How to Get the Most Out of Pimsleur

You’ve decided to go with Pimsleur courses to learn you new language—great! But how do you fully take advantage of the learning opportunity you’ve made for yourself?

Student studying with Pimsleur To get the full benefit of each lesson, try to create the best learning conditions. Choose a quiet place where you can practice without interruption and a time of day when your mind is most alert and your body least fatigued. (It doesn’t matter if you’re a morning person or a night person, so long as you know what’s best for you!) You might study in your car, listening to the program while you commute or travel. You should always listen to the lessons where you feel comfortable speaking aloud, so that you can best respond and practice speaking as the lesson prompts you.

Each lesson is approximately 30 minutes long. Dr. Pimsleur’s research showed this to be the optimum period for learning, after which the mind loses its ability to retain new information. Try your best to work through one lesson each and every day. Whether you move on to the next lesson daily or repeat past lessons you feel unsure about, it is important that you familiarize yourself with the language on a daily basis.

Once you’ve started the program, simply follow the tutor’s instructions. The most important part is to respond aloud when the tutor tells you to do so. There will be a pause after this instruction, giving you time to reply. It is essential to your progress that you speak out in a normal conversational voice when asked to respond. Your active participation in thinking and speaking is required for your success in mastering this course.

As tempting as it is, do not have a paper and pen nearby during the lessons, and do not refer to dictionaries or other books. The Pimsleur method works with the language-learning portion of your mind, requiring language to be processed in its spoken form. You will only interrupt the learning process if you try to write the words you hear.

Guidelines for Success

  1. Listen carefully to each lesson. Always follow the directions of the instructor. Repeat a lesson if you don’t think you have mastered it.
  2. Complete the lessons in strict consecutive order (don’t skip around), doing no more than one lesson unit per day, although the lesson unit for the day may be repeated more than once. Daily contact with the language is critical to successful learning.
  3. Speak out loud when directed by the tutor and answer questions within the pauses provided. Do this prior to hearing the confirmation which is provided as reinforcement.
  4. Do all required activities according to instructions, without reference to any outside persons, book, or course.

We hope these guidelines will help you learn a new language with our Pimsleur courses.

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"There truly is something very powerful and familiar in the way Pimsleur taps into those primitive parts of your brain in the learning process, almost like hypnosis. Having done it successfully, I realize that it is a revolutionary learning protocol that was designed to bypass all the things that would get in the way of me learning and not wasting time."

-- Rick, Nevada

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