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Pimsleur review: barely keeping with the times

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Back in the days of pre-internet language learning, you had 2 ways to learn a language: attend a class, or buy one of those CD sets that had you go over words and phrases in the language over and over again until you got a hang of it. The CD method is basically this Pimsleur review – yeah, it’s old-school.

This Pimsleur review will talk about what exactly the Pimsleur method is, Pimsleur’s promises, and what to expect if you do choose to buy the course. Is Pimsleur right for you?

Pimsleur review: languages

Right off the bat, Pimsleur boasts a significant number of languages:

  • Albanian
  • Arabic (Eastern)
  • Arabic (Egyptian)
  • Arabic (Modern Standard)
  • Armenian (Western)
  • Armenian (Eastern)
  • Chinese (Cantonese)
  • Chinese (Mandarin)
  • Creole (Haitian)
  • Croatian
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • English
  • Filipino (Tagalog)
  • Finnish
  • French
  • German
  • Greek
  • Hebrew
  • Hindi
  • Hungarian
  • Icelandic
  • Indonesian
  • Irish
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Lithuanian
  • Norwegian
  • Ojibwe
  • Pashto
  • Persian (Dari)
  • Persian (Farsi)
  • Polish
  • Portuguese (Brazilian)
  • Portuguese (European)
  • Punjabi
  • Romanian
  • Russian
  • Spanish (Latin American)
  • Spanish (Castilian)
  • Swahili
  • Swedish
  • Swiss German
  • Thai
  • Turkish
  • Twi
  • Ukrainian
  • Urdu
  • Vietnamese

Pimsleur is an audio-based resource, which means the specific accent of any given language can be very important. So, if a certain “version” of a language is important to you, then Pimsleur may be an excellent match for your needs.

The Pimsleur Method

The Pimsleur Method is based on the research of the late Dr. Paul Pimsleur, whose interest and research were based on memory.

The Pimsleur Method itself is a very strict one: 30 minutes of practice every single day (no more, no less), of pure listening and speaking work. Do not attempt to read or write while you listen.

With this approach, Pimsleur promises you’ll be able to converse at an intermediate level in just 30 days. 30 days of 30 minutes of practice today means Pimsleur promises intermediate-level fluency after just 900 minutes (15 hours) of listening and speaking.

Pimsleur review: lessons

The first 30-minute lesson of every language on Pimsleur is absolutely free. You can work through any language you like, as many times as you like, but it’s only that first lesson. This can give you an idea if the approach is something that you’d like to use, without any financial risk.

For some, this first minute-long snippet is all you need to know about Pimsleur. You’re listening to an audio clip of a man slowly explaining (in English) a basic exchange of basic phrases.

If you find that boring, go to my language app search instead to find something better for you. If the slow pace and the excessive English narration don’t bother you, continue reading this Pimsleur review.

As mentioned early, Pimsleur was designed to be listened to and repeated (a common language learning strategy called “shadowing”) while you’re doing something else, like driving or doing the dishes.

When going through these lessons, you’ll start out with pretty basic, usable phrases: “Excuse me, do you speak English?” and “No, I don’t”, for example. Great for tourist-level learning, and getting a pretty solid background of the language.

Pimsleur will take these phrases apart and really drill you in on each individual aspect of the words and phrases, which is good for absolute beginners. It’s definitely all about training your ear to figure out what you’re listening to and saying. Excellent for listening practice as well as pronunciation – understanding the exact sounds that the language uses, not just the word itself.

Pimsleur’s reading approach

While Pimsleur is primarily focused on practicing speaking conversational phrases, it’s also recommended that you continue on their reading practice (but only after the initial lesson is done).

Here you’ll break down the pronunciation of important words and patterns bit by bit, by preparing you for common pronunciation mistakes as well as comparing the sounds of your target language with the sounds of English.

This is truly a slow, methodical approach to pronunciation via shadowing.

It’s not really reading as much as it is pronunciation, which is confusing. In fact, nothing about Pimsleur’s method could be considered effective reading practice.

Pimsleur review: other activities

The two samples above are really the meat of the Pimsleur app. There are other features (discussed below), however, it should be noted that that is THE Pimsleur Method. The rest of the features mentioned in this Pimsleur review are more of Pimsleur’s attempts to keep up with the times than anything else.

As in, not completely necessary.

For example, here are the practice games Pimsleur uses to help you truly drill the lesson’s vocabulary into your brain.

I do like that they’re trying to make the content just a little more engaging for the 21st century, but remember that Pimsleur is very clear that all these fun and games are after you listen to the initial lesson, not instead of.

While it feels like Pimsleur missed the mark a bit with those games, I do enjoy Pimsleur’s voice coach (it’s a chatbot….anytime you hear a language app talking about chatbots, it’s this).

In the future, I’d really like to see Pimsleur expand this section. Personally, I find this much more engaging than listening to a 30-minute recording that’s mostly in English anyway.

Pimsleur review: price

In the past, Pimsleur was very financially inaccessible – you would plan to spend a few hundred dollars for just a basic language education. Fortunately, time and tech have changed, and Pimsleur has negotiated their prices accordingly.

As aforementioned, you can access the first lesson of any language for free at any time.

If you decide to continue with the Pimsleur Method, you can opt to pay monthly, either for just the language you’re learning or for all languages Pimsleur offers. You can see updated pricing here.

Fortunately, gone are the days of spending $1,000 and waiting for your new CD set to come in the mail (and hoping for the best that you’ll actually use it) – now you can get started instantly!

Pimsleur review: who it’s for

We’ve reached the end of this Pimsleur review, so should you try it?

As I said, if the slow pace, the relaxing cadence, or the heavy English narration are distractions for you, then Pimsleur may not be the best way for you to learn a language. In that case, I would suggest Language Transfer or the LanguagePod101 series.

Or, even simpler, find videos for beginners on YouTube! That free content combined with the Language Reactor Chrome extension…the sky’s the limit.

However, if you enjoyed listening to the videos in this Pimsleur review and are happy to repeat words and phrases until you can have simple conversations, Pimsleur may just be the language app for you. Get your 1-week free trial here!

Glossika review: for all your repetition needs

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Glossika is a highly engaging way to learn 60+ different languages. It does this with AI-supplemented sentences, high-quality audio, and a variety of different types of exercises. In this Glossika review, let’s take a walkthrough of the platform and discuss who can benefit most and who won’t.

And if Glossika doesn’t look like your kind of language app, keep scrolling to see some Glossika alternatives.

Glossika review: available languages

As mentioned, Glossika offers courses in 60+ languages:

  • Arabic (Egypt)
  • Arabic (Morocco)
  • Arabic (Standard)
  • Armenian (Eastern)
  • Azerbaijani
  • Belarusian
  • Bengali (India)
  • Bulgarian
  • Cantonese (HK)
  • Catalan
  • Chinese (Mandarin)(Beijing)
  • Chinese (Mandarin)(Taiwan)
  • Croatian (Å tokavian)
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • English (British)
  • Estonian
  • Filipino (Tagalog)
  • Finnish (SW dialect)
  • French
  • Gaelic
  • Georgian
  • German
  • Greek
  • Hakka (Hailu)
  • Hakka (Sixian)
  • Hebrew
  • Hindi
  • Hokkien
  • Hungarian
  • Icelandic
  • Indonesian
  • Irish
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Kazakh
  • Korean
  • Kurdish (Sorani)
  • Latvian
  • Lithuanian
  • Manx
  • Mongolian
  • Norwegian (Nynorsk)
  • Persian
  • Polish
  • Portuguese (Brazilian)
  • Portuguese (European)
  • Russian
  • Serbian (Ekavian)
  • Slovak
  • Slovenian
  • Spanish (Mexican)
  • Spanish (Castilian)
  • Swahili
  • Swedish
  • Thai
  • Turkish
  • Ukrainian
  • Uzbek
  • Vietnamese (Northern)
  • Vietnamese (Southern)
  • Welsh
  • Wenzhounese

And because Glossika cares about language preservation, a few of them are available for free; you don’t get all the benefits of a paid membership, but you do get unlimited spaced repetition practice to do your part to keep these languages alive.

We’ll talk about that more at the end.

Glossika review: the placement test

To start with Glossika, you can first opt to take a placement test. It’s a very simple test: listen to a few audio recordings of sentences, and select the sentence that you hear. If it ever gets too hard, you can always let Glossika know that you need to start from that level.

Unfortunately, like most placement tests, it’s pretty useless.

While the audio recordings themselves are very clear and high quality (the same goes for the usability of Glossika as a whole), I’d rather they just toss the whole thing.

The sentences are so different that all you need to do is recognize one single word at the beginning to answer correctly. This is regardless of whether you understood the statement itself or could even create it – you can see towards the end of the above video that I could answer correctly based on literally the first word.

And that’s beside the fact that it’s only testing listening (despite claiming to exercise all the language skills) and didn’t even attempt to test me beyond B2. Where the placement test is concerned, I’d rather they just ask me directly.

Glossika review: learning new phrases

Glossika teaches users a new language by introducing new sentences that are useful in day-to-day life. You’ll learn to understand the language implicitly, as opposed to learning new vocabulary words and grammatical terms piece by piece.

You’ll learn 5 phrases like this at a time, through reading, writing, listening, and speaking, as well as using spaced repetition.

Glossika lessons follow this format:

  1. The new phrase is presented written in both your source and target language
  2. You hear a recording of the phrase in both languages, so you can follow along
  3. You type out the phrase in the foreign language
  4. You reread the phrase just in the foreign language
  5. You record yourself saying the phrase in the foreign language

As you can see, you got these phrases drilled into your brain really well. It doesn’t seem to be wildly sensitive to mistakes (I didn’t use any capital letters or accents, for example) which can be a significant drawback if you don’t get used to spelling appropriately, especially with Spanish.

Glossika is very customizable, which is a plus; for example, you can opt out of speaking practice if it’s not convenient for you at the moment, or you can turn the English translation on or off. The only problem is that these customizations aren’t obvious.

Another example: this next video was actually my first attempt at a lesson with Glossika.

I didn’t realize that it had automatically been set to “listening mode” until I started clicking around. There’s no tutorial showing you these options, nor any attempt to even let you know they’re there, so you’ll have to do some experimenting for yourself.

Maybe there’s an option to require correct accents somewhere? If there is, it’s not obvious.

Another helpful setting that Glossika didn’t tell me: if any of the phrases are too easy for you, just click the smiley face, and they’ll be taken out of the cycle.

Nonetheless, if used appropriately, this approach can provide language learners with a very well-rounded language education.

As a whole, I do love Glossika’s approach! In general, it’s engaging, modern, and really attractive.

Glossika’s “reps”

If you hang around Glossika’s Facebook group enough, you’ll see tons of talk about “reps”. The basic idea is that Glossika teaches through repetition, and your mastery of any given phrase or sentence can be defined by how many reps you’ve completed.

With Glossika’s approach, if you repeat their sentences enough times, you’ll master the language! How many times? According to this page here:

  25,000 Reps → Speak sentences comfortably
  50,000 Reps → Start engaging in casual conversations at natural speeds
  75,000 Reps → Start honing skills with more specialized topics
100,000 Reps → Mastery level where you can say just about anything

This is Glossika’s version of spaced repetition (also known as SRS). This concept is not unique to Glossika; it’s when a computer program predicts how easy or difficult any given term or phrase is for you. If it’s easy, and you get it correct, it puts that term to the side until it thinks you’re just about to forget it. Then it shows you that phrase again, therefore getting that phrase from your short-term to long-term memory.

Does this make sense? Sure. Using this strategy, could you theoretically boil down a language to a specific number [of repetitions]? Makes sense.

The problem is (and this is my personal opinion), repeating the same phrases tens of thousands of times is insanely boring.

You’ll practice each phrase 5 times at a minimum, more often if you’re struggling with it. This strategy is great for the more logical and scientific of minds, less so for those needing more entertainment.

Don’t get me wrong, repetition is very important for every language learner. But for my own personal needs, this level of repetition drives me crazy.

Using your stats

Glossika is very scientifically-lead, so their stats are a bit more interesting than most. For one, I love this feature of the “Memory” tab.

Note: I don’t know if the audio problems are because of my device, or a Glossika error.

As I was doing my spoken reps, I honestly didn’t realize that my audio was actually being recorded, so I was disappointed at first. However, going back into this section I can listen to myself repeating the phrase, and compare it to Glossika’s native audio.

This is a helpful strategy called “shadowing”, where you learn to mirror your pronunciation of a foreign language based on an audio clip. Honestly, it’s pretty tough to come by, which is strange considering it’s a simple way for any given language learning app to help you practice speaking a foreign language.

Another interesting feature: you can choose the topics of Glossika’s sentences.

I appreciate being able to tell Glossika that I have absolutely no interest in talking about the military or science. It’s not quite enough to make the approach less boring (again, as a personal opinion and not at all an objective one), but every little option that users can mess with is a bonus.

Glossika’s pricing

Glossika offers free trials to all new users, and then offers 2 pricing tiers: $30/month for unlimited reps in unlimited languages, and about half that per month to only change your language once every 30 days.

This new lower tier is brand new as of this Glossika review, and I’m very happy to see the compromise to make language learning more accessible!

And finally, in an effort to promote minority languages, the following languages are 100% free to all users:

  • Catalan
  • Gaelic
  • Hakka (Sixian)
  • Hakka (Hailu)
  • Kurdish (Sorani)
  • Manx
  • Welsh
  • Taiwanese
  • Wenzhounese

If going through this Glossika review convinces you to give it a try (more on that below), I highly recommend you at least spring for your free trial. No credit card is required!

Glossika review: who it’s for

Glossika is beautiful, smooth, and high quality, but it’s not for everyone. For one, Glossika does not start from 0, with basic vocabulary and grammar. Instead, you’ll start with beginner phrases. It’s more of the “figure it out as you go” approach, as opposed to the “1+1=2” one.

If you’re a big fan of repetition, Glossika is great for a wide variety of language learners, especially how well they tackle all the language skills. The advanced customization is a huge plus, too, as long as you’re tech-savvy enough to figure it out for yourself.

But if you want usability with a less…sterile approach, you’re not alone. If that’s the case, I might recommend Busuu, which connects the language more by way of living, breathing community, as well as more explicit language lessons.

Hooked on Glossika and want to give it a try? Click here to start your free trial!

Speechling Review: conversation-less pronunciation

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Need pronunciation help with feedback from a professional, but on your own time? In this Speechling review, I’ll share everything I love about this way to learn a language, and how to know if it’s the right language learning resource for you.

Speechling review: languages

Right off the bat, Speechling helps learners of a variety of languages, including:

  • Cantonese
  • Chinese (Mandarin)
  • English (American)
  • English (British)
  • French
  • German
  • Italian

  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Portuguese
  • Russian
  • Spanish (Latin American)
  • Spanish (Castilian)

With a subscription to Speechling, you get access to every single one of them. You’re also free to switch between languages (and any level within each language) at any time. This makes Speechling excellent for learners of multiple languages, or those who want a Duolingo dabble focused on speaking practice/pronunciation.

But I digress, I’m getting ahead of myself here.

I mentioned that Speechling makes for great Spanish-speaking practice for introverts, so that’s the next section of this Speechling review.

Speechling for introverts

There are quite a few options for language learners to practice Spanish speaking – resources like italki, Verbling, and BaseLang, all of which connect Spanish language learners with native Spanish speakers to get conversational Spanish.

While Speechling does connect you to native speakers, instead of having classes/conversations online, you submit words, phrases, answers, and more and get feedback on your pronunciation, while also getting fluency practice (depending on the exercise you choose).

Let’s get a behind-the-scenes look at Speechling, starting with the first screen you’ll see when joining Speechling.

Speechling review: getting started

When you first join Speechling, you’re presented with this very basic screen. It’s not the fanciest looking thing in the world, and it takes some learning to navigate, but it’s worth it.

Here’s a basic lesson and some basic definitions.

Here I’m being presented with the same basic word in 3 different formats, depending on which mode is selected:

  • Speak: practice saying the word or phrase
  • Understand: listen to the word or phrase, and report on the difficulty level
  • Lecture: a combination of listening, and then speaking.

You can see in the “Understand” section that you report on your difficulty level to tell Speechling how quickly you need to see it again. While spaced repetition like this is common these days (see easier words less often, more difficult words more often), I appreciate knowing exactly what time frame I’m looking at, as opposed to just trusting the app to do it right.

Now, this is really simple, but it can be a little more difficult to see the variety of activities you have access to. There are two different ways to change how and what you’re practicing. The first (and easiest) way is to scroll down and select from these lists.

This will give you the same kind of exercises, but using different kinds of content, depending on your selection. If you change your selection, it will not change the language/content outside of your current activity.

So as soon as you switch activities, you’ll be reverted to the options chosen in the Settings tab. This is the second way to choose how and what you’re practicing.

The Skill Tree: what you’re learning

Speechling essentially breaks up its content into 2 categories: the content you’re learning, and which strategies you’re using to learn it. The “Toolbox” tab provides you with a variety of different ways to use and express yourself using the sentences and phrases that Speechling has (which we’ll discuss later), and the “Skills” tab is where you choose the content you’re learning/practicing.

These words, sentences, and phrases are organized by skill level and category.

Every one of these icons contains countless native audio clips and opportunities for you to practice repeating those phrases. These opportunities include:

Speechling phrasebook: useful simple expressions for everyday life and travel

AKA: basic, tourist-level vocab

  • Asking for help
  • Basic expressions
  • Basic questions
  • Basic answers
  • Transportation
  • Health
  • Restaurant
  • Money
  • Weather
  • Clothing
  • Phone
  • Bad situations
  • Administration
  • Personal questions

Speechling foundations: build your vocabulary for the core curriculum

AKA: the very beginning foundations of the language

  • Numerals
  • Calendar
  • Nouns
  • Verbs
  • Adjectives+

Speechling core curriculum: use your vocab in context on thousands of sentences

AKA: build your vocabulary and learn how to use it right

  • Beginner 1
  • Beginner 2
  • Beginner 3
  • Intermediate 1
  • Intermediate 2
  • Intermediate 3
  • Advanced 1
  • Advanced 2
  • Advanced 3
  • Expert 1
  • Expert 2

Except, of course, at the very end where you can practice expressing yourself freely, which is incredibly important. The pre-made sentences and phrases give you practice saying the vocabulary, while the free speak allows you to practice using the phrases and sentences yourself.

Speeching conversations: don’t just repeat sentences. Apply your skills.

AKA: take everything you’ve learned and practice using it naturally

  • Answer the question: pretend like you are in a real conversation
  • Describe the image: harness your descriptive skills
  • Freestyle mode (say anything): bring in your own curriculum/study materials

Once you’ve decided where you are on the Skill Tree, you can either return to the Study tab (shown above), or go to the Toolbox tab and select an activity.

Dictation

Dictation is one of my favorite ways to practice listening comprehension, personally, so I’m excited to see Speechling has it! This activity combines passive and active skills: you listen to what somebody else is saying, and then recreate that sentence by typing it out.

By selecting “automatically continue on correct” you can easily get in tons of practice understanding the language; if you struggle with a phrase (like I did in the above video), you can flag it for practice later.

And if you’re really struggling, just click “Give Up” to see the correct answer.

Yes, these are the same phrases that you would be learning in Speechling’s regular activities, so you can consistently review your new terms. Listen to the audio as many times as you need, slow it down, go to the next audio track…it’s all customizable so you don’t have to practice phrases that aren’t useful for you.

Listening Practice

The next activity is listening practice, where you’ll get a native audio clip followed by a translation. This helps you to make the connection in your mind between both statements.

I love the ability to change the settings, even mid-activity, by scrolling down and selecting:

  • target language
  • translation language
  • half speed
  • play original sentence after translated sentence
  • automatically pause activity after the original sentence

Plus, you get to see the list of sentences you’ve already heard, including their translations, and the ability to record yourself repeating the sentence and send off your recording to your pronunciation coach.

With this activity, Speechling makes it so easy to get in your listening comprehension however you need it.

Flashcards

If you prefer more of a flashcard-like activity, here’s what Speechling’s flashcard option looks like.

I honestly don’t like this method just because it trains your vocabulary to be dependent on your native language, as opposed to attaching meaning directly to the target language.

There’s nothing wrong with doing this method every once in a while, but I would recommend you try to avoid it if possible, or at least turn off the translations using the option I selected in the video above.

Multiple choice quiz

The next option on this “choose your engagement type” list is a multiple-choice quiz. This strategy leads you to get a general gist of a phrase by picking up on one or two words, making it less precise than dictation, but more precise than flashcards.

Again, I’m a huge fan of the customization, because you can change this activity from hearing the language and translating to your native language, to hearing the language (with the transcript turned off) and selecting the correct transcript.

As always, you can opt to record your pronunciation of a phrase at any time.

Fill in the blank

Similar to dictation is fill-in-the-blank (also known as clozes). While dictation requires typing in an entire phase, fill-in-the-blank only prompts you to type in one part of it.

If you want more hints, you can opt-in to get the number of letters you need to fill in; for more of a challenge, select the checkbox on the bottom labeled “use normal text field instead”.

Regardless, you can see in the above video that there’s no real mention of my lack of accents. Speechling automatically corrects it for you, without highlighting the accent, making you correct the mistake, or even noting that accents are important.

Many similar apps provide you with the option to turn accents on/off, as well as giving you buttons to press in case you can’t create the correct letters with your keyboard, but unfortunately, Speechling doesn’t seem to care.

Search

Speechling offers lessons in 13 languages, which means they have a lot of native recordings. Not only that but since you can listen to any given recording in a male or female voice, that makes for literally double the content.

Suffice it to say that Speechling’s search function can be highly useful.

Honestly, if you want to practice understanding and pronouncing words, and all you want is to be given a whole bunch of sentences to practice with, Speechling is your best option.

Premium Offline Content

As I was going through this Speechling review, I had the thought “This is all excellent, but I just know that someone out there would rather take these audio clips outside of the activities and simply listen to them over and over again”.

Speechling’s already ahead of me here!

I already mentioned the sheer number of native audio lessons available with Speechling (over 10,000 sentences, apparently) – from this page, active subscribers can easily download them all for their use.

This content includes:

  • 10,000+ Speechling sentences
  • audio downloads broken up by skill level
  • Anki decks broken up by skill level AND speaking/listening practice

Speechling review: your pronunciation coach

Of all the content and features mentioned thus far in this Speechling review, there’s one thing we haven’t mentioned: when you record and submit your pronunciation of these words and sentences, where does it go?

If you opt to submit these recordings to a coach, they’ll be sent to a native-speaking coach hired by Speechling to give you feedback on your pronunciation within 24 hours. If your coach has any corrections, they’ll respond with another recording clarifying how you can improve.

And if you’re a subscriber, you can click over to Audio Journal to see your history of recordings.

All languages and all levels are grouped here, but you can also filter your recordings by the target language, topic, and feedback: if you need to work on something, you did just fine, or if you haven’t received feedback yet.

Your recordings are also color-coded:

  • Green: no critiques
  • Yellow: needs work
  • Brown: no feedback yet
  • Blue: rerecorded (in the event you had a correction and tried again)

Over time, you can get a great roadmap of your skills developing over time.

Speechling review: price

Speechling offers two categories of pricing: free and unlimited.

The content (meaning the curriculum and the audio recordings) is available totally for free. If you opt for the unlimited plan, you also get:

  • unlimited coaching (as opposed to the 10 you get for free)
  • audio journal
  • switch between languages at any time
  • offline premium resources

Unlimited plans start with a 7-day free trial.

Click here for Speechling’s updated pricing.

Speechling review: is it for you?

Speechling is the best language app for those looking for professional pronunciation help. It’s also really excellent for building up your vocabulary, considering its curriculum and the fact that it’s available for all free users.

It’s also excellent for introverted language learners looking for speaking practice, with its more advanced options to speak freely and submit it to an online coach (or not).

However, it’s not the prettiest platform. If you need something easier on the eyes, maybe with some fun notifications or any of the other common motivation hacks, try something like Yask which won’t teach you the language, but will get you practicing and speaking it.

Another Speechling alternative is Busuu, which has a nicer platform and similar speaking prompts, but also has more of a focus on grammar; in fact, speaking the language is more of a side quest on Busuu, rather than the whole enchilada.

Ready to try it for yourself? Click here to give Speechling a try!