Greek I

Rating:
Summary: Learn to Hear, Understand and Speak
Review: For me, it's always been fairly easy to learn to Read a foreign language. The difficult part is being able to understand the SPOKEN language - at actual speed. Finally all the way through the series. I find that it has been a GREAT help. Easily worth 5 stars. My only complaint is the lack of the 2nd and 3rd volumes.

Rating:
Summary: learn while you drive
Review: I am in my car quite a bit, and this is the best way to learn Greek in a short period of time. The lessons are repetitive, but very easy to keep up. The repetition is needed to help you remember the words and phrases you need. This makes it very easy to commit these words to memory. Difficult words can be mastered with this process as well. The only drawback to this method is I still don't feel I have a very wide vocabulary. The repetition leaves little time to learn more words, though I now know the important ones.

Rating:
Summary: Pimsleur is effective if you want only to SPEAK Greek...
Review: Pimsleur's Greek program is my first attempt learning a new language using their method. I've used Berlitz, Living Language and Language/40 cassettes and CDs for other languages. However, having gone through some 15 hours of instruction with the Pimsleur cassettes has proven to me that Pimsleur really does work.

It works if you want to speak the language, although the vocabulary I have learned in the 15 hours is limited, but I have retained most of what I've listened to. The method can seem repetitive at times.

I gave the edition 4 not 5 stars, because the booklet included with the tapes gives you only a brief glance at written Greek: the alphabet is shown, along with a pronunciation key. The chapter lessons are written in Greek only, which is great if you have the motivation to decipher it as a beginning student. I know Pimsleur's emphasis is on learning through listening and repetition, but why include the lesson titles at all then?

The vocabulary only provides words like: wine/beer, husband/wife, when/where, time/week, Athens/Thessaloniki, drink/eat, buy/shops, etc. Really useful words they should've included would be airport, help, even the names of some typical Greek foods you'd order in a restaurant. Offering a Level 2 or 3 is definitely needed if one is going to continue learning Greek using this method.

From reading other reviews of other Greek-language study aids, I feel the need to invest in a Routledge's Comprehensive Grammar as I intend to fully learn the language and the culture.