Pimsleur Level One Lessons Completed!

This week I am very happy to have completed my Pimsleur level one courses, consisting of 30 half-hour lessons each (of which I took four times each to total two hours per lesson) in Vietnamese, Japanese, and Spanish. The lessons suggest that you take each one until you’re 80% familiar with them, and then move on, so taking them four times each ensures that I’m well over the 80% mark for most of the lessons and just at 80% for a few of the more difficult ones.

Since I started taking these level one lessons last fall, I’ve noticed a big difference in my language skills, especially in conversation and particularly in Spanish. Conversationally, I’m able to use a bit of Spanish on occasion, like during my recent trip to Ecuador. And I’m happy to say that I was able to hold numerous successful conversations in Spanish in Ecuador, and even translated a little bit for some people. Even though I only have the basics down right now, I was light years ahead of where I was conversationally two years ago in Mexico City. It was such a rewarding feeling to know that all this time spent doing these lessons for the past six or seven months has actually paid off and made a difference in practical speaking.

A lot of people dismiss Duolingo as impractical, but I find that pairing these lessons with Duolingo, as well as with other language learning methods, is very productive when I can see the words used in different ways and make those connections between the different methods. I’m very much looking forward to continuing on to level two Pimsleur lessons combined with my Duolingo in these languages. Also, I think I want to start one of my fun goals of watching 50 Japanese language movies in a year soon.

As I have mentioned, Pimsleur courses past the introductory free ones do require a subscription, and now that I know for sure that I want to continue with this language learning method, I figured it was time to stop buying them individually so I went to the website (this is my refer-a-friend link which gives me a bonus for any subscriptions made) and found that they have a current sale of 50% off all access to all languages for a lifetime, which at $400 seems well worth it to me considering that I spent close to that in all of the individual level one lessons that I’ve bought so far, and considering my future endeavors. So I took the leap and got the lifetime subscription today. This includes extra mini lessons, flashcards, and more bonus content, so I feel like a kid in a candy store right now and am I’m very excited to start on all of this!

One thing that I didn’t realize until just now, though, is that they only have level one Vietnamese courses, so I have completed everything I can in Pimsleur in Vietnamese! I was hoping there were five levels, as there are in many other languages, but that’s okay. Having over 50 languages with extensive lessons available to me feels crazy right now, and I’m trying to figure out how to plan for my next round of Pimsleur lessons knowing that I have completed Vietnamese. One thing I know for certain and that I’ve been planning to do all along is to continue to review what I’ve learned in Vietnamese in Pimsleur on a regular basis to keep it fresh. But I also have my own rule that I can work on three new languages at a time in Pimsleur, so this means that if I feel like I can handle it, I can start a new language in Pimsleur, though this seems like a lot. I think I’ll play around on the app, with all of my new access, and see how I feel about it this week.