Pimsleur Postscript

I finished the third and final level of Pimsleur a few months ago.

Was it worth the time and effort?

I believe it was. It seems to have laid a solid foundation for the next level of development. The method effectively imprints a small vocabulary and set of language patterns into one’s consciousness. The level of fluency coming out of it is still extremely low, but it creates something solid to build upon.

Pimsleur focuses on speaking, and specifically on translating spoken English to spoken Chinese. I’ve concluded that the next areas I need to focus on moving forward from Pimsleur are: growing my vocabulary, and improving my listening comprehension skills.

To grow my vocabulary, I decided that I need to start becoming literate. There is a point where audio and pinyin don’t seem to cut it any more. The homonyms run together and make it hard to remember new words. Too many ‘shang’, ‘shi’, ‘sheng’, ’xi’, ’xiu’ sounds in sequence.

How best to learn to read and write? Last year, Chinesepod introduced companion material for what they said is the most commonly used textbook in college Chinese language courses: Integrated Chinese published by Cheng & Tsui. Integrated Chinese takes I decidedly different approach than I have been using, in that it focuses on all four language components simultaneously – reading, writing, listening, & speaking. More on this later.