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Why can’t I learn Japanese?

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  • Part of an essay in progress

Is Pimsleur better?

Posted August 1, 2011 7:53 pm  
 

My experience is that it is hugely better at preparing you for a trip. The constant repetition drums in common phrases necessary for tourists, none of which were taught in the Rosetta Stone program I used. However, Pimsleur makes no attempt to teach the language: it’s structure, its rules of grammar, its verb tenses, etc. What Pimsleur teaches can eliminate the need for a phrase book and is perfect for someone wanting to interact politely in a foreign country but not expecting to make conversation.

Have you tried Pimsleur or other foreign language study tapes?  What has been your experience?

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  • eliz   June 6, 2012 at 7:31 am

    I did check our Ellen Jovin’s blog, which gives a very extensive description of her personal experience with the two language programs and comes down strongly in favor of Pimsleur: bit.ly/vXZLSx. Response posts largely corroborate her experience. I look forward to seeing what she says about learning Mandarin, the most different of the languages she’s attempting. Pimsleur, like Rosetta Stone, does not teach grammar, a less significant deficiency with languages more similar to your own. My own view is that Pimsleur is superb at preparing you for a trip and setting you up for more in depth learning. I think that adults, unlike children, need to be taught grammar.

  • eliz   June 6, 2012 at 6:54 am

    I haven’t heard of it, but thank you so much. I will definitely check into it.

  • judy   June 6, 2012 at 6:44 am

    Hi,
    Do you know of Ellen Jovin’s three year language project? She has interesting comments on Pimsleur vs Rosetta Stone (ellenjovin.com)

  • Elizabeth Marcus   December 6, 2011 at 10:55 am

    Here is a very helpful response I received on LinkedIn:
    Fearchar MacIllFhinnein • Elizabeth, the Linguaphone Institute, as it was, was at one time well-known pretty well globally – except, for some reason, in the USA. It’s still going, but the older complete courses still find a ready second-hand market online. There’s a lot more information on Wikipedia:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguaphone_(company)
    My experience with using Linguaphone dates back to the early 1980s, but I’ve since obtained and/or used Linguaphone courses for languages other than German, and found them to be very good if you’re an independent learner. Originally, I could use cassette tapes (playing and replaying them), wearing a Walkman on my hip and doing manual labour. It worked for me, anyway, and I think that the idea of constant repetition of short passages or phrases till they’re known off pat is very useful for building up knowledge and the readiness to use it. By the time you come to use those sentences, they’re pretty well part of your normal behaviour, induced by the conditioned reactions to the stimulus: yes, they follow a pretty behaviouralist approach.

  • eliz   November 6, 2011 at 4:36 pm

    Thanks for another helpful reference! Sounds perfect.
    Your question about college-aged students is particularly pertinent. My son has a friend who studied Chinese in college, moved there after graduation to teach English and became totally fluent very quickly. I think the ability to acquire language falls off with age (and precipitously after a certain point) but that there is probably a very big range of when this happens. As soon as I have a minute, I’m going to try to track down people researching in this area. I think it’s a key issue.

  • eliz   November 6, 2011 at 4:31 pm

    A message from Judy that came through email:
    Hi,
    You might want to google an article by David Moser, “Why Chinese is So Damn Hard”. Many of the same issues probably apply to Japanese. His theory seems to be you have to really want to learn one of these languages, and you need plenty of time. It would be interesting to know about the experience of college age students learning these languages.

  • Elizabeth Marcus   November 1, 2011 at 2:44 pm

    I’m sorry to say that extended time did not help. With French, Spanish, and Italian, where I have a working knowledge, time immersed in the language definitely adds to my fluency. But I never managed to achieve an ability to use Japanese, only to repeat certain limited phrases. And I never got the structure of the language imbedded in my mind. I don’t know how much to ascribe to my age and how much to the extreme difference of Japanese from any other language I’ve ever used. Watching Japanese movies once with and once without subtitles also didn’t help. So discouraging!

  • judy   November 1, 2011 at 1:06 pm

    Last year we joined a small tour group visiting the major sites in China. At that point, I could exchange a few words with the hotel and restaurant staff. On the bus trips, I would stare out the window at the road signs, hoping to identify one of the few characters I knew! My local health club has several Mandarin speakers, and I occasionally try out a sentence , but no extended conversations yet.
    When you were in Japan, did you find that some of the language made sense the longer you stayed?
    Movies are a great challenge for me, partly due to the number of dialects in Chinese.

  • Elizabeth Marcus   October 26, 2011 at 12:12 pm

    I’m impressed with your patience. I was interested to learn how written Japanese works (though I had terrible trouble remembering any of it), but principally I wanted to grasp the structure of the spoken language. I didn’t expect any degree of fluency, just enough knowledge to be able ask questions, get the gist of discourse, to recognize the words I knew and be able to separate them from those I didn’t. I thought I was making progress in all the attempts I made -on the computer and in class- but I was horrified to discover that everything I knew fled as soon as I landed in Tokyo. It was as though what I learned had been stored in a different file that I’d left at home. I’m trying to understand how that happened, what it means, and if others have experienced it. Have you tried to engage in Chinese conversation? Can you follow Chinese movies? I’d love to know.

  • judy   October 20, 2011 at 12:33 pm

    I think making progress in a foreign language requires several approaches and lots of time! I have found the 3 volumes of the Pimsleur Mandarin course helpful, especially in vocabulary and pronunciation. Although grammar study is not explicit, it is included in the structure of the course. I have also attended weekly classes and have viewed courses on CCTV, China television. A wonderful small book is “Dreaming in Chinese” by Deb Fallows. Although she is a linguist, she writes openly about the challenges.

    • eliz   October 20, 2011 at 7:41 pm

      Thanks for the reference. I’ve heard of it but not read it and will now definitely do so.
      Did you attempt to learn the written language in the classes you took? Were you able to retain what you learned? The classes I took at Japan Society included the written component, which remained, despite considerable effort, beyond me.

      • judy   October 23, 2011 at 11:37 am

        The courses so far haven’t emphasized characters,but have focused on speaking and listening. I have practiced on my own with couple of workbooks. Again, progress is slow, and requires constant repetition. I have read that some Chinese continue to work on their calligraphy throughout life.