The Four Key Pimsleur Concepts Explained from Pimsleur Direct
The Four Key Pimsleur Concepts Explained
Pimsleur language courses encompass four key concepts that Dr. Pimsleur advocated, based on his extensive research and experience with effective language training. The four keys are: “Graduated Interval Recall,” the “Principle of Anticipation,” “Organic Learning” and “Core Vocabulary.”
Graduated Interval Recall
Graduated Interval Recall is a complex name for a very simple theory about memory. No aspect of learning a foreign language is more important than memory, yet before Dr. Pimsleur’s work, no one had explored more effective ways for building language memory.
In his research, Dr. Pimsleur discovered exactly how students remembered new information, for how long, and at what intervals they needed to be reminded in order to retain it. He found that if students were reminded too soon or too late, they failed to retain the information. This discovery enabled him to create a schedule of exactly when and how the information should be reintroduced.
Let’s suppose you learn a new word. You tell yourself to remember it, you repeat it a few times right away, but after five minutes you can’t recall it. If you’d been reminded of it after five seconds, you probably would have remembered it for maybe a minute — then you would have needed another reminder. Each time you are reminded, you remember the word longer than you did the time before. The intervals between reminders become longer and longer, until you eventually remember the word without being reminded at all.
Pimsleur courses are designed to remind you of new information at the exact intervals where maximum retention is possible, and needed. Each time your memory begins to fade, you will be asked to recall the word. Through this powerful method, you progress from short-term to long-term memory without being aware of it, while avoiding the monotonous rote repetition used in traditional language courses.
Principle of Anticipation
The Principle of Anticipation requires you to “anticipate” a correct answer.
Practically, what this means is that you must think about the situation and retrieve the answer from your own memory before it is confirmed in the lesson. It works as follows: The lesson will pose a challenge by asking you, in the new language: “Are you going to the movies today?” There will be a pause, and, drawing on what you’ve learned or heard before, you will say: “No, I went yesterday.” The instructor will then confirm your answer: “No, I went yesterday.”
Before Dr. Pimsleur created his unique self-instruction learning method, the attempt to teach spoken language was based instead on the principle of rote repetition, followed by rote repetition, and then more rote repetition! Teachers drummed words into the students’ minds over and over, as if the mind were a blank canvas that could be painted with repetition. However, neurophysiologists tell us that simple and unchanging repetition has a hypnotic, dulling effect on the mind. Eventually, the words being repeated as rote practice will lose their meaning. Dr. Pimsleur discovered that learning only takes place when there is a meaningful two-way system of interaction between learners and native speakers of the language, in which students receive information and then are asked to retrieve and use it in meaningful exchanges.
Organic Learning
The Pimsleur Method focuses on teaching you how to speak a language as a whole. You will be working on your vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation all at once, while learning phrases that are often used in daily life. Dr. Pimsleur created his language programs with audio because he knew that students of languages would learn better with their ears, not their eyes. This is achieved through what Dr. Pimsleur called “organic learning,” which entails learning on several fronts at once. His system enables the student to learn grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation in a natural and exciting way.
Each Pimsleur course is designed to teach you to understand and speak the essential elements of your new language in a relatively short time. During each half-hour lesson, you will actually converse with two people, using the type of language spoken by people in their everyday business and social life. Pimsleur’s unique method for presenting dialogue relieves you of most common learning problems.
Core Vocabulary
The Pimsleur method builds upon the fact that in our daily communications in our native tongues, people use a remarkably few vocabulary items. It has been frequently estimated that the ordinary routines of the English language consist of 1,500 to 2,000 items we use and re-use most of the time. These words are used frequently on an almost automatic basis: as we greet people, make a comment or two about the weather or a news event, and say goodbye at the end of a typical exchange. Because the content of every Pimsleur language course is based on the most frequently used grammatical structures and everyday vocabulary items in the language, Pimsleur learners are perfectly at home when conversing with native speakers. They have been using these items from the very first lessons in a Pimsleur lesson; and everyone is comfortable and enjoying the interchange. Of course, when you want to communicate at more advanced levels of the language, the number of structures and the vocabulary levels will depend upon the amount of time you have invested in the three Comprehensive Levels of the Pimsleur Series.
Dr. Pimsleur realized the importance of giving students a sufficient amount of “everyday spoken language” to provide enough useful content to achieve real-life language exchanges. Because you’re exposed to natural conversation so early on in the learning process, Pimsleur takes the fear out of learning. We have all been intimidated, when approaching a new language, by the sheer number of new words we think we have to learn. And we partly believe this because we realize how many years we have been working in our own native tongues. Don’t let your past learning experiences discourage you. There is plenty to learn in the half-hour daily Pimsleur lesson, but it won’t leave you frustrated or confused. The Core Vocabulary of Pimsleur includes everything a new speaker needs to know to function in conversation and spoken interactions.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this explanation of the Pimsleur language programs, and hope you’ll check out all the Pimsleur courses we have to offer!
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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."
