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Pimsleur Italian lesson content | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| PianoFish Newbie United Kingdom Joined 3605 days ago 11 posts - 28 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 1 of 8 06 July 2014 at 2:58am | IP Logged |
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For most of the lessons I've felt like I'm doing a course that should be called 'How to chat up women in Italian' but if it's going to carry on like this all the way through I'll quit now and find something else because I don't like it. It's been bearable if somewhat tedious up to now but I did Unit 9 today and the content especially in the second half made me feel very uncomfortable. It felt like the guy in the dialogue was being really pushy with the woman to the point of harassment - I don't know whether it was that all the repetitions to revise the vocabulary made it sound worse that it actually was but by the end I was just listening and raising my eyebrows. Right at the end after she's rejected him at least 78 times she says "you don't understand", he says "what don't I understand?" and she says "you don't understand Italian." I felt like shouting, "no, you understand Italian, what you don't understand is that she doesn't want to go out with you!"
Can anyone who's done Pimsleur Italian, preferably at least up to the end of part 1, tell me if it carries on in a similar manner? If this lesson just happens to be particularly bad then I'll give it another chance, if the main character is going to spend the rest of the tapes bothering women I'll give it a miss. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| soclydeza85 Senior Member United States Joined 3703 days ago 357 posts - 502 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 2 of 8 06 July 2014 at 3:10am | IP Logged |
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I've done only about half of level 1 of Pimsleur Italian but I know exactly what you're talking about haha; I remember getting a chuckle out of it, thinking "what the h*ll is this?". It will move on to different topics/situations. The last I left off with Pimsleur Italian it was going over shopping/buying things (something about buying candy?) I'm almost done with level 4 of Pimsleur German, and it had a lot of that pick-up-ish stuff toward the beginning, but it moved on to a bunch of other topics: family, business, travel/vacation, etc. Definitely stick with it, Pimsleur (in my opinion) is probably the best program when teaching you how to be conversational.
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| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4050 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 3 of 8 06 July 2014 at 4:38am | IP Logged |
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I've worked through a lot of different Pimsleur programs and that specific dialog is part of most of them and is definitely the worst part of the courses. Thankfully there's generally nothing else like that afterwards. Edited by YnEoS on 06 July 2014 at 4:39am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| PianoFish Newbie United Kingdom Joined 3605 days ago 11 posts - 28 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 4 of 8 06 July 2014 at 5:04pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks, that's good to know. I'll make a note to skip over that bit if I use Pimsleur for other languages in the future.
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| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4461 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 5 of 8 06 July 2014 at 10:30pm | IP Logged |
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I've never listened to the Pimsleur Italian stuff, but the Pimsleur Japanese has similar
content. To be honest I didn't notice at the time (at least not until I'd read other similar threads here), so perhaps I was concentrating too hard or you expect too much of a short introductory course :-) As a manual of seduction, it's pretty inadequate I'd've thought: you'll need to carry on well beyond the course before you can manage a real conversation (of any sort)! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 3848 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes Studies: German | Message 6 of 8 06 July 2014 at 10:57pm | IP Logged |
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I have worked through the complete Pimsleur series for German, Spanish, and Italian as well as the initial phases of Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, and Russian. Like PianoFish, I was quite surprised at the "pick-up line" content of the Phase I courses, particularly in cases where the courses had been revised in the recent past. That is, an opportunity to update the content has been repeatedly missed! The good news is that the objectionable-for-some content is of short duration and it is not repeated in the subsequent Phases. So, my recommendation would be to "stick with the programme."
As an aside, while I found the full Pimsleur programmes (Phases I through IV) somewhat long, I was particularly pleased with Phase IV which, in addition to introducing new material, served as a general revision of the previous Phases. Finally, if I were starting the Pimsleur programme from scratch, I would opt for the "Unlimited" version, as the on-screen exercises obviate the need to work backwards from the lesson material, with the aid of a dictionary, to develop one's own glossary and notes. Also, the sound files can be downloaded in MP format. Edited by Speakeasy on 06 July 2014 at 10:58pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5579 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 7 of 8 10 July 2014 at 5:59am | IP Logged |
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I think you just have to bear with content that annoys you in any course. It's important to remember
that everyone is different when it comes to what they find off-putting. Me personally, I never found the cheesy pickup stuff in Pimsleur annoying because it never felt remotely realistic to me, I never (as some do) found the sound of Michel Thomas's false teeth annoying and actually love the humour and weird topic choice of Assimil (which a few people hate); on the other hand I find Linguaphone vaguely annoying because all the ones I've seen centre around a disgustingly smug, self- satisfied middle class family living their ridiculously privileged lives. I still use Linguaphone, though, because they're excellent courses and actually complement Assimil quite well IMO. I'd be foolish to let myself be put off. Pimsleur is worth going through IMO, so keep plugging away. Edited by Random review on 10 July 2014 at 6:02am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4685 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 8 of 8 10 July 2014 at 8:15am | IP Logged |
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Stick with Pimsleur, but be warned ... it gets worse!
They all seem to follow the same cheesy model in the beginning. There is another excruciating but useful section on time (do you want to have dinner at three o'clock? No, I want to have dinner at four o'clock. Do you want to have dinner at five o'clock? No, I want to have dinner at six o'clock), and the worst, for me, is a seemingly endless section on playing tennis at the club. I can't remember if this is in the second or third level, but it never seems to end. The sport changes depending on the language. But it really is a helpful program. And I agree that the Level IV (for the few languages I've got that far) is quite good. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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