Recent surveys of adult language learners have revealed that their first priority in studying a foreign language is to acquire the ability to understand and to converse with native speakers. Whether you're a traveler, language enthusiast, student, or just a dreamer, the Pimsleur method can help you learn a new language.

How Then Will Adult Language Learners Learn?

Dr. Paul Pimsleur had a vision of a language teaching method which would elevate adult learners to specific and measurable levels of spoken language proficiency after the study of programmed lessons. He had discovered that adult language learners were absolutely unable to acquire fluent speech by breaking down a language into its component parts and studying those parts -- in accordance with the current academic philosophy of language teaching.

Dr. Pimsleur realized that since language is communicated as speech, adult second-language learners could only acquire spoken proficiency in other languages if they were presented language as it is actually used. This began a completely new language teaching approach had to be developed to provide a way for adults to acquire practical, spoken-language proficiency skills.

In the late 1960s, Dr. Pimsleur completed his research and development of the highly sophisticated, self-instructional, fully programmed, foreign-language teaching program. Dr. Pimsleur was neither the first nor the last linguist to observe that specific, culture-based languages exist as an essential part of human life among specific language communities. It is now commonly understood that learning a particular spoken language, with the skill to use it, occurs through communication experiences with members of a target-language group.

But Dr. Pimsleur was the first linguist to develop and create teaching/learning materials based upon this observation. He proposed that since it is the sounds of human speech which provide the raw materials of a language, each and every language learner has to acquire the organized sounds of a specific language as a result of authentic communication experiences with native speakers.

The Missing Link -- The Sounds of Speech in the Brain

The major question that needs to be answered in connection with text-based teaching methods is: What is missing in this manner of teaching another language?

The Answer: adult learners who approach learning to speak a language with a printed text are missing the essential meaning carrying elements of a language--the sound based melody; the intonation; the music that reveals the grammar and the meaning of speech.

Ever since the invention of printing, written language has affected the way adult learners go about selecting the foreign language materials they purchase. As it has turned out, however, Dr. Pimsleur's research has clearly revealed that the written language simply adds another level of difficulty to learning spoken communication, and in fact has prevented learners from acquiring the power of speech in another language. The phrase "visual learner" has been defined in today's environment as an adult language learner who would rather read than speak. Every year many adult language learners continue to select foreign-language materials based on written-language teaching methods and then blame themselves for bring "poor language learners" when they fail to communicate well outside of the classroom.

Pimsleur Comprehensive Language Programs

Each of the three levels of the Comprehensive Pimsleur Programs contains 30 lessons. Every lesson of a Pimsleur Program contains six parts, which is what ensures that you will learn to both understand and to speak the language.