Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
where to go. Also, both
Pimsleur.com
and
PimsleurAudio.com
offer the first lesson of each
language as free samples, which can be useful both as an informational and an inspirational
tool.
I need to warn you, however, that when you take your first Pimsleur lesson, you may
be in for an uncomfortable experience. The lesson will be conducted entirely using audio,
and you won't have anything to look at. The result might be that you feel you have noth-
ing to hold on to mentally. This feeling is completely normal and is 100 percent a result
of being raised with Western-style education, where reading and writing are emphasized
to an extreme. A natural feeling that many people have when first beginning Pimsleur is
that they are “visual learners,” and that they need to see what they are learning in order to
learn it. I myself had these exact thoughts, in fact. While these thoughts may be true for
other more visual disciplines like mathematics, language learning is fundamentally an aud-
itory activity. Once self-professed visual learners allow themselves to make sounds, even
if they're incorrect, they find that their brains embrace this natural approach. While it may
take several lessons to wake up the language-learning centers in their brains, these centers
can and do wake up. Thereafter, language learning occurs much more quickly and enjoy-
ably than in previous attempts.
Since it's possible that you'll be mentally uncomfortable during your first lesson, I
recommend that you make yourself as physically comfortable as possible—for instance,
by either lying on your bed or your couch—and that you do your best to remove all dis-
tractions. Don't do the lessons in your car just yet. Instead set aside thirty minutes, find a
relaxing place in your home, turn off your phone, and tell the others around you to please
give you some space for a little while.
Once you've made arrangements and are ready in a relaxed environment, start your
Pimsleur lesson. Pimsleur will take you through imaginary conversations in your chosen
language. You'll immediately learn to ask people if they speak English, to say excuse me,
and to say yes and no. Each lesson is thirty minutes, and during each lesson, you'll only
learn about ten new words. You'll learn to master those words, however, both in pronun-
ciation and in use. Over the course of your many Pimsleur lessons, you'll first become
comfortable participating in elementary, practical conversations before moving on to other
common social interactions. As a result, you'll gain a high level of proficiency in the ba-
sics of the language and, when your Pimsleur study is complete, you'll find it very easy to
assimilate more advanced concepts later.
Since the auditory nature of the Pimsleur method may seem unusual, here is some
additional advice. First, be willing to go to the next lesson even when you haven't com-
pletely mastered the previous one. Many of the concepts will be reviewed at the start of the
next lesson, and giving incorrect answers is an essential part of learning. Additionally, by
