Spanish II

Rating:
Summary: Expensive, Bad Focus and CD Quality!
Review: Great method for learning. Cost of program is high though. My local library had all programs available for checkout. I even found out that recordedbooks dot com rents all lessons on tape and CD.

Rating:
Summary: Incredibly effective!!!
Review: I have just completed the first sixty lessons (Spanish I - 30 lessons, Spanish II - 30 lessons) of this 90 lesson course and tonight placed my order for the last 30 lessons (Spanish III).

This course follows the teaching method of the late Dr. Paul Pimsleur and is, without a doubt, the most effective method I have found for learning a new language. Having done some preliminary reading on Dr. Pimsleur before ordering the first course, I was struck by the wisdom of his "graduated interval recall" method.

What's interesting is that, as you go through the taped lessons, you are actually learning Spanish (or Japanese, German, Italian, etc.) in much the same way you learned your native language. Think about it! We all learned to speak our native language YEARS before we ever learned to write. We learned by listening, watching, and emulating. The advantage you have with these tapes is that, understanding English, you can now be clearly TOLD what each word means, rather than having to learn by watching and associating like we did as small children. Simply by listening, the tapes feed and TEST you on an ever increasing list of phrases, gradually increasing the length of time between testing until, finally, you LEARN. At the same time, you are forced to recombine the words you learn into NEW phrases, further testing and reinforcing your new knowledge. Additionally, as you progress through the tapes, the native speakers gradually increase their speed. Not surprisingly, your ability to understand increases with it!

It is already amazing how far I have come. I am now comfortably (if somewhat haltingly) speaking in present, past, AND future tenses, with a large set of commonly used verbs, nouns and adjectives. I am really excited to "dig in" to the last 30 lessons.

One final note: This course is only intended to teach you to SPEAK the language. Reading practice is extremely limited. The fact is, I have almost NO IDEA how to write or spell most of the words I'm using (again, just like children). For me, that is not a problem. I am told by native speakers that my pronunciation is EXCELLENT! For now, that feels like a huge success!

Rating:
Summary: The definitive way to learn a language while you commute
Review: I have tried other tapes (10 years ago, anyway) and found that they all required books, or live lessons, or were just rote phrases. But this is a GREAT way of learning a language. You can convince yourself of this by looking at the high resale price of used copies on eBay.

Anyway, all you do is listen and speak. Each tape is a half an hour. They are consistently good and easy to progress. Occasionally, they throw in a stinker tape (Lesson 24) but usually, they're really good about challenging you without making it impossible.

I'd recommend listening to them at least twice. I personally listen to each side of each tape a total of 3 times.

If you have a 30 minute commute, they are perfect. I listen to them on the way to work every day and have progressed to midway through level 3. I'm obviously not fluent in Spanish, but at least now I can understand some of Univision (as long as they're showing chiquitas in bikinis).

Rating:
Summary: The definitive way to learn a language while you commute
Review: I have tried other tapes (10 years ago, anyway) and found that they all required books, or live lessons, or were just rote phrases. But this is a GREAT way of learning a language. You can convince yourself of this by looking at the high resale price of used copies on eBay.

Anyway, all you do is listen and speak. Each tape is a half an hour. They are consistently good and easy to progress. Occasionally, they throw in a stinker tape (Lesson 24) but usually, they're really good about challenging you without making it impossible.

I'd recommend listening to them at least twice. I personally listen to each side of each tape a total of 3 times.

If you have a 30 minute commute, they are perfect. I listen to them on the way to work every day and have progressed to midway through level 3. I'm obviously not fluent in Spanish, but at least now I can understand some of Univision (as long as they're showing chiquitas in bikinis).

Rating:
Summary: Well, certainly better than nothing.
Review: I seem to be less overwhelmed by the quality of this course than other reviewers. It has both strong and weak points.

POSITIVE POINTS: The segments are skillfully overlapped so that you're not starting from scratch every new lesson. Also, if you repeat the phrases when you're supposed to, you'll get a lot of valuable pronunciation practice. The course requires lots of listening and speaking, which is exactly how it should be.

LESS THAN POSITIVE POINTS: There's too much repetition focused on nonessentials and not enough focus on useful idioms. For example, when a practice dialogue mentions "un cassette con los últimos éxitos" (a cassette of the latest hits), the listener is instructed to translate the following:

"Hits.
Hits.
Latest hits.
The latest hits.
Cassette.
A cassette with the latest hits.
A cassette with the latest hits.
The latest hits.
A cassette with the latest hits."

This degree of repetition is great if you're planning on traveling to Mexico and striking up a conversation about cassettes with the greatest hits. However, if you plan on engaging in normal communication, this will not help you much. In my opinion, misplaced focus is a problem throughout the course. Also, many of the topics of conversation (e.g. several dialogues re: arranging for quick turnaround time at the dry cleaners) are probably not particularly pertinent to people who would be using this course.

Overall I would say the course is helpful, but for this price I think it could be better.

Rating:
Summary: Expensive, Bad Focus and CD Quality!
Review: My problem with this CD course is the level of appropriate
communicative ability one has after using the course to deal with everyday situations.
I believe that the focus of the program is to teach you certain vocabulary which is repeated ad nauseum and then, when you are bored to tears, abruptly ends. It is then you realize that the high price you paid was not worth the money.
The CD quality seems poor to me. I would think that for the price of the course one would receive a better quality CD set and recordings.

Rating:
Summary: Great program to begin speaking Spanish
Review: Pimsleur programs may be most valuable for people who are having hard time pronouncing words correctly - and when you're learning languages with which you are completely unfamiliar.
Pimsleur program will make it practically an effortless experience.

I don't know what kind of a problem the previous reviewer had with CDs - mine play perfectly. I did get all three levels of Spanish and am very happy with the entire set.

I also got numerous other programs, but out of the entire variety my favorite additional program was Platiquemos. It is somewhat cheaper and you can learn much more and faster. The truth is I love them both.


Rating:
Summary: It doesn't get much better than this
Review: The Pimsleur family of language courses is probably the best available in the English-speaking world. However, if you're even considering buying this it means you've probably already finished Pimsleur Spanish I... so you're already familiar with what the product is like and how it works.

The main thing I can say about Pimsleur Spanish II is that when I finished I actually started to feel like a Spanish speaker. Maybe not a fluent speaker, but proficient enough to survive (or perhaps drive a taxi!) in a Spanish-speaking country. It's a much different feeling than completing Spanish I... where I had learned just enough to grasp how much there was yet to learn.

If you haven't done so already, I would also recommend finding some basic grammar book to look over. A Pimsleur principal is that it's more "natural" to pick up grammar rules by osmosis as you listen to conversation. While that may be true, you also have to consider that as a child it took me 10-15 years to master my native tongue's grammar by osmosis... and that was being surrounded by native speakers and taking classes in school! While learning grammar from books alone is counter-productive, I can't count the never of times that something confusing me on the Pimsleur CD's was cleared up INSTANTLY by reading a rule in the grammar book. If you're investing this much time and money into gaining Spanish proficiency, you might as well go the extra few inches and read up on your grammar basics.

Another extra I would recommend is some basic Spanish reader. I don't mean a phrase book... I mean some sort of "Dick and Jane"-style reader where you can learn new words in the context of reading natural text rather than exercises or travel phrases. The reading exercises in Pimsleur courses are the only aspect that I found to be slightly disappointing. There is really NO correlation between the vocabulary in the reading exercises and that which you're learning in the main lessons. Most words you learn will never show up in reading exercises, while allot of words you see in the reading exercises are never taught! I suppose that the idea here is to teach you how to pronounce written Spanish even when seeing unfamiliar words. However, I enjoy learning Spanish by reading natural text as much by hearing natural dialogue... and there are countless readers out there for beginners.

All in all, you can't go wrong with Pimsleur's courses. Once you've finished the "Spanish II", you'll be itching to move on to "Spanish III". These courses may be a more effective (and affordable) option for those more serious learners that would otherwise consider taking night classes.

Rating:
Summary: Pimsluer Spanish II Review
Review: The Pimsleur programs are the best at home language learning tool you can buy. It breaks up difficult words so you can pronounce them correctly. It also moves along at an easy to learn pace. I do reccomend taking one year of spanish in a classroom along with this, to be able to understand grammer. If your serious about learning Spanish, this is a must.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent product for teaching everyday Spanish
Review: The system is great. I get by easily in Mexico after going through blooks 1 and 2. However, the quality of the cassette tapes in my book 2 is TERRIBLE. Very poor audio on most, two tore after several plays. The worst part is the company doesn't appear to stand behind them. I've emailed them and talked to a local dealer and nobody gets back to me.
If you order their product get it on a CD. If you get tapes, copy them to good quality tapes right off. I wish I had done that because their tapes are junk. For what they charge they should pay attention to quality and have some loyalty to their customers. But again, their learning system is very good.