as i am sure a lot of you heard about the pimsleur approach to learning a new language right. Well i have been using the pimsler program for about a year NOTE: this was one year before i heard about lingQ. But now that i have everything thing i need to learn how to write and speak in Japanese on lingQ is it still necessary to use pimsleur. I can obviously learn to speak Japanese faster than i would on lingQ, but all of my reaserch materials used to learn how to write in Japanese come from lingQ, and they say to learn the writing system before you learn how to speak the actual language. So should i give up pimsleur or use it next to lingQ.
I found a cheap copy of Pimsleur’s Japanese course before I found out about LingQ. It had 16 lessons in it I think, which is half of a level if I recall correctly. At the time, I liked being able to have a few canned phrases to immediately be able to say but I had a lot of trouble keeping to the schedule that Pimsleur dictates. Also, I’m not sure if the full version of the product comes with this but having a transcript of the lessons (at least the Japanese portions) would have helped me retain the new words quite a bit. If you already have the CDs, I don’t see how it would hurt to finish up the lessons. If the lessons come with a transcript, you might want to import them as a lesson in LingQ and follow along while you listen.
After one year you should be far beyond Pimsleur and into more authentic content. The vocabulary of the Pimsleur program is extremely limited and won’t get your very far after all the time put into it. I say it should only be used for a basic introduction to get yourself into other material as soon as possible.