Welcome to Pimsleur Approach Review, glad you dropped by! I hope you find my article interesting and informative.
Pimsleur Spanish Level 1 is arguably the most popular Spanish course on the market. It is sometimes called the heavyweight champion of learning Spanish.
How We Learn
The founder, Dr. Paul Pimsleur, spent his professional life studying how humans learn a language, and was one of the world’s leading experts in applied linguistics.
He is the inventor of the Graduated Interval Recall Theory in 1967, and is copied by some other language courses. Briefly, it is a spaced repetition of a word or phrase in order to maximize future recall.
Good Information
My aim in Pimsleur Approach Review is to give you enough information so you can make a good decision about which program to choose, so I will tell you about the good and the bad regarding the various courses.
On this site I will be talking about Latin American Spanish only, the reason being that Spanish is spoken by over 500 million people, and is the second most spoken language in the world. (My apologies if you were wanting to learn Swahili as a second language :0)
Latin American Spanish
If you learn Latin American Spanish and then visit Spain where castilian spanish is spoken, you don’t have to worry. If your pronunciation is okay you will be understood.
Spanish Level 1 consists of 15 hours of audio You will start off learning basic sentences, then variations of those sentences.
They use repetition in a way that makes you feel like you’re always progressing. (Because you are.) They also manage to avoid monotony by giving you enough time to remember and apply a response before they give you the answer to a particular question.
Low Initial Price
They have a very low initial price – I paid $9.95 for Spanish Level 1 including shipping! But, I don’t know how long they will keep that sale price, they didn’t say. The regular price is $19.95.
In my research for Pimsleur Approach Review I found that most language learning programs have a low price to get started, but as you work your way up the different levels it gets very expensive. We’re talking $200, $300, and more. However, I don’t think you could become fluent in a language by just taking a level 1 course.
Gaining Fluency
What exactly is meant by fluent? My dictionary says: “able to speak or write smoothly, easily, or readily: a fluent speaker.” My understanding is that you don’t have to be a scholar, and you don’t have to know thousands of words.
Pimsleur Approach has had over 25 million customers and 40 years of success, and offers 17 languages. Taking their course is an excellent way to develop a Latin American accent. Apparently this is not true of all programs. I sure like this aspect of their course.
It just seems so much better when you have that accent. Now all you need to do is go to a sun-tanning studio to look a little more like a Latin American!
Pimsleur Quick And Simple
This is an introductory course comprised of the first 8 lessons of their comprehensive course, so you will be up and running very quickly. The focus is on conversation, and you will be able to ask directions, use numbers, and know some greetings. You will also have a pretty good accent.
Learning Spanish Is Fun
In my research I came upon many people who said they found Pimsleur to be fun, easy, and effective. I agree. I am at the half-way point in my Spanish course and I highly recommend it.
Pimsleur Approach offers a 30 day money-back guarantee.
Negative comments:
*They teach a rather formal way of speaking
They teach:
*Vocabulary
*Pronunciation
*Grammar
*Writing
LANGUAGES OFFERED
Albanian, Arabic (Eastern), Arabic (Egyptian), Armenian (Eastern), Armenian (Western), Chinese (Cantonese), Chinese (Mandarin), Croatian, Danish, Dutch, English, Farsi, French, German, German (Swiss), Greek (Modern), Haitian, Hebrew (Modern), Hindi, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Ojibwe, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Thai, Ukrainian, Vietnamese
With Pimsleur Spanish, for each of the 3 levels it has to offer you will get 30 audio lessons, each 30 minutes long – a total of 15 hours of instruction.
MP3 Compatible
All this is available in cassette or CD, and is MP3 compatible. Since the lessons are fairly short you can pretty much take it with you anywhere, and learn some Spanish during your busy day.
If you have problems there is email support and phone support.
Learn More About Pimsleur Approach Here, and watch a very interesting video.
Here’s A Look At Some Other Language Courses:
ROSETTA STONE
This is a popular course which is language and sound based, and all work is done in front of a computer; there are no CD’S.
What People Are Saying About Rosetta Stone:
“Rosetta Stone Works” “A good place to start.” People also say that the teachers are friendly and patient and experienced teachers of the language. If your native language is English you will find that English is not spoken in this program.
They don’t translate anything into English; it’s all represented in photos and untranslated audio and text.
Another feature is that once you complete a unit you can schedule a 50 minute session with a teacher. You can see them by video but they can’t see you, and headsets are used to communicate. Negative comments include “Too expensive” (basic Spanish level 1 is $179.) ”Outdated learning system.”
However, in defense of their seemingly high price is the fact that they have spent huge amounts of money on linguistic research, cognitive scientists, neuro scientists, and more.
Learning Spanish Like Crazy
This is a good course for people who have never had any Spanish training. It is also a refresher for intermediate Spanish speakers.
If you are looking for more advanced material you will need to purchase the second level course instead.
This is an audio based program with lots of repetition of words and phrases spoken by instructors. You will learn to speak the way the average person does, meaning the colloquial language used by people in South America.
You will get a good idea of the vocabulary and accent of Latin Americans. The audio quality is very good and the (native) instructors speak very clearly, even though they speak rapidly. Speaking quickly is good, because that’s the way it often is in the real world.
Overheard: ” it is not based on enough sound educational practice to get my vote.”
The course is available on CD’S and a digital MP3 format for immediate down-load.
ROCKET SPANISH
Rocket Spanish is aimed at beginners, and then takes them through intermediate to an advanced knowledge of Spanish. There are 31 lessons in total, with 12 beginner lessons and 9 intermediate. The remaining lessons mimic real life situations where you can follow a conversation.
You can learn quickly on this course: you hear a conversation, then the conversation is explained line by line. There are some different tools that match the learning style of different people.
Rocket Spanish has improved it’s course by introducing the Learning Lounge which gives the course more structure and provides feedback. This method tends to motivate the student more.
The Learning Lounge is online and students are urged to visit as much as
possible. They have added new features to encourage return visits to the Learning Lounge.
In addition, there are two teaching games :
MegaVocab – vocabulary recognition: match one of 6 pictures to a word picked at random by the software
MegaAudio – listen to an audio of a word or sentence and guess which of the 4 pictures represent the audio.
These games are useful to consolidate the knowledge learned in the lessons or as a warm up exercise before the lessons begin.
Flash cards are provided :
154 beginner flash cards
123 advanced flash cards
A comment: ”users may miss the video presentations they can find on other online Spanish courses.”
Rocket Spanish customer service is good.
BERLITZ
This language course has a completely different twist: it’s full immersion from the start; instructors only speak to you in the language you are learning.
Private instruction is available and is custom designed for your needs.
What People Are Saying About Berlitz:
“Instructors are enthusiastic and energetic.”
“The audio Cd’s are the best part of this package”
“The sound and lessons are high quality”
The downside:
“Not for beginners just starting out”
“Not for computer beginners”
Don’t forget that the above comments are personal viewpoints, so of course they won’t be shared by everyone.
Buena Suerte!
