Lakkhamu Diglot Groupie Turkey Joined 5272 days ago 63 posts - 65 votes Speaks: English, Turkish* Studies: Latin, German, Russian
| Message 1 of 37 25 July 2010 at 8:28pm | IP Logged |
Hello. After browsing this site and doing some research, I came to the decision that the best and most widely known 3 language programs are Michel Thomas, Assimil and Pimsleur (Excluding Rosetta Stone, about which I hear no one speaking in favor of). I can acquire most languages of Michel Thomas and Pimsleur for free but no idea about Assimil. So, putting financial problems aside, which of them is the best in your opinion?
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Paskwc Pentaglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5705 days ago 450 posts - 624 votes Speaks: Hindi, Urdu*, Arabic (Levantine), French, English Studies: Persian, Spanish
| Message 2 of 37 25 July 2010 at 8:38pm | IP Logged |
Assimil is the most comprehensive of the three programs. It teaches at a much deeper
level. MT and Pimsleur can be useful tools, but they overwhelmingly focus on spoken
language and do not teach as much as Assimil.
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mrhenrik Triglot Moderator Norway Joined 6107 days ago 482 posts - 658 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, French Personal Language Map
| Message 3 of 37 25 July 2010 at 8:45pm | IP Logged |
I think you'll find strong supporters of all three methods, mostly belonging to different
schools of learning. Perhaps not as many for Pimsleur, but definitely for the two others.
They're all good products depending on what you want, and also very much depending on
which language you're learning. There's a number of languages they don't offer, for
instance.
Personally I very much prefer Assimil's learning style, but I can definitely see the
point with MT as well. Pimsleur was nice in the car, otherwise waaay too boring.
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Lakkhamu Diglot Groupie Turkey Joined 5272 days ago 63 posts - 65 votes Speaks: English, Turkish* Studies: Latin, German, Russian
| Message 4 of 37 25 July 2010 at 8:49pm | IP Logged |
For Russian, Japanese and Mandarin Chinese, especially. I think these are really critical languages, especially Japanese and Mandarin due to their difficulty thus I want to get the best out of my study.
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Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5593 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin
| Message 5 of 37 25 July 2010 at 10:26pm | IP Logged |
To me they're not mutually exclusive - I always do MT and Pimsleur before Assimil.
Edited by Elexi on 25 July 2010 at 10:27pm
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LatinoBoy84 Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5603 days ago 443 posts - 603 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Latvian
| Message 6 of 37 25 July 2010 at 10:49pm | IP Logged |
Elexi wrote:
To me they're not mutually exclusive - I always do MT and Pimsleur before
Assimil. |
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Same here, using both provides a foundation for Assimil. For harder languages a strong
foundation is a must. If either Pimsleur or MT aren't available for a specific language
I would recommend using Linguaphone PDQ are a substitute/complementary course.
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psy88 Senior Member United States Joined 5619 days ago 469 posts - 882 votes Studies: Spanish*, Japanese, Latin, French
| Message 7 of 37 26 July 2010 at 1:46am | IP Logged |
If you have the money to spend all three are excellent and can be used to complement each other. I have used them all and like them all. If on a tighter budget, go with Assimil. I think you get more value for the money because it is less expensive but it also provides a lot of material.
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johntm93 Senior Member United States Joined 5355 days ago 587 posts - 746 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish
| Message 8 of 37 26 July 2010 at 2:44am | IP Logged |
Assimil and MT are my favorites. Pimsleur is just okay.
I'd say Assimil+MT is good for a foundation.
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