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Michel Thomas or Pimsleur?

I just got Michel Thomas German and Pimsleur German from my library and I was wondering about which one I should start with.

Sep 6, 2014 11:57 PM
Comments · 15
2

Short answer, Pimsleur.

 

Long answer, you should concentrate on pronunciation/orthography in the beginning. Learn to pronounce seperate sounds, then words, then use pimsleur for sentence level pronunciation. I normally start Michel Thomas after I finish at least the first level of Pimsleur. 

 

I wrote a post about this here:

http://polydog.org/index.php?threads/synergy-part-1-my-method-of-learning-languages.4/

September 7, 2014
2

One in the morning, the other in the evening. ;D

September 7, 2014
1

Learning seperate sounds is "supposed to be" part of the Pimsleur method. With Mandarin I had to go back to the alphabet to break apart the individual sounds first but with other languages I didn't have to do that. In Pimsleur the native speaker will break down the words into sections so that you can hear the word part by part. 

 

If you have to choose just one method to start, I think it I would choose the Pimsleur if it works well for you because it really does set you straight into that listening mode. It's like when a child is listening really hard to figure out the sounds and trying to repeat them. If you start with Pimsleur you will get the great benefit of learning a good accent which is really hard to do later if you don't start it from the beginning. Pimsleur also incorporates that all so important interval repetition that Pimsleur came up with by timing his students to see how often a word had to be repeated to go into long-term memory. Especially if you have time constraints, Pimsleur is great because it's a solid one half hour a day and that's it! You dedicate yourself with only that half an hour and you know you will continue to make progress day by day and get the pronunciation down. Later, you will need other things of course, but Pimsleur can take you a good long way because German is one of the languages that they have more levels for. You can also gain more benefit if you do one half an hour session with real concentration and then half an hour of the SAME LESSON that same day while doing something else as a review if you have time. 

September 7, 2014
1

Thank you aegis.

September 7, 2014
1

I am totally with Dorothy! Do both! Neither is very deep. Get a formal book based course (i.e. Assimil) on top as a solid base. Even MT und P together will not get you very far.

 

I would say 20% MT + P, 80% book based.

September 7, 2014
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