Understand what you're buying before you buy it!, May 26, 2004

Before you buy a Pimsleur package, understand what you're getting. There are a LOT of language-learning tools out there, but none are quite like Pimsleur. If you're trying to learn the maximum amount of a language for the smallest amount of money, your money would probably be better spent elsewhere. Instead, Pimsleur caters to those who have a very rough time getting anything to "stick" through other methods. You pay a considerable amount more, but you WILL learn, and that may catapult you in your studies with other methods.

You will NOT be fluent after finishing Pimsleur German I. However, you will definitely have ultimate command of what you do learn. It will literally be a part of you the way English is. You will not be able to discuss politics or music, but you will be able to get directions, go to a restaurant, talk about what you've done, what you're doing, and what you want to do. If you do the lessons as suggested, you'll be able to do these things without having to translate in your head. In fact, if your experience is anything like mine, you might say what you want to say in German and then have to think about what you just said in English. It is both fascinating and exhilarating. This is the essence of what separates Pimsleur from buying a six dollar phrasebook with all of the same phrases.

If you want to know if spending this amount of money for this package is really for you, go buy one of the cheaper "teaser" Pimsleur German courses that only provide a few lessons. Better yet, see if your local library has it. If you like it, come back and buy this one.

Whether or not you stay with Pimsleur, use this as an adjunct to other materials. One of my biggest criticisms is that it is mostly a speaking-only program and has very little reading and no writing whatsoever. Also, an outline in booklet form of the vocabulary, grammar and techniques studied in each lesson would be nice for reviewing later.

Keep in mind, however, that when you begin Pimsleur, try not to look the words you hear up in a dictionary. Try to master the sound the way they sound to you first, or you will end up with an American accent.

Yeah, it's expensive, but you get what you pay for., April 7, 2004

I don't know about you, but I don't want to learn a language so I can read a newspaper or understand a radio broadcast. I want to communicate with real live people in their own language.

How many people take language courses all through high school and even college only to find when it comes time to actually USE the language, they've "learned" it without the ability to SPEAK it?

This doesn't happen with the Pimsleur method. It forces you to respond, continuously moving forward, teaching you new things while reinforcing concepts learned earlier. The Pimsleur program is far superior to other audio methods in that it's not just repeating incredibly dull phrases over and over again. You interact with the dialogue. You have to THINK and it reinforces things learned earlier at just the right time intervals. A concept is reinforced more often right after learning, but these reminders become less and less frequent as time goes on and you learn new things. But then what you've learned previously becomes part of new concepts and vocabulary that keep getting put before you, reinforcing those concepts even more.

The Key is that you RETAIN the concepts and vocabulary and hence the ability to use the language. You learn correct pronunciation, as the program uses native speakers. You won't be tongue-tied, since you're asked questions in the program and you have to THINK about the answer. You THINK because the question might reference something from three or four tapes ago. You use proper grammar despite yourself because you're not thinking about grammar, you're learning the language the same way you learned as a baby - you're USING it.

Is there a down side? Of course. They're ridiculously expensive (HINT: check out the auctions), but have you priced an evening course at your local university lately? The books and materials cost alone would probably pay for these tapes.

The other down side is that as good as they are, you'll need to use other resources if you want to go past basic usage. The Pimsleur method will teach you the basics, but using it with other materials is easy and those other materials will be much less expensive. The other bonus is that you'll get much more out of them if you use them in conjunction with the Pimsleur program.

I have all four German sets (do yourself a favor and skip the fourth, BTW) and to be honest, I found the Pimsleur series to be the best for teaching you how to pronounce the language correctly. But it was much more useful with Russian than German, as German isn't that difficult for English speakers to pronounce. I'd guess that the Pimsleur discs for Chinese and other really difficult languages would be a lifesaver.

Ultimate Foundation on Which to Build a Language Education, August 12, 2004

I love learning foreign languages, but the large number of options out there for the consumer can be daunting. Everywhere you look you have some people who love the product and some people who loathe it.

When I stumbled across a recommendation for the Pimsleur series, it piqued my interest. I had never heard of it before, so I did some research. It sounded very promising. The idea of verbal only instruction seemed intriguing, and being that I went through three years of HS Spanish managing to learn all the vocabulary and get As every semester yet cannot still understand a moderately basic conversation in Spanish, I figured why not try something new? I had read some raves and I had read some rants, but I also kept in mind there are some people who just have to learn from a book alone.

I WILL however offer this bit of advice. I had started an attempt to learn German some months ago, and I started out by learning the way to pronounce German properly as well as the spelling rules. I started this program at the point where I could read a passage easily (though not know what it was saying). Additionally, through the course of this program I made sure each lesson I wrote down all the new words I learned, as well as some practice sentences. It helps greatly in expanding your ability to write in German, and it also helps drill it in your head better. My Langenscheidt's German-English dictionary was my best friend. I also then would go on an online translation service and practice typing my sentences in German and then translating them to see if I got the jist of how to use the words and proper order. This may not always work, as those services aren't perfect and can screw up some things, but it's good practice. Additionally, when I had some questions as to why certain parts of a sentence came when they did, I consulted sites such as german.about.com and other resources, which were great.

Basically, if you take some initiative to do some self-study to get an even better grasp of the language and it's rules, you'll enjoy the program even more.

As for the program. I loved it. You start off worrying about if you'll be able to remember everything you learned, but you shortly see that the program is designed, as advertised, to refresh your memory every so often so you build upon an ever increasing vocabulary and knowledge of the language.

I certainly wouldn't worry about not being able to learn tons of vocabulary through this program. It's true you won't learn lists of vocabulary words. Definitely not. However, what you DO learn is a strong structure to use vocabulary words IN. It's useless to have a knowledge of 500 German nouns if you can't say what you exactly want to buy or eat and so on. People who are outraged and say it's a rip off because you don't learn tons of vocabulary miss the point of the program.

I'm ready to move on to German II, and can say that German I met all of my expectations and then some. I walked away knowing far more than I thought possible from a thirty day timespan. It was so encouraging and so much fun being able to start saying a number of things in German. I was even able to write a basic letter to a friend in Switzerland after about fifteen lessons. For many lessons I repeated it twice a day to drill it in. By all means, pause the CD player each time you feel you need an extra second or so to think about a response so as to not get nervous and forget or mess up. It works great, and then if you play it a second time around you'll be able to answer even faster and may not even need to pause, but pausing is your friend, as is the rewind button to re-listen to a command, which I found necessary when it gets to the point you're commanded in German.

I would look at the entire Pimsleur series as an excellent start to your language education. By the time you finish you will have a very solid core on which you can then set out and persue even more advanced material. You will certainly be able to say a lot with what you do learn. If you want, a wonderful idea would be to get a book of German nouns or German verbs and practice those each day as well, so you'll be expanding on your knowledge even more.

I'm an extremely skeptical person, so it was a leap of faith for me to put my trust and such a large amount of money into this program. But, the saying is true, you get what you pay for. You could indeed pay $50 for a textbook, but I think after thirty days you'll find you're far from the level where you would be with this course.

If you get over the notion that it is impossible to become fluent in a language easily and in a short amount of time and believe in what Pimsleur sets out to do, you'll walk away a very satisfied customer. I know I did, and I'm extremely excited to continue on with German II and German III. After that point I will continue my German education through advanced books, news, and other material. Your language learning experience is what you make of it. With Pimsleur as part of your curriculum, you'll get where you want to be while having fun and feeling encouraged.

One of, if not the best german learning program, July 6, 2004

This program works the same way kids learn language - by listening and repeating. I've tried multiple methods and this was by far the best - Remember however, if you are a "bottoms-up" kind of person who likes to learn the grammar and vocabulary first, this is not for you. However, if you are looking to converse in German very quickly, this works very well.

Very valuable product, April 22, 2004

First a disclaimer... I'm currently selling this product here. I have read many of these reviews before buying my copy, and I almost did not buy it, due to cost and some of the arguements presented by unhappy reviewers.

However, I will share with you my plan. I made the investment on German I. I have been extremely pleased with it. I'll now sell it at a small loss, buying German II with the money (plus a little extra). I'll do the same for German III. In the end, it will most certainly not cost over $1000. In the end, because I take time to research my purchases, it will cost me under $500, and probably under $400, for the use of all three. (I'll take the advice of skipping the fourth one). When I'm done the three, I'll buy the Rosetta Stone German I & II.

The reviewers who scoff at the amount of vocabulary learned are correct - there is very little - but it is the important vocabulary that you learn. As for the comment on grammar... you are not taught the principles of the grammar, but you do learn grammar in a very intensive way through the practice.

I intend on reinforcing my vocabulary through Rosetta Stone once I have a firm grasp of speaking the basics through the Pimsleur program.

Far from being Comprehensive... except for the pricetag, February 17, 2004

The title of Pimsleur's CD seris (Comprehensive) is, at best, misleading. At worst, it's simply a lie. While I'm not trying to sound bitter, Pimsleur's series (German, Spanish, and I would assume others) only teach one how to "get by" if you are in the country. I will admit that if you were to finish all of the CDs series (which would cost literally over 1000 dollars), you would be able to get by in Germany, asking for directions, ordering your lunch, and other very boring tasks.

Or, you could spend fifty to hundred dollars on some books, and use online resources for practicing the listening aspect of German; there are literally dozens of online German radio stations, free to use by anyone, anywhere. Your results would be a thousand times better, and your wallet would still have some money left in it.

The problem with Pimsleur's method is that it's too basic. It takes you by the hand and leads you through the very rudiments of the language. While it does this fairly well, the "language learning" ends there. The vocabulary that Pimsleur teaches you is simply pitiful. You could learn twenty times the amount of vocabulary that Pimsleur teaches, in half the time that you would spend listening to the CDs. There is an unneeded pause between many of the things that the *English* speaker says (and I'm not talking about when he asks you to repeat what the native says), making the CDs bloated with "dead air time".

In short, Pimsleur could act as an aid to learning German, but that is where it ends. You will not learn German with this package - you will learn how to say various things via parrot fashion. You will probably even know how to put together a few phrases on your own, out of the meager vocabulary that you've learned from the CDs. Pimsleur is great at what it does - just don't fool yourself about what it is that it does. It teaches the very rudiments of the language, if it does that. To prove my point, I've included a a bit of German that was said by a native German, on one of the language forums I go to. He's not a scholar or anything like that. I seriously doubt anyone that used Pimsleur's CDs by themselves, could make heads or tails of it.

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