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Summary: My fiance now wants to use Pimsleur's French CD's!
Review: I bought the Pimsleur Spanish I cd's with very little experience with the Spanish language and my fiance, a native Spanish speaker, is very impressed with the speed that I've been learning and my accent.
My favorite aspect of the cd's is that they concentrate on very useful phrases and words. It also provides enough of a structure so it becomes easier and easier to learn new words and how they are used.
Another thing that I really like about these cd's is that you aren't just spoon fed every bit of information. There are points where you have to figure out how to use a new word based on your knowledge of similar words.
Yet another thing I like is that the topics that they choose for you to engage in are pretty funny. One conversation involves a man telling a woman that, although this man is his friend, he doesn't like spending time with him because he talks too much about nothing. It is enough to keep your attention.My one complaint is that they slowly replace the English speaking narrator with a man speaking in Spanish. This second narrator speaks a bit too fast for me, so I usually end up only catching the last few words and guess what he is talking about based on the context of the words that I did catch. It isn't too bad and hasn't really been causing a problem until the 23rd or 24th lessons. All in all, I'd highly recommend this product to anyone who wants to learn Spanish and hasn't had much exposure. I will definately be trying the next in the series.
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Summary: It works...period.
Review: Not cheap, but after going through Spanish 1, I can speak and understand everything covered on these lessons perfectly, even in the rapid speech of a native Spanish speaker. I have ordered Spanish 2 and am lookig forward to expanding my ability. If it is not important to really learn the language, I'd suggest cheaper recorded lessons which will allow you to get by. This is for serious students.
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Summary: Painless way to learn another language
Review: This is learning a language the way it was meant to be. The way we learn our own primary language...by hearing it. I have studied three other languages the "conventional" way, by learning to read and write, conjugating verbs and learning vocabulary with little thought to actual conversation. I can only speak a few words in these languages with much difficulty and pause to "translate". The Pimsleur tapes take the logical approach. I found that I could "get by" after just a few lessons. I hear Spanish now and can actually understand much of it as if I were listening to English. I did need to review each lesson at least one additional time, but that could just be my brain. I have purchased the Spanish II program, and plan to get the Spanish III when the time comes. I highly recommend this course.
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Summary: Spend the money if you're serious about learning!
Review: I actually returned another brand's...CD set and exchanged it for Pimsleur's. I got one through the "used" link, although it's not really used...just less expensive. Although it cost...more, it is well worth the price! I'm serious about learning Spanish and want a program that works. This one works! It's not just a bunch of phrases rattled off to you at random intervals...there's a systematic method that brings up the words/phrases at exactly the right time so you can remember them. This company obviously did their research! I'm not sure what that research is...and quite honestly, I don't care...as long as I can learn Spanish. I haven't tried all the programs out there, but I've tried a few and this is by far the most effective so far!
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Summary: You've tried the rest, now try this!
Review: I highly recommend this series, despite the high price - it's worth it! I first learned basic Spanish while hitchiking around Latin America (hey, it was the seventies, people did that back then). I had big gaps in the basics, which this set fills in. But you learn the same way you would if you were a kid or a traveleler- by using phrases. After only a few 30-minute sessions (perfect for commuting) you have a functional set of phrases. Much better than rote learning! Much better than slogging through verb tenses (you learn them without even realizing it) This course is better than all the other ways I have attempted to learn - college courses; the Foreign Service Institute; other CD computer stuff. This introduction also sensitized my ear so that I can follow Spanish TV and Radio much more easily, thereby learning even more quickly - acquired through the same habit the Pimsleur CDs encourage - context, patterns, basic vocabulary. A little too much emphasis on dinero and cerveza early on - inappropriate for my 12 year old son, I think; also a bit dorky on the senor-senorita interaction, but these are minor complaints -- get this set and learn Spanish once and for all!
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Summary: Aprende espanol ahora!
Review: I began using this series prior to traveling to Mexico to do healthcare mission work in the rural underserve areas and I can't tell you what a blessing this series has been to me and my work. If you want to learn functional Spanish and you're not necessarily interested in the Spanish language as an academic area of interest, then you should stronly consider this series.
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Summary: Best Spanish Course in the World
Review: If you want to learn spanish the easy way, this is it. There's no book to read, you just listen and repeat. That is it. Listen and repeat. In fact, in almost two years, I completed Spanish I, II, III, and Plus by simply running with my CD in the morning and repeating along the way. The people I passed on the street thought I was nuts, but to me
this is the best way to learn. By listening and repeating. Frankly, for you to do this at home or in the car may be too borning, but since you are not doing anything while you are excersing, this makes learning Spanish fun. Anyway, I could not say more nice things about the course other than it words. It helps you build a vocabulary from the ground on up. It is a slow process, but it is really effort less and it does work. I just wish there was a Pimsleaur 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, & 10. Adios
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Summary: great leg up in Spanish
Review: I am mediocre in language learning ability and perseverence. Therefore, I must pay tribute to these tapes to keeping me learning and giving me a level of competence in Spanish. I won't say this is an "easy" course. I have to listen to the tapes many times to digest their lessons. Fine. So I take a long time. But the tapes are interesting enough to keep me going, and, now, when I encounter a baffled looking Spanish speaker in my building (we have lawyers there who cater to
Spanish speakers), I can communicate with them and help them. I listen to these tapes in my car. If I had been listening to talk radio, I would be unimproved in any aspect of my life. But now, I can communicate in Spanish. I am about to start the second program of this three part series, and I am looking foreward to it. These tapes will help anybody who is serious about adding a new language to their store of knowledge.
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Summary: teaching my young children Spanish
Review: After reading the wonderful reviews and listening to the first 30 minute lesson, which is available on the internet at the Pimsleur website, I bought the Quick & Easy Spanish. (...) They are 8 and 5.5. We do it in the car -- I have a little portable CD player which plays through the tape deck. That's pretty important, because we have to push "pause" after each phrase to give them time to think out the answer, and the pause button on the portable is very accessible on this player. At any rate, they didn't like Pimsleur the first week or two, feeling they'd never be able to say those long words, and they didn't care for what was being said, either. However, my five-year old now begs for it -- we have since bought the whole Lesson 1 and are deep into it. Once they got over the first hump where everything was new and they weren't sure they could ever make sense of all this new language, they started to progress much faster and with no more panic or worry. It's like their brains made room for a new language in the same way that a baby learns the first few words slowly and then picks up speed? That's how my kids have become. They love the fact that they can speak conversationally -- with each other. And they can make up sentences that suit what they want to say. But the program is definitely geared for adults. My small children learned how to ask for the hotel, restaurant, and to ask how much a beer costs. Ahem. We just laugh and do it. I recommend that you find a cute song tape, used on the side, geared towards children (with vocabulary like mom, dad, dog, sleep, colors, etc), with translation, so the kids can learn some other vocabulary geared to children. I consider the song tapes to be supplemental rather than primary, because I don't think kids can learn a language from a song tape by itself. That's because you don't learn how to manipulate the words to change the meaning of what you want to say in a song, you just memorize the words as written. After my own kids had learned say, 8 lessons of Spanish, it started to become pretty easy to learn a few new nouns every day or whatever, and then the kids can say more things than Pimsleur teaches alone, but only because they know how to make some basic sentences. Pimsleur is so cool because it teaches how to make sentences by manipulating the words you already know, rather than memorizing pat phrases. In all this that I've written, I'm trying to say that the program is not geared for kids -- the conversations are adult, but the words themselves are usually applicable to other things kids say. And the confidence to put words together into understandable sentences is really important. It works great for us. You have to have a sense of humor when your 5 year old says, "I am Mr. Jones" and asks for a beer, but . . . I still think it's the best way to learn the language, even for kids. When I bought another song tape for variety, my eight year old mistakenly thought he was supposed to learn Spanish from the songs themselves. He said, "Mom, I could never learn to speak Spanish with that! Only Pimsleur can teach Spanish." Also: for kids, it doesn't work at one whole lesson a day. Our do a fraction of a lesson, with some review at the next sitting, and we use "pause" so they can THINK through their answer each time. Sometimes I go back and play the lesson "at tempo" once they know it well. But I tell you, what they have learned, they have learned VERY well. I really, really like this approach. I cannot imagine a more effective way to learn a new language. I would still recommend getting the first 8 lessons first, available much more cheaply (...), to see if your kids will be willing to do it. There are no gimmicks and no songs. In fact, there is nothing cute at all, so not every child will be willing to buckle down and make sentences as directed. It would be good to give it a trial run before buying the whole package.
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Summary: Expensive, but I'm worth it!
Review: I'm ready to purchase Spanish II tapes and am quite pleased with the program so far. I've also found that rereading the reviews AFTER I completed the first set of tapes was quite helpful. Validation at having to listen to the tapes more than one time per day was extremely comforting. My only recommendation for those just beginning this journey is to keep listening and not get discouraged. There were times when I wanted to fling my cassette player across the park and dump the tapes. I stuck with it, though, and am very pleased with the results, especially the pronunciation. Many Spanish speakers comment on my great pronunciation skills. As far as the cost goes, I find if I spend the money I'm more apt to work through the project. It would be much easier to quit if I didn't have much to lose. Just a quirk I guess. I've also found that Amazon offers much greater discounts than other websites. Comparison-shopping has been helpful and brings me back to Amazon. I wonder if I'd be a better Spanish speaker if I purchased tapes from a more expensive vendor.....! Good luck to those just beginning.
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