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Pimsleur assumes that an adult who is STUDYING a new language will learn the same way a child does merely by listening. THAT IS NOT TRUE. Children learn language by association. They are completely immersed in an environment where they constantly see and hear adults and older children moving their lips, speaking sounds, making facial expressions, and pointing at things. Moreover, children can interact with and touch things in the environment in which they are learning language without the hindrance of already knowing a language. An adult STUDYING a second language will naturally initially filter the foreign language through a translation into their first language and associate the foreign word and sentence structure with their native word and sentence structure. Spewing sentences in a foreign language without a literal translation that shows adults word-for-word how the foreign language structures it’s sentences is merely a frustrating, laborious, and fruitless means of passing the time. And to heap on more frustration, it’s nearly impossible to hear what the voices are speaking: did he just speak with a “b” in that word or a “d”?

I love Pimsleur. It’s the best language learning out there no doubt. But the latest version of the app doesn’t work well if you aren’t using “unlimited” or the monthly subscription it seems. I have lessons I want to review and program I didn’t quite finish that I purchased some time ago. I can no longer just downloaded the files as MP3 and play them while driving- have to use the app. Which is great for new lessons but if I try to repeat a lesson- any lesson - it just spins and spins and never loads the lesson. I have left it to load for as long as an hour just to see and - nothing. This is the case even if I unmark the lesson as “complete” and change it back to in progress. I have even tried uninstalling and reinstalling the app. Since I do mostly use this while driving and on the go I often do need to repeat things but with this version of the app I cannot, making it much less useful for me especially since I can no longer download the files to play separate from the app even online (or if I can I cannot figure out how to do so) even though I have purchased them.

Pimsleur has been one of my language learning go-tos for many years (Russian, Spanish, Romanian, Italian) But when I reported that the app freezes up when you stop and start, the helpdesk informed me that I was Doing It All Wrong and would Fail to Learn because I was stopping after the prompt in order to have more time to respond. Language learning is my hobby, so I know that everyone needs to use tools in the most effective ways for them. I slow down Pimsleur to 75% or 80% while I’m in the shower, and when I’m working directly with the program I stop the app to have time make my responses, exactly the way I patiently wait for my English students to put together new sentences. (If I didn’t do this, I would feel like a failure and lose my motivation, plus I’m not willing to listen to those lessons more than twice!) So consider downloading the MP3 and using a more flexible MP3 player that will correspond to your own language learning preferences. In the meantime, I do indeed recommend Pimsleur for starting a new language (but be sure to use other resources as well.)