seems to be effective, but unlike Pimsleur, it isn't fun at all.