Finally back to getting good pace with this again. I’m almost done with the second set, just eight more ;; I’ve been playing them during walks, but I’ve been off/on motivated on doing those, so it’s been sporadic. My goal is to walk every day this week and so far I’ve managed it. My walks go just over the time so I get to listen to the same 30 minutes 1.5 times, then I just finish the rest after I get home.
I think it depends on how well versed you are with the content and the language. I’ve taken quite LARGE gaps, and while I struggle a bit, it doesn’t take me long to figure things out again.
This has happened to me too a few times xD It’s both funny and frustrating. Sometimes I’ll pause it to give myself the chance to say it before they do.
I noticed this with me too, which is why I’m starting to play them twice, and on the second go it’s a huge difference.
Hello - finally back on this thread. I’ve started listening to Pimsleur! But I haven’t been very consistent. Trying to do at least three lessons a week before work at the moment but sometimes my heads just not in the game in the morning. Good luck to everyone on their Pimsleur. Its great to read other peoples experiences and discoveries. Hopefully I can contribute my own once I get in a good rhythm.
Pimsleur was my first formal introduction to Japanese, actually. Started it in the Fall of 2016 and went through all of Phases 1-4 doing them (mostly) daily as recommended, sometimes 2x either in the same day or back-to-back if I felt like a lesson was particularly difficult. Once I finished, I went back through all of them again from 1-4. Usually did them on my commutes to/from work because, what else do you do with that time, right?
While it’s certainly not the end-all-be-all for learning Japanese, I certainly credit my use of Pimsleur with my pronunciation ability. I still get comments about how good my pronunciation sounds, even if I can’t always communicate fluently. That being said, I also live in an area notorious for having a thick accent, and I’ve had to overcome that as well as standard “formal” Japanese being far less common than Pimsleur would have you believe (in my area, anyway).
I wish you all the best of luck working through it! It’s certainly a great resource to have in your study arsenal, even better with Phase 5 out now. I was already in Japan by that point and only got about halfway through it before I quit. You’re well on your way to evolving from 日本語上手 to すごい！発音綺麗！！！
I’ve got a hearing impairment, which means listening is by far my weakest skill.
I’m up to lesson four, but I just wanted to check in does anyone else hear 上手
as jouji rather than jouzu, from the male speaker? The female speaker is more clearly jouzu.
The male speaker pronounces a lot of things differently from the female speaker. I don’t remember that one specifically, but he has very different ways of pronouncing ん and ぐ than she does. It’s kind of cool to get two differing pronunciations.
Agreed. It’s nice to hear different pronunciations. I’m using the app, and it incorporates more material like readings and flash cards which helps a ton since you can review the material and make sense of word breaks and odd pronunciations.
Also, I pause any time I can’t immediately recall a phrase in order to work on 100% recall. For me, that’s been a game-changer since I used to just let it play and “catch up” when the native speaker repeated the phrase. While that still helped with my accent, it started to erode my progress because my recall started slipping. It’s vitally important to do Pimsleur at a consistent pace since they build on lessons in an SRS-like style. Skip too many days, and you’ll forget the phrase they want you to repeat from 4 or 5 lessons prior (which they do at the end of each lesson)
Anyhow, good luck to all of you! I’m just about to start Japanese II now.
Can you please tell me how much it costs to use the app? Is this a subscription model where all the content of phases 1 to 5 is immediately available? That would be awesome. Or is there only a certain amount of lessons available per month?
Currently I use Audible to listen to Pimsleur Japanese Phase 1, which is quite easy for me, but I don’t want to skip lessons either. I think it’s better to go through everything again and strengthen my foundation. The pricing is quite reasonable with one free audiobook (= 5 lessons) per month and if you want more it’s about 10 Euros for another 5 lessons (I don’t know the equivalent in other currencies, sorry). The downside is that only phases 1 to 3 are available on Audible (18x 5 lessons). So I need another source for the rest sooner or later.
My dad also pauses to give himself time to think, and said it helped him quite a bit. In all fairness, the gaps can be insanely short at times, especially in the higher phases with longer phrases. Best of luck to you in Phase 2! My dad and I both agree that Phase 2 is where you start to pick up steam, and it can be discouraging at times. Keep at it and you’ll be fine!
Judging by the fact that you said Euros, you obviously aren’t in the states, but when is the last time you checked Audible for Pimsleur? It may be different in different countries due to copyright or something, but at least in the US all 5 phases are available via Audible, and also includes the reading resources if I’m remembering correctly.
I can’t pause because I do the lessons while driving. In a way, it’s good to feel like I HAVE to answer in a short time. On the other hand, I end up repeating a lot of lessons.
It’s a bit pricey at $19.99 per month/per language, but it includes Japanese levels 1 to 5. I’m hoping to get through all 5 within 5 months, so the total cost is only $99.95 which is still loads cheaper than the $575 cost of the full program.
I just checked again and it’s still the same, only phases 1 to 3. And the accompanying reading resource is just a manual. Maybe Audible Germany doesn’t have the rights to distribute the other two phases (yet).
Thank you, that is good to know. It probably makes more sense for me to switch to the app.
Interesting. Regardless, the app sounds like a MUCH better way to go. I paid full price for each phase and while I got great use out of them, I certainly would’ve preferred the app option you seem to have. Enjoy your studies!
Well, I finished phase 5 today. I found the first few lessons in 5 quite tough, but actually I found it easier as it went along. Finally, lots of informal discussion. Probably about 75% of N4 grammar covered in one way or another. So now I can discuss learning wood carving techniques at the Ainu Museum, the number of casualties sustained constructing the Seikan tunnel, and (my favourite) describing the night view from summit of Mount Hakodate (the third best night view in Japan apparently). The last lesson was an extremely detailed description of cooking rice.
I think the best thing about Pimsleur is it manages to be fun. I’d be surprised if anyone could use it as a single resource for Japanese but I did approx 5-6 levels of Wanikani for each phase and I have to say they kept pace very well with each other that way.
I listened to Pimsleur in the car a lot before I started using LingoDeer. It’s not the most effective learning method, but I found it useful in a let-it-wash-over-you kind of way. Not to say that I didn’t try to pick up what it was teaching, I just didn’t find it stuck that well at the time. But when I moved onto other grammar resources I had a lot of “this is familiar!” moments.
Yes, I’m stuck here! I’ve lost my motivation to keep going because the dialogs are still to hard when they repeat them at the end! They just seem way too fast/long for me to understand everything now.
My walks go just over the time so I get to listen to the same 30 minutes 1.5 times, then I just finish the rest after I get home.
