German

Rating:
Summary: Pimsleur Instant Conversation German
Review: I found this set extremely, annoyingly repetitive--repeating "Ich bin Americane" "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" so many times that I couldn't stand it any more. If you want to learn how to pronounce a few words VERY well, but are not interested in learning a lot of new words, this is perfect for you. I think most people, however, would like to learn a little more than that. I've found the Living Language series--Verb Building especially, much better than this. About anything is better than this!

Rating:
Summary: Laying firm foundations for spoken fluency
Review: It's true that this set is repetetive -- that's the point. It's not boring, however. I'm halfway through the set. Since I had studied a bit of vocabulary beforehand, I find myself wishing occasionally for a faster pace, or less "white space" for practice. Still, it might be wise to err on the side of making sure a day's worth of material can really be retained. The method is quite sound: the student is coached through listening to and repeating the ingredients of simple and then more developed conversations, with frequent tangents on how to recombine those building blocks in more complex and varied ways, so each word becomes "live" for one's neural connections.

These 8 CDs include far less vocabulary than many other introductory sets -- after a week, I can have comfortable conversations about a few limited themes, but with this set the student can internalize the syntax and pronunciation *very well* for that initial vocabulary, without having to do any written notes at all. Vocabulary from earlier lessons is sprinkled through later lessons, to keep all the vocabulary live and fluent. A couple of times, I did want to see spelling for a word, and looked it up in a dictionary.

Having spent time in graduate school with many bright people who studied English as a second language as adults, I'm inclined to agree with the Pimsleur warning that memorizing words based mostly on written cues before getting a solid grounding in pronunciation and intonation leads to a permanent handicap. I'll dive back into my heady grammar text and hundreds of vocabulary cards *after* training my ears and core intuitions with Pimsleur I and II.