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Are You Learning to Speak French With The Wrong French Language Program?Maybe Pimsleur French is What You're Looking for...Pimsleur French Review
Je suis
fatigué, tu es fatigué, il est fatigué, nous sommes
fatigué, ils sont fatigué. (I'm tired; you're tired; he's
tired; we're tired; they're tired.)
If I had to
learn French that way, I would be totally exhausted,
wouldn't you?
 Well, it doesn't have to be like
that! Pimsleur French 1 teaches
French in a totally different way - one that is
much more natural. Pimsleur French 1 utilizes two
abilities nearly everyone has - the ability to
listen, and the ability to repeat. And it combines
these into a powerful program that can have you
speaking French in no time!
Buy
Pimsleur French I for $200.25
Why is Pimsleur French 1 so
radically
different?
In the old
days, educators thought that the proper way to teach a
foreign language was to teach grammar first. They believed
that students wouldn't be able to "play the game" before
they knew the rules.
But Dr. Paul
Pimsleur, a noted linguist and developer of the Pimsleur
French 1 method, realized that this isn't how a baby learns
to talk at all. Babies don't know the rules of the language
their parents speak. They simply hear their parents talk
and mimic them.
Think about
it. Have you ever noticed that when a parent asks a very
small toddler, "Do you want a cookie?" the toddler will
become excited and repeat "Cookie!" He may not even be able
to say "cookie" properly - it may come out sounding
more like "tootie" or "took." Smart parents will take the
opportunity to repeat the word "cookie" one or more times
as they're giving the child his treat.
But even
though the child isn't yet able to say "Yes, I would like a
cookie, please," communication has been established, and
over time, the child's pronunciation will improve and his
command of the language will grow. Pimsleur French 1 takes
advantage of this natural tendency toward communication and
builds on it, inviting students to listen to native
speakers, repeat what they've heard, and eventually
construct replies of their own.
The Pimsleur
Method
Dr. Pimsleur
isolated four unique components of language
learning:
 anticipation
graduated interval
recall
core
vocabulary
organic
learning
Anticipation takes advantage of the fact that we
can often predict what the other person is going to
say.
When we ask
"How are you?", most of the time our acquaintance replies,
"Fine, thanks."
This
predictability establishes a greeting pattern that
eventually becomes so habitual we can call upon it without
thinking. Pimsleur French 1 utilizes the principle of
anticipation to enable students to come up with quick,
nearly automatic answers to common questions, and provide
on-the-spot translations to words and phrases they've
previously learned.
Graduated interval recall reflects Dr. Pimsleur's interest in
the frequency and timing of
repetition.
All language
learning systems rely on repetition to commit new words,
phrases, and concepts to memory.
But Dr.
Pimsleur's work proved that the frequency with which new
vocabulary is repeated and the order in which the questions
are asked plays a huge part in how well students recall the
new material. Pimsleur French 1 puts Dr. Pimsleur's
theories into practice, enabling you to remember your
lessons more thoroughly than you ever thought
possible.
Another cornerstone of Dr.
Pimsleur's method is his
emphasis on core vocabulary.
Suppose you
were a foreign speaker learning English. Did you know that
experts have estimated there may be more than a million
English words - yet if you learned a mere 2000 of
them, you'd have learned 80% of the words commonly used in
English speech? How can this be? Well, choose a random
newspaper article and count the number of times the word
"the" appears. Now count other common words like "and,"
"to," "it," "because," and "in." You're probably getting
the picture. We use the same words over and over, multiple
times, in the same sentence.
These basic
words are known as your core vocabulary.
Foreign languages have core vocabularies as well, and by
learning all the prepositions, pronouns, and conjunctions
together with a healthy collection of commonly-used nouns
and verb forms, beginning learners are soon able to engage
in a real conversation. Pimsleur French 1 has identified
the words and phrases most commonly used in French speech,
and those are the ones you'll learn
first.
The final hallmark of the Pimsleur
method is organic
learning.
Dr. Pimsleur
felt strongly that language instruction programs that teach
reading and speaking at the same time only confuse the
student, because speaking and reading are two completely
different activities. He returns again to the example of
the infant learning to speak.
Learn French through your ears and
not your eyes!
Children learn
to talk long before they learn to read, and Dr. Pimsleur
concluded that adult language students should follow suit.
For this reason, Pimsleur French 1 is
completely audio-based; grammar, pronunciation, and
vocabulary are taught simultaneously, but entirely through
the ears and not the eyes.
This is all
very technical stuff. What does it mean to you? It means
that Pimsleur French 1 is grounded in solid linguistic
research. It means that someone has spent a lifetime
studying the way children learn language, and has then
applied those observations to the way adults learn as well.
And it means that the Pimsleur method is not some
fly-by-night download hatched up by amateurs with a lot of
time to kill and a pile of money to
make.
Simon and
Schuster, the New York publishing firm that implements this
program, would not have its name associated with Pimsleur
French if they did not believe this was the best
language-learning method of its kind.
I'm
sold - but I need to start learning French
today!
Trust
me - you can! Pimsleur French 1 is
broken down into thirty lessons, each lasting a half hour.
For this reason, it is particularly easy to download from
the Internet, since no textbook is required to complete the
program.
When you've
completed Pimsleur French 1, you'll already be able to
carry on the type of easy, casual conversations friends and
neighbors enjoy the world over. But if you want to learn
more, you'll be ready to progress to French 2 and French 3,
each also composed of 30 lessons, and leading to an amazing
mastery of spoken French.
But first things first. Wouldn't you like to try a free sample lesson to see how easy learning French can be?
(Requires Windows Media Player to play free sample)
Now that you've had a chance
to hear Pimsleur French 1 for yourself, why not order the
entire course for a mere $200.25? You would never be able
to find comparable language instruction at that price
anywhere else. Go ahead - give it a try! You'll be glad you
did!
for only $500.25 and save $140.50! (48 hours in length)
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