The Pimsleur Method for Learning Languages
Languages are one of my favorite topics, and I'm always on the lookout for techniques to learn them more effectively. I myself speak five languages to a varying degree: Russian, English, German, French, and Italian. The last four I largely taught myself through trial and error.
Recently, I came across a book by Paul Pimsleur, an American linguist and polyglot. I've heard about his system a while ago but never tried it before. I found a large portion of his advice on learning languages useful and decided to summarize it here.
It's important to bear in mind, though, that this is a review of his book How to Learn a Foreign Language and NOT of the Pimsleur courses. For the latter, you can check out the website of Irish polyglot Benny Lewis here. (For the sake of clarity: this post is not sponsored).
The techniques that Paul Pimsleur discusses apply to learning any language, and are divided among three pillars: grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. I suggest to treat all of them as hypotheses that you test in your journey of learning foreign languages: They may or may not work for you, and that's OK. Adopt the practices that work, and discard the rest.
Let's start with grammar.
1. Effective Techniques for Mastering Grammar
Learn the hardest thing first
A common way to approach the study of language is to go from the simple material to more complex. According to Pimsleur, however, this is psychologically backward, because this way way you expend fresh energy on simple things and are fatigued by the time you get to the complex ones. As a result, you feel discouraged in your study of language.
Instead, he suggests to follow this principle:
Learn the hardest thing first and the rest will seem easy.
The illustration is the study of pronouns which are in many languages notoriously hard to learn. The 'one brick at a time' theory would suggest first learning each pronouns separately and then combining them to see their use in sentences. However, if you start by studying the use of several pronouns in sentences, you'll often see that grasping the concept becomes easier.
Don't be afraid to get to the hard stuff sooner.
Concentrate on communicating
When studying grammar, a lot of us get hung up on strictly following the rules and being afraid to make a single mistake, as if trying to escape severe punishment. The fear is often anchored in reality: So many teachers only focus on mistakes rather than achievements of students, which is extremely discouraging.
The solution is to remember that the ultimate goal of learning a language is communication.
If you get your message across, using your hands, eyes, and whatever else you can muster in addition to words, you have a chance to improve your grammar as you proceed.
Grammar does not have value in and of itself; it is only valuable as long as it helps you communicate with other people.
Verbs: Focus on the key concepts
Verbs are often a tricky part of any language, and grammar books devote an extensive amount of attention to them.
Pimsleur notes that about a dozen of common verbs account for a very high percentage of all verb occurrences. The key verbal concepts include, inter alia:
to be
to have
to be able
to come
to go
to know
to take
to want
to say or tell
to do or make
to see
to give
Master these verbs and their most used forms, and you capacity to express yourself in your chosen language will improve dramatically.
Construct your own grammar
A problem that plagues many grammar textbooks is the triumph of linguistics over psychology. The material is usually structured according to the logic of linguistic analysis, not its 'teachableness' or the student's needs.
The way out is to construct your own grammar curriculum.
What you, as the learner, can do is to construct your own grammar in accordance with your own needs, taking the facts you learn in class or in your book and putting them together to suit your particular learning style.
In other words, grammar does not have to be the same for everyone. Everybody has different goals in terms of learning the foreign language, and it's ok to tailor the grammar you find in textbooks to your own needs.
Your eventual goal is to have in your mind a grammatical schema that will enable you to produce speech in the foreign language. Mistakes are inevitable but unimportant, and as you proceed learning the language, the schema will evolve and improve. What's important is that it should be clear and understandable for you, rather than dictated by the logic of linguistics.
2. Effective Techniques for Acquiring Vocabulary
Construct urgency
To be more efficient in learning new vocabulary, try injecting some urgency into your attitude (btw, works not just for languages but for other projects as well). For instance, set deadlines for yourself. This will help you make progress faster.
Randomize
Paul Pimsleur notes that starting with the ABCs of a foreign language, we are taught as many things as possible in defined orders: The days of the week, the numbers from one to a hundred, the conjugations of verbs. Often we are taught to repeat these by rote.
But some things should be learned out of order—or, more precisely, in random order. That's how we encounter them in life. Knowledge is best when it is free-floating in the mind, available to be recalled at any time, in any order.
So when you learn new vocabulary, try recalling the words in random order, mixing them up. It's going to help you recall them later when you actually need them.
Focus on the most frequent words
The 100 commonest English words actually account for 50% of the vocabulary in a typical English book. Similar patterns can be discovered in German and French.
To maximize learning the vocabulary, Paul Pimsleur suggests to do the following:
- learn the commonest words first because they will accelerate your guessing power;
- begin reading as soon as you have learned 500 to 1,000 common words;
- pick reading material that interests you strongly and continue to learn words following the natural frequencies.
Don't expect reading or listening to help you with speaking or writing
This may sound obvious but you should not expect your reading skill to help you if you later decide to learn to speak.
I have to confess that when I started out with languages, I did exactly the opposite. I was terrified of speaking the language, so I doubled down on reading and listening. Instead of helping me with speaking, this skewed my language skills in the direction of - you guessed it - reading and listening. To this day, for instance, it's much easier for me to read and understand spoken speech that to produce it.
Deliberate work on my speaking skills, however, helped me to even that out. One of the resources I used was italki - a website where you can find a speaking partner for pretty much any language on any budget. This also helped me to overcome the fear of talking to actual people - doing this by Skype felt more liberating somehow.
Work in short spurts
Don't overextend yourself. Learn the language in short, focused sprints. Instead of planning to devote to your target language 2 hrs every day, try 20 minutes, or even 15.
Use 'pockets' of time that you have in your life: Waiting in the queue in a supermarket, or brushing your teeth, for instance.
Paul Pimsleur recalls:
I knew a man who used his shaving time to learn Chinese. He posted a few Chinese characters on his mirror every morning and looked at them while shaving. It cost him a nick or two, but within a few months he had learned five hundred Chinese characters solely while shaving.
Working in short, intensive spurts of time will not only be more sustainable, but may also lower the inhibitions you may have regarding the language.
Let the “living purpose” for which you undertook the language be your guide in how to learn it
When choosing materials for learning the language, keep the goal of it in mind. For instance, if your goal is to be able to visit the country of your target language and be able to communicate with native speakers there, ask yourself at the end of each session: 'What did I learn today that would help me if I left immediately for the foreign country?' If your goal is to be able to watch movies in the original language, or use it for work, or communicate with your partner, adjust the question accordingly.
3. Effective Techniques for Learning Pronunciation
I have to admit that for me personally, pronunciation is usually the hardest. Most of the languages I know, I learned as tools to access certain professional opportunities (e.g., English- and French-speaking moot-courts or German legal literature) and I always regarded proper pronunciation as a luxury, something I can't waste time on until I learn all the intricacies of grammar and vocabulary. This, of course, can be different for you, as it depends on your personal needs for learning a particular language.
Think Sounds, Not Letters
Many language learners, being visual thinkers, try to picture how a word is written before reproducing it in oral speech. That can be a serious impediment, because a lot of languages in the world are not phonetic - meaning they are pronounced as they are written.
The solution here is to reproduce words in your target language by relying on the audio, not visual information. For instance, in addition to the audio materials in the language courses you may take for your target language, try using Google translate or Forvo - an online pronunciation dictionary that is completely free and gives you access to multiple versions of the same word pronounced by native speakers.
First, listen to get the sound planted in your ear. Then, gradually imitate it with your tongue. Do not use your eye till you get the pronunciation right.
Start from the End
To learn the music and the rhythm of a foreign language, Paul Pimsleur suggests to learn long words from the back to the front: Start with the last syllable, then second-to-last, and so on until you reach the first syllable. This will help you retain the intonation of the word, and you won’t risk swallowing the ending.
To make sure this works for you, try both ways and see.
Use a Recorder
Record your pronunciation. Try recording both free speech and reading the material aloud.
I personally can attest that this technique helped me tremendously in improving my spoken English: Already after a few recordings, I noticed the patterns I was reproducing over and over again that I had no idea I did, and could concentrate on working on them.
Think in Sound-Clusters
All sounds are not created equal. Rather, they differ depending on the context and the surrounding sounds, because of the way the tongue must glide from one sound to the next in a word or a phrase. Practice sounds in context, in whole phrases, as opposed to single sounds.
Difficult Sounds in Each Language Are Few in Number
Usually, in each language you'll have a few sounds that are particularly difficult while others will come more naturally to you. Focus on them and remember that pronunciation problems are not endless, as they often seem, and definitely fixable.
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These are the main insights from the book How to Learn a Foreign Language by Paul Pimsleur. As always, hope this was helpful ☺️