A fine continuation for those with reasonable expectations, June 22, 2000

The negative reviews here kept me from ordering this for a while, but ultimately it comes down to whether you can afford it, and whether you want to stay in the nest a little longer before being kicked out of the tree. Don't worry about about being confused because you don't know two commonly used tenses. You are going to be confused because even small children know a few thousand more words than you do.

Spanish III reviews the old and adds the use of the imperfect tense (used to), the past perfect tense (had..., or would have...), and the past tense in the plural and informal forms. In fairness to the critics, it is wrong to ask you to say something in the future tense (will ...) and then give the translation in the near future (going to ...). But you are going to have to learn a lot on your own anyway, and the future tense not very hard. I learned more Spanish than I ever thought possible, and I can express myself comfortably within my vocabulary without going through English. Pimsleur made learning a language a wonderful experience, but the learning doesn't end with the course.

pretty good, February 15, 2002

i have gone through all three levels of pimsleur spanish and found them quite effective in helping me lock away in my memory what is probably the core of the language. i can converse with native speakers at work in ordinary chit chat and am complemented upon my pronounciation. i have no doubt i would be ok in an area where nothing but spanish is spoken. what undoudtedly helped was the fact that i had for severl months before starting this series studied grammar books and bilingual reading books. if not for that i probably would have had some problems with this series if i had started it with no previous knowlege of the spanish as i am one of those visual learners...hence the 4 stars and not 5. no one source can make you fluent. but attacking it with several differnt types of sets including fsi, vocabulearn, slang sets, verb sets, and practicing with native speakers can bring you very close. do you have to have formal instruction? no not really...i knew someone who took three years of spanish in high school and still could not order dinner. what you really need is a huge appetite for what you are attempting to master and some logical common sense planning! pimsleur is a great place to start!

Unworthy to be called level III, but nice basic review., September 28, 1999

You know you're in trouble when a level III Spanish listening course begins with lessons on how to introduce yourself. What should be a thorough review of conversational Spanish coupled with an intensive introduction to future, conditional and subjunctive tenses is nothing more than a cursory review of first semester Spanish. Granted, listening to all the conversations on these 24 CDs will undoubtedly help your pronunciation and ease with common conversational situations, however, why should you or anyone shell out nearly three C-notes when you can get the same and more from the Barron's Institute "Mastering Spanish Level 2" for less than a Franklin. Of all the audio-language learning courses I have taken in French and Spanish, Barron's is by far the best course and the best value for the money.

Great Program to begin learning Spanish, October 27, 2004

By the time you're done with this program you'll be able to communicate confidently, but you'll also have only a handful of words at your disposal.

There are many other books and programs out there to help you continue where you left off, but above all of them I recommend Platiquemos - it will help you to go all the way to fluency if you stick with it.

Solamente Tres Estrellas , October 14, 2004

I finished all 3 levels of Pimsleur Spanish. The course is satisfactory. Perhaps a little better than satisfactory. Pimselur's question/answer method is very effective in helping you think in Spanish. And the audio is very sharp. I also like the fact that the speakers are native Speakers of Spanish unlike courses such as Michel Thomas which uses non-natives. Also repeating my answers before and after the native speakers really helped in my pronunciation and developing a real Spanish sounding accent. So why do I only give it three stars?

After finishing all three levels and spending the money that I spent, I still cannot understand native Spanish speakers or "Latinos" when they are speaking among themselves. Pimsleur Spanish also equips you with a rather limited vocabulary. For the last three months, I have been studying with the lessons from Learning Spanish Like Crazy ( http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/?af=217396 ). The Learning Spanish Like Crazy course has a teaching method very similar to Pimsleur's Spanish. In fact, I remember reading somewhere on the Net that Learning Spanish Like Crazy was started by a disgruntled Pimsleur Spanish customer who finished all 3 levels of the course and felt that the Pimsluer Spanish that he had learned was so "formal" that it screamed "GRINGO."

In my opinion, completing all three levels of Pimsleur Spanish can leave someone disillusioned into believing that they will really be able to understand native Spanish speakers when they speak among themselves. The Learning Spanish Like Crazy lessons start out with the native Speakers speaking at about the same pace as the Pimsluer Spanish speakers. But as the course progresses, the speakers in Learning Spanish Like Crazy tend to speak quicker or more at the same pace that natives actually speak. I think that's a more realistic approach because native Spanish speakers tend to speak Spanish very fast.

I also noticed that the narrator in Learning Spanish Like Crazy ( http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/?af=217396 ) tends to speak less and less English as the course progresses. Unlike the narrator in Pimsleur Spanish who speaks an excessive amount of English. In fact, the narrator in Pimsluer Spanish apparently does not speak any Spanish. And that certainly did not help in my comprehension of rapidly Spanish speaking natives.

To sum it all up, Pimsluer Spanish is a good course. But don't expect to finish all three levels and be able to understand natives when they speak among themselves. It's not going to happen. If you want to not only speak Spanish fluently, but also understand it fluently, I think that Learning Spanish Like Crazy ( http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/?af=217396 ) is the better of the two.

It's ridiculous how easy it is., October 1, 2004

I love learning languages. For 8 years, I've studied Russian with private tutors. I think I speak decently for never having lived in that country; however, I do struggle a bit with native speakers, and I'm not sure if it is because it is such a tough language, or perhaps my method of learning it wasn't so effective, or maybe I just need to live there.

I also took Spanish in high school for two years, and didn't learn how to say anything, just pass some exams.

For a laugh, I started with Pimsleur Spanish I just to see what would happen. I'd read so much about it. I thought I might impress my Spanish speaking boyfriend. My goal wasn't really to learn it or anything, but to have some fun. The first lesson made us both laugh pretty hard. He rolled his eyes in the kitchen as I began listening to and repeating my first words. But the lessons were fun and so I continued.

Three months later, I have twenty more lessons to go in Level III. It's shocking how much I've learned in such a short period of time, and it has not been painful; rather, it has been a complete joy. Now we speak Spanish on a daily basis, and every day I can speak just a little bit better than the day before. Every time I attend one of his many family gatherings, I understand better than I did before. And I can never wait for the next lesson.

People think learning languages has to be difficult. Granted, Russian is hard, but I'm tempted to start over using Pimsleur just to see what would happen. Learning Spanish has been such a pleasant surprise. For some reason, a half-hour a day is a enough for me, although sometimes I have to play a small section again. I don't tend to worry about perfection, because it's always repeated in some way later on. And with every word I learn, there's always this sense of discovery, like, "Oh! So that's how you say it!"

As a supplement, I by accident found a copy of "Spanish for Reading" at a local bookstore. I highly recommend it. It actually explains what the tenses are. I don't stress over this either: just an exercise a day and my vocabularly gradually increases.

And I've also just signed up at a local Spanish language school now that I think I've got a decent base. The ability test was conducted on my cell phone with a really weak connection, and still I tested as an Intermediate. After three months? I think that's pretty good. It took me five years to reach that level in Russian with classes and private tutors, and I STILL can't say, "Te dije, ?uedes traerme una cerveza?"