4 ms·

>On the other hand, I found Pimsleur and similar methods of learning languages to be semi-helpful and possibly worth spending money on. Arg. Sorry but I have

by furyg3 17y ago

>On the other hand, I found Pimsleur and similar methods of learning languages to be semi-helpful and possibly worth spending money on. Arg. Sorry but I have to disagree. I used Pimsleur to get up and running quickly with Dutch, and later realized that (other than for practicing basic pronunciation) it's worthless. That was two/three years ago, and now that I'm at a much higher level, I've gone back and listened to the phrases they wanted me to learn. Junk. Some phrases were severely antiquated, words were mis-translated so you may be saying a phrase and you actually don't know what you're saying, etc. The only thing it's good for is listen/read/repeat pronunciation, and that's not so good when driving. Rosetta Stone's a bit better since you're listening/reading/repeating, and learning some real vocabulary, but you're spot on: it feels like it's for kids. As far as language learning software goes, I only found one that was worth anything, and it came with a Dutch textbook (CODE series... Dutch only). It has movies/audio/text with quizzes afterward, vocabulary/grammar exercises, and listen/repeat/playback feature. Pro-tip for the OP: Languages are living things, you can't learn them by yourself. Any native speaker, no matter how unprofessional or unskilled at language teaching, is much more help then some software tool. Your office cleaning lady (who's probably better at Spanish then you'll ever be) earns less than $10/hour. For the same price of Rosetta Stone Spanish 1-5 ($700) you could have 70 hours of speaking time with a really interesting person. I found a Berkeley exchange grad student who was teaching Dutch for $15/hour on the side, learned a lot, and we ended up falling in love with each other. Not saying that will happen for you, but it reinforces my 'find a native speaker' method. :)

silencio 17y ago
Well, they're fairly useless on their own, it's mostly using them in conjunction with other methods of learning (i.e. a good textbook or two, a few movies, podcasts, games, talking to native speakers) that makes them helpful because you get a little practice where you might not otherwise. Not sure if the quality of these language learning tools depend on the language being taught and perhaps with individual learning preferences as well. I thought Pimsleur for Mandarin was acceptable and similar to the texts I was using, and since I had the most trouble listening and speaking Mandarin (as opposed to reading/writing), it was helpful to me. But again, disclosure: most of the language programs and resources I've tried were free through school, which was immensely helpful in deciding what I liked and didn't like. I'm not entirely sure I'd buy Pimsleur either ;)

by furyg3 17y ago

silencio 17y ago

Well, they're fairly useless on their own, it's mostly using them in conjunction with other methods of learning (i.e. a good textbook or two, a few movies, podcasts, games, talking to native speakers) that makes them helpful because you get a little practice where you might not otherwise. Not sure if the quality of these language learning tools depend on the language being taught and perhaps with individual learning preferences as well. I thought Pimsleur for Mandarin was acceptable and similar to the texts I was using, and since I had the most trouble listening and speaking Mandarin (as opposed to reading/writing), it was helpful to me. But again, disclosure: most of the language programs and resources I've tried were free through school, which was immensely helpful in deciding what I liked and didn't like. I'm not entirely sure I'd buy Pimsleur either ;)