| |  | Author: Pimsleur
Publisher: audible.com
Category: Book
List Price: $58.29
Buy New: $30.59
You Save: $27.70 (48%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  12 reviews
Media: Audio Download
ASIN: B0014CDN70
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
 PIMSLEUR DEVELOPS A SPEECH CENTER January 23, 2007
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
No where in the literature that Pismleur puts out does it claim to be the "end all" Spanish program. I mean, really! It would impossible to put everything you need to know in three short courses. What it claims to do, it does. It gets you to a certain level of SPOKEN FLUENCY and no more and no less. When I did the research for my book, "YOU CAN LEARN SPANISH or Any Language No Matter Your Age or Disposition," what I found was that Americans particularly have the most bizzare idea of what it takes to develop spoken fluency in a second language. The course, "FSI Programmatic Spanish", is one that should be done after the highest level of spoken fluency is achieved. What "FSI Programmatic Spanish" does is address material to the short and long term memory and not to that portion of the brain that develops a "speech center". If you want to know what a "speech center" in your brain is, just note how your six or seven year old child can communicate in his native language BEFORE ever learning what a part of speech is. When I went through the " FSI Programmatic Spanish" course so I could review it for my book, I thought it was dreadfully boring, mind numbing, and did not at all address the development of a Speech Center...Pimsleur, however does. Pimsleur is not "A" method for second language acquisition...it is "THE" method for beginning spoken fluency. One comes before the other. In fact, in my book, avaialable here on Amazon.com, I mention Pimsleur as part of the course of study for developing spoken fluency.
Excellent learning program! October 14, 2006
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
I purchased the Pimsleur I, II and III series because I wanted to learn Spanish by audio while walking my dogs.
Each lesson is 30 minutes long and I listened to the same lesson over and over again until I felt that I had mastered it then I moved to the next lesson. Each lesson builds on the previous lesson and they work!
I have just returned from a week in Barcelona and I was able to communicate fine in Spanish with the people there. Although Catalan is the most popular language in Barcelona most of the people there also speak Castillian Spanish.
I was completely comfortable alone wandering the city. I knew enough to get around. You only have to ask the locals to speak slowly for you and they will. :) No entiendo, habla mas dispacio por favor. Many of the people I met there had the same problem understanding English when we speak to fast too. So they were not at all bothered by speaking slower for me.
One night at dinner my co-workers made me speak entirely in Spanish for the entire dinner. They were surprised at how much I knew. During my trip strangers were telling me that my Spanish and my pronunication was perfect. I know that if I had the opportunity to spend more time in Spain I would learn faster too with the base of knowledge that these tapes have provided to me. (En Espanol - Se que si tuviera la oportunidad de pasar mas tiempo en Espana aprenderia mas rapidamente tambien con la base del conocimiento que estas CD's me han proporcionado).
I highly recommend these series if you want to learn by audio.
My only regret with these tapes is that there is no Spanish IV, V or VI to learn from. They are wonderful!
I have seen and worked with the other Spanish learning products on the market. These are the best!
 Skip #3, but 1 and 2 are good September 14, 2006
24 out of 25 found this review helpful
As others have said, Pimsleur is great for developing correct pronunciation and for getting comfortable speaking. In that regard, volumes 1 and 2 are excellent and gradually introduce more complex or idiomatic phrases as well as verb tenses gradually and in a natural way. Also, as others have said, you will not even remotely be able to say much (or understand much) if you ONLY do the Pimsleur lessons. You have to get a good vocabulary book (children's picture books are highly recommended), listen to Univision, etc., but getting grounded solidly in pronunciation and just the initial step of being able to put together sentences confidently is something Pimsleur 1 and 2 will definitely help in greatly. Course number 3, however, is a huge disappointment---it's not just "not good enough", it's actually extremely poorly done. Anyone who gets number 3 presumably has done 1 and 2 and is comfortable with pretty much any basic phrases (Muchas Gracias), how to do introductions (Mucho gusto in concerlo), filler phrases (No importa), etc. but in course 3, you will spend a significant amount of time simply repeating these same phrases over and over. There is also a completely mysterious enormous emphasis on certain phrases that end up taking up in total nearly an entire lesson apiece---for example, "un plato de la especialidad de la casa" (one plate of the specialty of the house). First of all, this is a phrase any reasonably knowledgeable person who has done lessons 1 and 2 could figure out without outside help---you don't need lesson time that you paid for wasted being introduced to something you can figure out yourself. But this phrase took up nearly an entire lesson. Other similar unimportant or phrases easily decipherable without help took up entire lessons. Very little in the way of additional verb tenses were introduced in the entire course number 3, and a very specific set of vocabulary was introduced entirely geared towards foreign engineers making business trips or going to conferences in Latin America (I'm not kidding---that's the vocab you get repeated endlessly and not all that useful outside of very narrow situations). So all in all, number 3 is really terrible and should be avoided even if you get it for free---it simply isn't worth the time. But number 1 and 2 are strongly recommended as good tools for getting to a basic "comfort level" from which you can really develop on your own.
 Bookchip version is better and easier to use May 9, 2006
2 out of 6 found this review helpful
Bookchip version is better and easier to use, ( 3 bookchips compared to 52 cds) I bought bookchips and cds, send cds back. Buy Bookchip (Audiofy Bookchip) instead.
Just great September 7, 2005
6 out of 9 found this review helpful
I love these tapes; I've used several of the Pimsleur series and they're fantastic. By stressing *listening* over reading, these tapes lead to excellent pronunciation, and the "graduated recall" system seems to improve retention. The one thing I missed was that another tape set offered mnemonic devices (e.g., in spanish "bathtub" is "tina", so you imagine a girl named tina in a bathtub to help recall), so with Pimsleur I just make up my own as I listen.
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