Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
pushing forward to a new lesson, you'll be keeping your learning fresh and interesting. This
will keep you engaged and make your learning fun. A second, seemingly contradictory, but
actually complementary piece of advice is to be willing to go back and review past lessons
once a new lesson is completed. This can be very helpful, since an integral part of language
learning is developing skill in making the foreign sounds correctly. Making sounds is a mo-
tor skill that, just like any other motor skill, requires repetition to master.
To resolve this seeming paradox of moving forward but still practicing past lessons,
I recommend a technique called “backstitching”. The idea of backstitching is that, after you
complete a new lesson for the first time, you go back and repeat at least one earlier lesson
before advancing to the next new lesson. For example, you might do the lessons in the fol-
lowing order, with new lessons underlined:
1
2
1
3
2
4
3
5
4
6
…
Backstitching allows you to review completed material without ever doing the same lesson
twice in a row. This approach keeps the lessons surprising and makes them more fun. It
also prevents rote memorization and encourages your active involvement. If you need ad-
ditional review, you can always go back further in the sequence once you've completed a
new lesson. For instance, suppose you were following the above plan, but felt after lesson
four that you needed more review. Then you could go back further and follow the sequence
below, with new lessons underlined again:
4
2 3
5
3 4
6
4 5
7
…
This particular approach repeats every lesson three times. Since you're the only one who
can determine how much review you need while keeping your learning fresh, I suggest that
you experiment with different backstitching plans—just keep in mind the general principle
that you'd like to avoid doing the same lesson twice in a row.
To complete our discussion of the Pimsleur audio lessons, I strongly encourage you
to complete at least one lesson a day, with the lessons even done in pieces if necessary.
For example, if your drive to work is only fifteen minutes, as mine is, you can do half of
a lesson on the way there, and half on the way back. This is the approach I personally fol-
low. By making sure to complete one lesson a day, you'll allow your brain to consolidate
the information every night. In fact, you may even begin to have dreams in which you're
