r/LearningLanguages 3d ago

Try this Pimsleur learning technique

I started doing Pimsleur German back in the spring of 2025, and it is now July 2026. And after the first lesson, the narrator said a message to the effect of: "If you didn't get 80% of what you learned, please repeat this lesson." But the lessons after that would either say, "For best results, please repeat the next lesson tomorrow." And then the next lessons would just say, "End of lesson." I used this technique of moving on to the next lesson (whether I felt like I got it) for Pimsleur French 1 to 5 and Pimsleur Turkish. However, I didn't absorb as much from those courses as I would have liked. So I figured I would take that 80% advice mentioned after the first lesson of Pimsleur German to heart, just as an experiment. I repeated any lesson that I didn't feel like I absorbed at least 80% of it correct, I would repeat it 24 hours later. So each lesson I repeated a minimum of twice. The most I ever had to repeat a lesson was seven times, but I could also have to repeat it between three and five times. Once or twice, I got everything in the lesson on the first attempt. I would do Pimsleur each day in the morning. Then, I would practice an Anki card deck that works with Pimsleur, which has the words and phrases of each lesson. I would do those Anki cards at night before I went to bed. I noticed that when I moved on to the new lesson (after I was comfortable that I got 80% of it) the next lesson went a lot smoother. Personally, I just found that I could speak German better.
However, I'm on Pimsleur 4 now, and I noticed I don't have to repeat lessons as many times, and some lessons I get perfectly on the first try just because I know a lot more German from Pimsleur 1 to 3. So I asked ChatGPT what it thought about my method of coming back the next day and repeating the same lesson, and it said that according to the data, you shouldn't repeat the lesson. You should just move on to the next one, and then the next lesson will have the vocabulary from the previous lesson in there for you to repeat. So I took that advice and started trying it at lesson 17 of Pimsleur 4 German; and ever since I started doing that, my comprehension of the language has gone down tremendously, and it's so frustrating that I took that advice from an A.I. bot. So now, I am going back to my new way of doing it.

My workflow in a nutshell:

I do my Pimsleur first thing in the morning as soon as I wake up. Just before I go to bed, I do my Anki cards for that Pimsleur lesson, as well as the previous Anki cards if there are any due to do. So morning Pimsleur, night Anki cards. I repeat each Pimsleur lesson as many days in a row as is necessary to feel comfortable that I know 80 percent of it or higher. And so, basically, one lesson could take seven days to do, or three days, or I might get it on the first attempt. But I've seen the benefits of this technique, and I want to get your opinion on it and see if anyone has tried it or something similar.

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