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Pimsleur Mandarin review

By Gerrit du Plessis

Dr. Paul Pimsleur, the founder of the Pimsleur line of language courses, believed with all his heart that adults learn foreign languages the same way they learned their first one - by listening to the conversation of native speakers. While it's certainly true that babies DO acquire their language skills this way, with adults learning Chinese online is a bit more complex. Some adults are visual learners, and learn best by reading; visual learners do not tend to remember what they hear.

Some adults are kinesthetic learners, and remember neither what they see nor what they read, but seem to "physically" remember what they do with their hands and their bodies. Unfortunately for the visual and kinesthetic learners of the world, the Pimsleur method doggedly teaches foreign languages as if we were all somewhat dense auditory learners - just repeat it often enough, and even the dumbest people will get it.

The result is that a course that should work really well for auditory learners may actually be too repetitive for them. It's no surprise that the Pimsleur method doesn't work really well for visual learners because there's nothing to read (after all, when you were a baby, you had nothing to read, right?). And there's nothing for kinesthetic learners to do.

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P.S. Check out Rocket Chinese if you are looking for a fun and proven way to learn Mandarin Chinese fast.