As the Rosetta Stone Japanese learning system is the biggest selling language computer software, the Pimsleur language system is one of many longest selling systems. Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone share some typically common elements, but Pimleur also contains elements that seem to be at least theoretically opposed with their competitor's system.
Both Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone take a scientific approach to teaching foreign languages. They're both predicated on well-tested linguistic and psychological learning models. Specifically, they share the belief that languages are best learned from the ground up in the same way that children learn their native language. Neither system wastes time with lots of translation or grammar lessons. They both jump in and teach the student the spoken language.
Where in actuality the Pimsleur method differs from the Rosetta Stone method is that while Rosetta Stone, theoretically at the very least, opposes the behaviorist (or behavioralist) method of paito japan, Pimsleur actively employs it and has historically used it as part of their marketing strategy. Dr. Paul Pimsleur introduced his language teaching technique over forty years ago, at the height of behaviorism's popularity.
At its most fundamental level, behaviorism has a mechanistic view of human behavior. We're basically automatons who react to stimuli and lack any unique and meaningful human qualities. The strict behaviorist believes, for instance, that free will can be an illusion.
While a far more humanistic method of both learning and psychology has been adopted in more recent years, nobody denies the effectiveness of many behaviorist-based models, including Dr. Pimsleur's. Two of the Pimsleur system's procedures for memorization and retention are particularly noteworthy.
The first of these methods comes from the "Principle of Anticipation." What this means is that the learner must anticipate the clear answer to a question rather than have the solution given for them time and time again until it "sticks." Dr. Paul Pimsleur, creator of the Pimsleur language learning technique, called this kind of interactive learning an "input/output" versus an inactive learning technique. While they don't just like to give Dr. Pimsleur credit for it, most if not all modern language learning programs also employ this technique.
0 Comments