I'm an American-born expat living in Peru and I have two children. As such, I'm always worried about whether or not they're properly learning English. I learned Spanish using the Pimsleur System and so I was interested in the LittlePim series, created by Paul Pimsleur's daughter.
I had previously downloaded parts of the Spanish Little Pim series through torrents and so I kind of knew what it was about. Despite the price and the difficulty ordering, I decided to go ahead and get the series to help reinforce my children's English skills.
The series has some definite advantages. First of all, kids like the videos and actually watch them, so that makes them better than a technically superior solution that children find boring. However, as I am an English as a Foreign Language teacher, I watched the videos with a careful eye for details that others might not notice or comment on.
I give the Little Pim (English) series 8 for concept and 5 for execution.
The Little Pim videos start with Little Pim, a panda, who does silly things to get the kids to laugh and helps provide segues from one part of the video to the other. In between his antics, the children watch videos to background music and a voiceover (Little Pim) explains pertinent features of the video. In the first scene we see children eating with a fork and the fork is circled thanks to the magic of video editing. Pim identifies it as "a fork" and the words "a fork" appear on the screen. So far so good. Watching children then know what a fork is and may even repeat it.
However, let's set some realistic goals for Little Pim and see how it does at reaching them.
1. Teaching children pronouns (I, you, he, she, it, we, they).
2. Teaching children when to use "a" and "an"
3. Teaching children when to use "the"
4. Teaching children how to make plurals.
5. Teaching children common adjectives and adjective order.
6. Teaching children good intonation.
Firstly, Little Pim does all right when it comes to teaching pronouns. It clearly teaches the difference between "he" and "she" while "it" gets a lot of coverage too. Later in the series "they" is also presented. Unfortunately "I" and "you" are given extremely shirt shrift and "we" gets no coverage at all. Little Pim should have had a sidekick, I'm afraid. Continuing the monochromatic theme they should have had a penguin to help him out. That would have let Pim throw in useful tidbits like, "We're blowing bubbles" or to have someone to ask "Are you hungry?" or "What are you eating?"
Secondly, more work could have been done on "a" vs. "an" and plurals. For example eggs are presented as just that: Eggs. It would not have been that hard to start with "an egg" and later teach "eggs" and then "He's eating eggs." The word "the" hardly ever gets mentioned, even when appropriate. In fact, I can't think of a single example of the word "the." For example you get presented with the word "a newspaper" and later you see "Dad is reading a newspaper." Would you ever really say that? Wouldn't we say "the newspaper" as we know exactly which newspaper we're talking about? If you think this is a moot point, remember that languages like Japanese don't have words for "a" or "the" so they need ample, clear presentations of what these words are and how they're used. The Pim series doesn't always give the "a" starter either, as when the toothbrush is presented that's what it's called: toothbrush (not "a toothbrush").
Thirdly, other than simple plurals or "fait accompli" plurals no real effort or thought is given to plurals. Children might easily get the idea that you make plurals just by tacking an "s" on to everything (or no idea about how to make them at all). Soon they'll be writing "toothbrushs" or trying to pronounce it - another missed opportunity by Little Pim.
Fourthly, I had started to despair of the idea that Little Pim might teach adjectives, but they did come up in the 3rd video. Soon children are learning colors and the important information that it's a "green triangle" not a "triangle green" which Spanish-speaking children might easily think. Additional work could have (and should have) been done on making it clear that it's "green triangles" and not "greens triangles" as adjectives don't become plural when they describe plural objects - at least, in English. Other languages require the adjective to match in number and gender.
Finally, we should talk about intonation. The Little Pim series almost never uses contractions, which results in awkward intonation patterns being presented to the children.
A native speaker would naturally say:
John eats peanuts (where the underline shows the words most strongly stressed) and say
He eats them.
Similarly a native would say "He's hungry" and the underline shows the stress. When the children hear the non-contracted version it's almost always said "He is hungry" as though the word "he" was somehow important new information in the sentence. This could easily result in children having a poor idea of intonation in the target language and I don't see why contractions were avoided like the plague. Maybe I could understand not including them in the first CD, but they should have been solidly in place in the 2nd and 3rd CDs.
One additional note: It won't affect most toddlers, but really the English-language text on the screen should have been properly capitalized and punctuated.
Is the Little Pim (English) series worth buying? I leave that up to the reader to decide.
I had previously downloaded parts of the Spanish Little Pim series through torrents and so I kind of knew what it was about. Despite the price and the difficulty ordering, I decided to go ahead and get the series to help reinforce my children's English skills.
The series has some definite advantages. First of all, kids like the videos and actually watch them, so that makes them better than a technically superior solution that children find boring. However, as I am an English as a Foreign Language teacher, I watched the videos with a careful eye for details that others might not notice or comment on.
I give the Little Pim (English) series 8 for concept and 5 for execution.
The Little Pim videos start with Little Pim, a panda, who does silly things to get the kids to laugh and helps provide segues from one part of the video to the other. In between his antics, the children watch videos to background music and a voiceover (Little Pim) explains pertinent features of the video. In the first scene we see children eating with a fork and the fork is circled thanks to the magic of video editing. Pim identifies it as "a fork" and the words "a fork" appear on the screen. So far so good. Watching children then know what a fork is and may even repeat it.
However, let's set some realistic goals for Little Pim and see how it does at reaching them.
1. Teaching children pronouns (I, you, he, she, it, we, they).
2. Teaching children when to use "a" and "an"
3. Teaching children when to use "the"
4. Teaching children how to make plurals.
5. Teaching children common adjectives and adjective order.
6. Teaching children good intonation.
Firstly, Little Pim does all right when it comes to teaching pronouns. It clearly teaches the difference between "he" and "she" while "it" gets a lot of coverage too. Later in the series "they" is also presented. Unfortunately "I" and "you" are given extremely shirt shrift and "we" gets no coverage at all. Little Pim should have had a sidekick, I'm afraid. Continuing the monochromatic theme they should have had a penguin to help him out. That would have let Pim throw in useful tidbits like, "We're blowing bubbles" or to have someone to ask "Are you hungry?" or "What are you eating?"
Secondly, more work could have been done on "a" vs. "an" and plurals. For example eggs are presented as just that: Eggs. It would not have been that hard to start with "an egg" and later teach "eggs" and then "He's eating eggs." The word "the" hardly ever gets mentioned, even when appropriate. In fact, I can't think of a single example of the word "the." For example you get presented with the word "a newspaper" and later you see "Dad is reading a newspaper." Would you ever really say that? Wouldn't we say "the newspaper" as we know exactly which newspaper we're talking about? If you think this is a moot point, remember that languages like Japanese don't have words for "a" or "the" so they need ample, clear presentations of what these words are and how they're used. The Pim series doesn't always give the "a" starter either, as when the toothbrush is presented that's what it's called: toothbrush (not "a toothbrush").
Thirdly, other than simple plurals or "fait accompli" plurals no real effort or thought is given to plurals. Children might easily get the idea that you make plurals just by tacking an "s" on to everything (or no idea about how to make them at all). Soon they'll be writing "toothbrushs" or trying to pronounce it - another missed opportunity by Little Pim.
Fourthly, I had started to despair of the idea that Little Pim might teach adjectives, but they did come up in the 3rd video. Soon children are learning colors and the important information that it's a "green triangle" not a "triangle green" which Spanish-speaking children might easily think. Additional work could have (and should have) been done on making it clear that it's "green triangles" and not "greens triangles" as adjectives don't become plural when they describe plural objects - at least, in English. Other languages require the adjective to match in number and gender.
Finally, we should talk about intonation. The Little Pim series almost never uses contractions, which results in awkward intonation patterns being presented to the children.
A native speaker would naturally say:
John eats peanuts (where the underline shows the words most strongly stressed) and say
He eats them.
Similarly a native would say "He's hungry" and the underline shows the stress. When the children hear the non-contracted version it's almost always said "He is hungry" as though the word "he" was somehow important new information in the sentence. This could easily result in children having a poor idea of intonation in the target language and I don't see why contractions were avoided like the plague. Maybe I could understand not including them in the first CD, but they should have been solidly in place in the 2nd and 3rd CDs.
One additional note: It won't affect most toddlers, but really the English-language text on the screen should have been properly capitalized and punctuated.
Is the Little Pim (English) series worth buying? I leave that up to the reader to decide.
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