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The
Pimsleur Method builds upon the fact that in our daily communications
in our mother tongues, people use a remarkably few vocabulary items.
It has been frequently estimated that the ordinary routines of courtesy
language may consist of between 1,500 to 2,000 items we use and
re–use most of the time; frequently operating 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. It is the lack of this level of native use of a language
that separates the beginning language learner from a native speaker
of a language. Because the content of Pimsleur Programs is based
upon the most frequently used grammatical structures and everyday
vocabulary items in the target 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 Program; and
everyone is comfortable and enjoying the interchange. Naturally,
when you wish to communicate at more advanced levels of the language,
the number of structures and the vocabulary levels—as they
do in your own native language, 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 the learner a sufficient
amount of "everyday spoken language" to give the learner
enough useful content to achieve real–life spoken–language
exchanges, at the very beginning of spoken language training—enough
to undertake and complete several successful encounters to build
the confidence of the learner that it is within his own power
to achieve actual communicative exchanges with genuine eye–contact
and satisfaction for the time invested in learning!! From this
point on, language learners KNOW they can speak and understand
by this kind of language training, and the limit is to acquire
the basic core of the target language from Levels I, II, and III.
Pimsleur takes the fear out of learning what—when approached
in the "wrong way" seems an impossible task!
We
have all been intimidated, when approaching a new language, by
the sheer number of new words we have come to believe we must
learn. And we partly believe this because we realize how many
years we have been working in our own native tongues—and
many of us hope there is a miracle cure—when in fact there
is the gradual half–hour daily Pimsleur lesson! Extensive
linguistic research has shown that we actually need a comparatively
limited number of words to be able to communicate effectively
in any language. The real trick is not how many words we
learn, but rather which—the most frequently used words
—THE ACTUAL CORE OF THE LANGUAGE we easily acquire and use
with the appropriate structures
Language
can be divided into two distinct categories: grammatical structures
(function words) and concrete—everyday —vocabulary (content
words). By focusing on function words and enabling the student
to comprehend and employ the structures of a new language, Dr.
Pimsleur found that language learners were able to more readily
put new working vocabulary to use in conversations with native
speakers of the language.
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