Outstanding Teacher Biography: Paul Pimsleur

Paul Pimsleur was a language professor and teacher who, through research came up with a highly efficient method of learning, based on how we forget information. The problem with a lot of revision is that it is great at getting things into your short term memory, but it just doesn't seem to 'stick' around long enough for the exam. This is especially bad for languages, since it's not just about exams, but about learning to be able to speak it.

Pimsleur found the key to remembering stuff was being reminded of it. Simple eh? But how many times do you need to be reminded, how regularly? In 1967 Pimsleur came up with a memory schedule, which would test you at certain intervals, and therefore get it into your long term memory.

Pimsleur's memory schedule: 5 seconds, 25 seconds, 2 minutes, 10 minutes, 1 hour, 5 hours, 1 day, 5 days, 25 days, 4 months, 2 years. This is called Graduated Interval Recall, after each

He later later used this information to design CD/MP3 language courses. The basic design of the course war that:

• The student listens to a recording on which native speakers speak phrases in both the foreign language and the language used for teaching (usually English).
• At varying intervals, the student is prompted to repeat a phrase after the speaker finishes it
• The student is then introduced to a new phrase and the meaning is explained.
• After repeating several times, the student is asked to repeat a previous phrase, along with integrating vocabulary from the new one.
• More new phrases are introduced, while old phrases are prompted at ever-increasing intervals

You could either use Pimsleur's system with his own CD's (available from Amazon), but as they are very expensive I recommend you borrow them from a local library, since most library's seem to stock them. After you have finished the Pimsleur course, you could continue the method Pimsleur discovered with this Open-Source programme, designed by a Computer Scientist at Cambridge University.

Ebbinhaus's Forgetting Curve shows how the % of Data remembered increases after each time you revise it! Simple!