Pimsleur: Language Learning 4+

I’ve always wanted to learn a second language, but for some reason, I always thought that I didn’t have the intelligence to do it. well, I certainly learned that intelligence can be very subjective, because I have learned so much in such a small window of time and the more you keep going, The more fun you start having with it. i’ve decided that I want to learn how to speak Finnish, the national language of Finland. Something else that really took me by surprise was the fact that as you start learning words, you start making those neuronal pathways between where the original word in your mother tongue language is stored in the word that you learn through your second language, and once that connection is made it stays there, and in the beginning, you’ll start to hear the words, and then the English version of the word Will pop into your head as the definition. And then, as time goes on even more, and you’re learning more and more advanced words, you literally start to think in the new language. all I can say, is I recommend this program to anybody who wants to be able to start speaking a new language right away within the first lesson because it is true. You do learn how to speak some bear essential words in the first lesson.

I’m learning Tagalog, now into my tenth lesson of the first course. Having doubled down with this app and a few other language training apps, I can tell you that you WILL learn with Pimsleur. The training seems rooted in conversations that are both relevant and easy enough to follow along. My one main gripe—and what keeps me from giving Pimsleur a full five stars—is that there is no text to accompany the feature spoken dialogue of each lesson. Supplementary text-based training modules follow the feature spoken dialogue, and it is only by then that I sometimes learn I was speaking incorrectly throughout the whole lesson. For instance, in today’s lesson—in which I learned some words for telling the time of day—I repeated the word “balang” several times. Later, in the text-based training that followed it, I learned that I SHOULD have been saying “pa lang”. “Balang” and “pa lang” sound similar enough to be confused with each other by a new learner like myself, but these are entirely different words. Text to accompany the feature dialogue training would handily prevent such confusion from happening. And, it would obviate the need to have Google translate or some similar app handy to attempt word discovery while training. Pimsleur, add text to accompany the dialogue, and I’ll give you five stars. Everyone else, if you’re seeking to learn a new language, Pimsleur should be among your top picks. Just keep my caveats in mind.

First off, credit where it’s due: over the past 5 months I worked through Italian 1-5. I’ve been in Italy now for three weeks and am having a much easier time integrating at work thanks to what I’ve learned with Pimsleur.
I have been almost constantly frustrated with the app’s seeming dislike of working offline, and its tendency to delete lessons I’ve already downloaded. Thus if I live in an area with poor cell reception but have WiFi at home, I might go out for a walk hoping to do a Pimsleur lesson already downloaded to my phone, and two minutes into my walk find that the lesson is suddenly no longer there. When this happens, the app tends to display a message to the effect of ‘Functionality updated. Re-download lesson’. I’ve found this extremely inconvenient.
Finally, the lesson download functionality itself is inconvenient: say you want to download Level 1, all 30 lessons. You have to individually select each lesson. Ok, no big deal. But then you want to do something else while the messages are downloading: nope. If you switch screens within the app, if you try to open a different app, or if your screensaver kicks on, downloading stops, so you have to restart your download.
Obviously, despite the frustration, using the app is still easier than buying the CD’s and carrying around a CD player. But come on, Pimsleur. Your developers can do better.