It’s an audio-based language learning course that was developed around 50 years ago by Paul Pimsleur. It’s quite popular among language enthusiasts. I heard about it last year and only decided to try it out a month ago. 

I want to see if it suits my learning style despite my being a visual learner. In this review, I will cover its pros and cons and conclude whether the Pimsleur method really works.

I challenge myself to learn Dutch, a totally new language that I have never learned before. This way I’ll know the effectiveness of the method. I only take the Unlimited German level one so, the review will be based on that and not the whole level.

There is a reason why the Pimsleur Golden rules below are created.

1. Thinking and speaking ensure success
2. Don’t expect to Listen and repeat through the Pimsleur course
3. Don’t try to write anything down or look anything up
4. Focus on audio and instinctive responses that will pop into your head
5. Don’t try to memorize

That is because some of it is indeed effective. I follow each rule diligently even though I find rules number 3 and 5 to be the most difficult. 

I mean, how can you not even try to memorize it? Then, I realized you need to understand how it works first before you can memorize everything.

Pimsleur uses the spaced repetition method where they present you with a word/phrase, you speak it out loud, and get familiarized with the sound.

Before the everyday lesson starts, it repeats the previous lessons which strengthens more of what you’ve learned. I guess that’s why the above rules exist.

Come to think of it, when I finish the lesson and do the exercises needed I don’t look back at it once I close the Pimsleur software.

It emphasizes 2 ways of learning, asking and answering questions. The audio narrator will do that at the same time. So, you really have to participate.

It translates word by word and gives the literal meaning and teaches you how to construct the words together. Apart from that, it stresses accent and intonation as well, not just pronunciation.

To make it easier, it gives examples of how the word should be pronounced by referring to an English word. The way they pronounced it is from back to front. For example sprechen: chen then spre.

Each lesson started by listening to the audio. You’re going to pronounce each word presented simply by listening to it. At this stage, you just have to rely on the audio heavily.

Not to mention blindly pronounce the word without knowing whether it’s right or wrong.

Whenever there are words that aren’t clear to me, I have to rewind them a couple of times because it doesn’t have a reply button. I know I can listen to it during the exercises, but it’s good to have a reply button on the spot.

I did tell you it’s audio-based right, so don’t expect to see pictures whatsoever. You have to use your imagination when the narrator asks you to “imagine you are in a restaurant and the waiter...”

People who are visual learners might find it a bit difficult. Me, not so difficult. Who says to be visual you have to physically see it? 

I mean you can use your brain to mentally visualize it, right? If I can do it, so do you.

Just when I thought I was getting comfortable with the first stage, it soon became confusing at the other stage.

There, there is the text version of the audio in the Speak Easy lesson. To familiarize yourself with the speed and pronunciation so, you can start talking like a native, you have to do role-playing the male and female characters in the audio.

Spoiler Alert: If you think the spelling and the pronunciation are going to be the same, you’re so wrong. The way they pronounce words that start with V sounds like F, W sounds like V and S sounds like Z, etc.

It takes me quite a while to get used to it.

If you take out the previous lesson included in every lesson, the length is a bit short. Some may find the amount of vocabulary presented within each lesson to be very little. 

I think they created the course (in terms of vocabulary addition) very well because rather than throwing a bunch of words, they focus more on how to make sure it stays in your head for god knows how long.

It might be just me, but there are times when the voices sound as if it is spoken by a non-native speaker - an American to be exact. Don’t ask me how I know.

I just know because I pay more attention to accent and pronunciation when learning a foreign language, so that includes English.

They do teach you about it, but not directly and it’s very little. Up until now, I’m still confused about when to use mir, mich, meine, sie, ihnen. 

Talking about that, Pimsleur teaches you both formal and informal ways to converse with people but is geared more towards the former. It’s great with people we don’t know, but I’m definitely not going to speak formally with my friends. That’s just… awkward~

Pimsleur solely emphasizes listening and speaking. It’s all in the head. There is no writing exercise. How can you expect to be good at foreign languages if you’re bad at writing them? 

Don’t tell me “language is spoken and not written” because that doesn’t work for me. It’s true most of the time you’ll do lots of talking, however, that doesn't mean no writing at all.

As I followed along and finished the level 1 course, below are a few questions I asked the Pimsleur support which you may be interested to know. I included their responses as well.