Pimsleur approach any good?

[Guest]

I've had an eye on those Pimsleur coursed for a while now. I think those tapes alone can't teach you a language, maybe they help you just with pronunciation. What's strange is that for some languages they have only level 1, for others they have level 1 and 2 and still others have level 1, 2 and three. So what do you think of the Pimsleur tapes?

[Torsten]

You are right, there are some Pimsleur language courses that offer tapes for 1 level while others include tapes for 2 or more levels. The reason for this is rather simple: some languages are more popular than others and so the demand/supply situation is different for each language.
As for the Pimsleur approach itself, it enables you to learn phrases without being attached to a computer or text book. You can expose yourself to the language you are learning wherever you are and whatever you are doing at the moment.
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[Em]

I recieved an email from www.pimsleurapproach.com about learning a language in 10 days which seems a bit short. Since you have bought it have you learned much since?

Thanks,

Em

[Torsten]

Hi Em,

So you received an email from Pimsleurapproach. That's good news. You certainly can learn a language in 10 days, the question is how you define learn a language. Learning a language is a life long process so you can learn a language for 10 days and you will have achieved a certain level of success and you can learn a language for 10 years and the result will be different. I'd venture to say that you can learn the basic phrases of daily communication in any language within a week or so. Still, the question remains: How exactly do you measure your language competency?
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TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[eagent]

[rickj]

Em,

It always takes more than 10 days to learn a language. I've used the Pimsleur method to learn how to converse in a few languages, but each full level of the course has 30 lessons. According to the instructions, you are supposed to only play one lesson per day--you can play that lessons multiple times in one day, but you should not try to "cram" in different lessons in a single day. That means to learn properly, it will take more time than Pimsleur Approach claims.

I've bought my lessons from Pimsleur Direct, which also has bookchips, a cool digital format that is cheaper and smaller than CDs.

Hope this helps & happy learning!
Rick

[MarinaT]

Hi,

I have just posted a new topic My experience to get the best ‘blended’ learning with Pimsleur, where I tell about my own experience of combining a very good asynchronous method as Pimsleur with support of the right real life tutoring. It worked very well for me, as the teacher is helping me with intensive conversations and correcting my mistakes, both in pronunciation and when putting different known sentences into a new one.

I hope it gives some good ideas to other people really interested in learning a language.

Marina