Is Pimsleur still a great way to train accents?

[leosmith]

Have I used Pimsleur a lot? Let’s just say that if it weren’t for me the Pimsleur company wouldn’t be able to diamond stud their gold plated swimming pools. I’ve used it for Japanese, Mandarin, Thai, French, Russian, Korean and Tagalog. Although I wouldn’t make a general statement like “it’s a great way to train accents”, I would say “it can be a great help in developing your accent”.

Here’s what I wrote back in 2011, and my method hasn’t changed much:

Knowing that I want conversation first, I start out with pronunciation. I prefer to learn isolated words or even
syllables, then build up to sentences. That being said, I spend very little time on isolated pronunciation practice
compared with other aspects of the language. But it's very important to make sure I can reproduce all isolated
sounds correctly, and I never skip this step. Of course, in order to do this I need to use the language's script.
Although I believe all pronunciation could alternatively be learned by Romanization, I've learned that for me it is
usually worth it to learn the script in the beginning. Again, not the most comfortable way, but in the long run,
the best choice for me. So I normally learn basic pronunciation at the same time I learn the script.

But I'm not through with pronunciation. It takes more than parroting words and chorusing sentences to get good
at it. This is where Pimsleur fits in. (And I admit to having designed part of my language program around Pimsleur
rather than just stumbling upon it and finding it to be the best fit. That is a moot point in my mind, because in
my mind I have taken the best features of the best course and made them work their hardest for me, and made
the bad features irrelevant.) Pimsleur with it's beautiful, clear pronunciation of the most basic vocabulary and
sentence structures. After the first lesson, it only adds 5 or 6 words and a little bit of new grammar, which allows
me to really focus on pronunciation while still progressing in the language a little in other ways. And the
pressure of answering in the time allotted is a superb preparation for conversation. I'm not saying that the time
limit is enough to simulate reality, but it's a start. It's extremely important to answer in a timely manner, and I
will never ignore this fact in my training. Of course, it's a rare person who can listen to any program and repeat
every sentence perfectly without ever having seen the spelling. That is why I always use a transcript. Even if I
have to create it along the way, I use a transcript. This is getting off the pronunciation wagon a little, but since
it's such low hanging fruit, I take the opportunity to put those sentences and words into anki, as 2 way
flashcards. This gives me a primer for reading, as well as review and a visual memory hook for all material I've
learned.

One thing I want to clarify, the “transcript” I talk about isn’t a full transcript by a long shot. It’s the opening dialog and the new vocabulary, and only amounts to 10-20 total entries per lesson.

While a transcript is not provided to go along with the audio lessons, if you purchase the Premium course, the "transcript" is integrated in the premium features to help you review course material and get in deeper with the written language.

That sounds great! Is it possible to copy and paste this text into my own spreadsheet, or at least freeze it so I can type it easily?

My closing comments – it’s the results rather than theory that makes me so fond of the program. And it’s not just me; I’ve heard so many positive comments on the pronunciation of learners who started with Pimsleur, often from teachers, that I would happily recommend it for that purpose.

[Skynet]

I have been able to imitate new sounds from a Pimsleur course (kh in Farsi ...) but this is not the norm

Before Pimsleur Farsi and Dari, I sounded like a cat with the pneumonic form of the plague trying to dislodge a fur ball in my throat each time I tried to use /gh/ and /kh/! Pimsleur is better suited to deep-pocketed language learners who are learning tonal languages and languages that have a script that they cannot yet read. I found my copies in the library- a privilege that the vast majority of language learners cannot enjoy.

NOTHING can justify the astronomical price of their products, especially when you learn 5/6 words per lesson. As I have already shown, that money would be better spent buying refurbished copies of Assimil and/or Linguaphone.

What I believe is the number one problem emerging in this thread: the demonisation of French. It is not significantly more difficult than most other European languages, you don't need to spend hundreds of euros to learn just the basics, and the pronunciation and ortograph will not be that much of a problem, if you put in the efforts. The myths are just discouraging the learners and making tons of companies profit from it. For example Pimsleur. Learning the first few hundred words, some touristy phrases, no grammar, that's possible with many tools for free.

Really, French is an exception among the mainstream languages. When it comes to the others, I have never encountered such a wall of discouragement from the publishers, teachers, internet communities, and the general public. The paranoia is stupid and leads to lots of spending.

I agree with Cavesa. Sure French takes a bit more getting used to with its orthography rules, but it's nothing to really fear. Making mountains of molehills, we are.

I know that I am in the infinitesimally small element of the population that ENJOYS finding solutions to problems and showing naysayers and sceptics that it can be done, but I too agree that French has been vilified to the power of infinity. I really don't understand how English speakers can say French orthography is difficult, when that of English is much worse! To highlight this, I asked my friends to write down the following sentence that I dictated to them: "The political climate cast a pall over the economy." All of them spelt 'pall' incorrectly as "poor", "pole", "poll", "pore" and "Paul." Yes, there are those two pesky accented French 'e's, but after two-three weeks, I could distinguish them without staining my attention.

French is just another living human language! I expect this level of melancholy to surround an extinct language isolate like Elamite or Sumerian.

[Deinonysus]

I have been able to imitate new sounds from a Pimsleur course (kh in Farsi ...) but this is not the norm

Before Pimsleur Farsi and Dari, I sounded like a cat with the pneumonic form of the plague trying to dislodge a fur ball in my throat each time I tried to use /gh/ and /kh/! Pimsleur is better suited to deep-pocketed language learners who are learning tonal languages and languages that have a script that they cannot yet read. I found my copies in the library- a privilege that the vast majority of language learners cannot enjoy.

NOTHING can justify the astronomical price of their products, especially when you learn 5/6 words per lesson. As I have already shown, that money would be better spent buying refurbished copies of Assimil and/or Linguaphone.

Well… I would disagree with this but I think it raises an interesting point.

The point of Pimsleur is not to learn vocabulary. Don't think of it as a full language course. It's a way of extensively drilling short responses to simple scenarios. It's very good at that, and that's basically all it's good for. I think it's worth the money, for what it is (although I do go through my library when I can).

I'm not familiar with Linguaphone, but Assimil teaches a completely different skill set than Pimsleur does. It's mainly focused on paragraph-length reading and listening comprehension skills. It does have speaking practice in the active wave but that isn't timed or spontaneous like Pimsleur is, so it doesn't train you to answer quickly or automatically. You can shadow it and that will probably train your accent as well as Pimsleur can, but you'll still just be repeating exactly what you hear rather than coming up with your own responses. Honestly, I'd say that there's very little overlap between what Pimsleur and Assimil can do for you.

Obviously if you are able to get a lot of immersion time that will be better than Pimsleur, but that can be hard to get.