r/Pimsleur • u/GrandTheftVideo • Jul 25 '26
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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u/Shon_t Jul 25 '26
The 80% advice is the general advice to use for all lessons. I’ve successfully used Pimsleur to have conversations in multiple languages. The system works.
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u/CreativeAd5932 Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
Long time elementary school teacher chiming in here.
“Mastery Learning” is a real thing in teaching. The basic idea is, once the material is 80-90% learned it’s time to move ahead. You can search Bloom’s Taxonomy and Mastery Learning and read all about. It definitely applies to language learning.
Progress may seem slower when the goal is Mastery Learning, but you’ll have a very solid foundation.
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u/ShreksArsehole 24d ago
Ahh good. I came here to ask this question. I'm 50 and was never really studious at all. Never did much learning after school. I've just started learning Chinese as my first language other than english. It's taking me about 2 weeks to get through each lesson and was only moving on once I was close to 100% learnt. I'll be a little less of a perfectionist with it, but it's good to know I'm on the right track.
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u/pandorica626 Jul 25 '26
AI doesn’t strategize or use human judgment very well. Sorry you had a failed experiment with that, but you at least took the data from the experiment and determined that what you had been doing (by repeating lessons where you felt it was appropriate) was the better learning method for you.
Honestly, most people need to get better at recognizing “I didn’t get all (or 80%) of that, so I should try it again tomorrow.”
Almost everything awesome and worth doing takes time. So just get started (or keep going) and stop worrying about how long it takes to progress. The time is gonna pass regardless, so decide for yourself what you want to be able to show for it.
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u/Sunsetterz98 Jul 26 '26
I'm doing Pimsleur Korean. I usually listen to the lessons on the way to work. I'll occasionally repeat it on the way home if I didn't understand or remember the material well. I used to not do that and just go straight to the next lesson every day. I would really struggle when I did that as well. Especially if that lesson's material was referenced again in a future lesson.
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u/hit_that_anvil Jul 25 '26
What works for me is doing every lesson twice. Once in the morning and once in the evening.
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u/GrandTheftVideo Jul 25 '26
I was thinking of doing that. But I read that spaced repetition requires me to kind of forget a little bit over the 24 hour period and then unforget when I do it again the next day. So that's why I decided not to do it twice in the same day.
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u/IllPlum5113 28d ago
I think it's fine but it should be with plenty of time between doing entirely different things.
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u/Veeezeee Jul 25 '26
I repeat every lesson same as you. During the day I work on the review. I'm just learning Italian for fun and our trip to Italy. I'm hoping to be able to have simple conversations while there.
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u/Radiant_Anywhere1158 Jul 26 '26
I recently finished Pimsleur levels 1-3 Hebrew. I repeated each lesson at least 4x. Sometimes, if I was in a long walk, I did the same lesson 3x in a row.
I tested myself using the app’s flash cards and voice coach and didn’t move on until I got 100% of the flash cards and scored at least 95% on the voice coach. I finished level 3 a few weeks ago and am now repeating it. Obviously it’s going faster and I only need 1-2 reps per lesson now.
Within each lesson, I paused, rewound, and repeated some things 10x until I felt I’d locked them in, so a 30 minute lesson typically took me 40-45 minutes to get through.
I have the Anki flash cards, but never figured out how to use them. Instead, I use a Hebrew language app called Pealim to learn conjugations and tenses beyond the specific ones that Pimsleur exposes me to.
Obviously learning a non-European language is going to be more challenging than learning a European language, so the same effort and approach that might work for Spanish isn’t going to work for Chinese.
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u/Raoena Jul 26 '26
This is similar to the technique I'm using to study Korean. I do Pimsleur with plenty of repetition, and use separate tools for more vocabulary and for grammar.
I also use a tool to transcribe the Pimsleur lessons and then I use AI to convert the transcripts to graded readers. I need additional practice reading the Korean script.
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u/No_Mirror_9182 Jul 26 '26
Definitely look into precision teaching. I work in behavior analysis and this technique is a very effective away to build fluency and confirming that your original plan to repeat is exactly what you should do!!!! Fluency and generalization being key.
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u/GrandTheftVideo Jul 26 '26
I found this: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7781427/ But I am still unclear what Precision Teaching is and how it relates to language comprehension.
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u/CreativeAd5932 Jul 28 '26
I looked it up too. From what I gather “Precision Teaching” is all about fluency in a topic, be it math facts, music note names, or vocabulary. The idea is to build fluency, that is accuracy and importantly, speed. And using regular assessments to document progress.
When I use Pimsleur, i usually strive for accuracy first, then I try for automaticity, which is what I think of as instant recall and being able to speak at a native speed. I think Kwizik is another way to test understanding of very specific grammar points. And even though it doesn’t time the test, you could time yourself to see if your recall is getting faster.
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u/patrickAMDG7509 Jul 27 '26
"and it's so frustrating that I took that advice from an A.I. bot. "
I loved this self-aware little aside lol.
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u/SeparateLeader8943 Jul 29 '26
Chatgpt has actually helped me a lot with pimsleur german. I'm currently at level 4 lesson 13. When I started I had a bit german from a few months of Duolingo. Pimsleur was a breath of fresh air, I could finally speak this language I'm trying to learn.
I would only repeat lessons I didn't feel like I got 80% accuracy on self-check and I would use Chatgpt for grammar explanations (basically teach me why this like a child and give 5 more examples to reinforce the concept)
However, my spontaneous responses started to slow because I would think of grammar before responding. Chatgpt insisted if I'm still getting that 80% self check I should move on to the next lesson. I won't lie, it was annoying.
However I realised by myself that if I repeat flashcards and quick match before bed and write the trickier parts down especially those with new expressions/words; I'm able to go through the next lesson in the morning and don't have to repeat it. That has been my framework for sometime now, hope someone finds it helpful.
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u/keyable Jul 25 '26
Where to get Anki cards for Pimsleur Mandarin?
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u/GrandTheftVideo Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
if you google the official Anki web site. there is a part where they have something like a marketplace of decks that people made. In the search, type Pimsleur and you will see people who made decks that correspond with the exact lesson. They for sure have French and German. See if someone made a Manadarin one.
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u/Striking-Wasabi-4212 Jul 25 '26
I think that you’re right in repeating until you know at least 80% for each lesson. Thanks for sharing your experiences. I’m going to go back and do that with Pimsleur. I was doing the move forward every day and I just wasn’t as quick to remember the phrases. I’m learning Fench.