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Any need for Pimsleur???? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| JamesS Diglot Newbie Australia Joined 4010 days ago 20 posts - 30 votes Speaks: English*, Indonesian Studies: Javanese, German, Mandarin | Message 9 of 21 10 July 2014 at 10:10pm | IP Logged |
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Pimsleur should help with your pronunciation and I think it could be a great way to get talking if a trip is
imminent or if confidence in speaking has been a barrier. It might also contain some useful phrases you aren't yet familiar with. However, the law of diminishing returns would certainly apply in your case - you might have to ask yourself if it is worth sitting through each half hour lesson just to get one or two new phrases. Unlike written resources you can't really skim Pimsleur. I wonder if, given you are at a reasonable level already, there is any harm in starting as high as possible with Pimsleur? If you are paying for it the best bang for your buck would be the highest level (I've heard there is a difference between level 3 and 4 in terms of the way it is structured and delivered but I'm not exactly sure). My own experience has been using some of Mandarin 3 in the lead up to a trip to China. It definitely helped me learn a number of useful expressions I did not previously know and I was able to use it on my commute to work, so it didn't take up time out of my normal study regimen (I was riding to work, however, so I couldn't really do it properly as speaking was not an easy thing to manage while huffing and puffing up various hills). Already having a solid grounding in the language should allow you to do a lesson once and go ahead to the next one without the need to repeat. I bought in five lesson chunks from audible so I didn't waste money on lessons I didn't use - this may not be economical if you do intend to use all 30 lessons in a level, but it might be a good idea if you aren't 100% sure Pimsleur is for you. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5660 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 10 of 21 10 July 2014 at 11:18pm | IP Logged |
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I would skip Pimsleur, i think Pimsleur (along with Michel Thomas) is a good starting point but i think with Assimil you've easily covered everything and more in Pimsleur. Pimsleur can give you some practice speaking, but you'll have more than you can handle with FSI. I'd spend those 30 minutes on FSI, it's much more intensive and much more at your current level.
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| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5057 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 11 of 21 11 July 2014 at 1:01am | IP Logged |
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Bolio, I was wrong. I guess I just like what the Pimsleur course did for me in Portuguese and Haitian Creole without really thinking about your cost-benefit analysis as to effort vs time and benefit gained. Any gain you'd get would be marginal at best. Trust Crush and James29 on this. Forget what I said. Edited by iguanamon on 11 July 2014 at 1:04am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4684 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 12 of 21 11 July 2014 at 1:51am | IP Logged |
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Pimsleur courses are five credits on audible.com, and you can occasionally get deals on
credits ... I've managed to get full courses for $60, which makes the cost-benefit ratio far more reasonable. IT sounds like you have enough going on right now, so I wouldn't recommend Pimsleur. However, I wouldn't totally discount it in the future. One benefit that you won't find in the other courses is that you need to think on your feet and provide relatively quick responses to semi-random prompts. This is very different from FSI, where each exercise follows a set pattern; or Assimil, where you are following pre-set dialogues. Unfortunately, the conversations aren't natural sounding (using multiple tenses and more modern expressions) until Level IV. Level I and II are for getting comfortable with the basics (so skip these) and Level III is slow and more like Level II 1/2. Edited by kanewai on 11 July 2014 at 2:00am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 3847 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes Studies: German | Message 13 of 21 11 July 2014 at 3:31am | IP Logged |
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Bollo,
First, as I commented above, I suspect that you have already progressed beyond what Pimsleur has to offer. While I suggested that ONLY Pimsleur Phase IV might be in any way useful to you, be advised that this programme is fairly expensive at 120 $US for a full 30-unit download. In the event that you are still tempted to try this programme, if you cannot find a free copy somewhere, you might consider purchasing a single Phase IV lesson from Audible/Amazon or from Catee's Downloadable Pimsleur. If you find the lesson too easy, then you will not have invested too much money. Second, although your question was specifically about the utility of Pimsleur, I am going to move somewhat off topic here. In order to expand your vocabularly, develop your listening and reading skills, and vary your study material, I suggest that you consider subscribing to the Think Spanish audio magazine. The magazine presents articles on the geography, history, culture, music, etcetera of the Spanish-speaking world. It is downloadable in monthly installments as a PDF file (about 25 pages) and MP3 audio (about an hour). If you subscribe, be sure to save your files as, once your subscription lapses, you will no longer have access to website's archives. Presently, an annual subscription is 99 $US and, in my opinion, thoughtful study of one year's material would be immensely more profitable than Pimsleur. Finally, while FSI Basic Spanish is a long, tough programme, despite its age, I think that it is just about the very best available. Stick with it! Good luck! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4704 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 14 of 21 11 July 2014 at 10:27am | IP Logged |
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Think Spanish is an interesting suggestion, Speakeasy. I have thought about Think French, but the price seems a bit too much. For that much money I could get a lot of books + audio, and there is a ton of free stuff on the internet anyway.
So could you sell it to us a bit, Speakeasy? What do you like about it, why is it effective? Do you really use it, or does it sit waiting to be used? One more point worth considering: when you subscribe for $99 you get a year's subscription, but you also get access to the previous year's issues. On the negative side, when I look at reviews of the Read and Think French and Read and Think Spanish books (which are published by the editors of Think X), there are a lot of reviewers who mention typographical errors and mistakes. What do you think of the quality of the written material? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5660 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 15 of 21 11 July 2014 at 12:47pm | IP Logged |
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Another thing you might want to try is the Language Transfer Spanish course. The Greek course is really good, i imagine the Spanish one will also be good. The course was recently redone from scratch and hasn't yet been released, but the old course (the first two levels out of five) are still available. You might want to wait until the new one is released, though. These courses are all free and can be downloaded from their website. The format of the course is similar to Michel Thomas in a way, but much more thorough and not afraid to tackle more difficult grammar.
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| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 3847 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes Studies: German | Message 16 of 21 11 July 2014 at 11:18pm | IP Logged |
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Hello Jeffers,
While my response to your questions will represent a significant digression from Bolio’s original question, which concerned only the utility of Pimsleur in this specific situation, since I started all of this, I will offer a spirited defense of audio-magazines in general and Think Spanish in particular. So then: Cost Effectiveness – More Bang for the Buck I disagree with your assertion that it is more cost-effective to purchase readers. I have a truly substantial collection of graded readers, with accompanying audio CDs, from Klett, Langenscheidt, Cideb, Eli, Emc, Spiga, and other publishers in Spanish, Italian, and German. I also subscribe to (or have previously subscribed to) a few audio-magazines in these languages. On average, the textual content of the graded readers is equivalent to roughly 20 pages of standard 8"x11" printed material. While it is difficult to speak of an average textual content for the audio-magazines, my estimate, having discounted the equivalent space that is assigned to graphic content, would be around 50 pages of standard 8"x11" printed material. The average price that I paid for the graded readers was around 20 $US each. While prices for audio-magazines vary significantly, since you questioned the cost-effectiveness of Think Spanish only, for which the annual subscription is 99 $US for 12 issues of approximately 25 pages of standard 8”x11” printed material, it is clear to me that it is dramatically more advantageous to purchase said subscription (you could purchase no more than 5 graded readers with the same 99 $US and you would receive all lot less material) and this, without factoring in the value of the 12 issues of free archived material. As to the "free" reading material online, yes, there is a lot of material and there are many reliable sources. However, if you are referring to sources such as Librivox, Books Should Be Free, etcetera, then we are no longer comparing apples to apples, as the material is almost invariably C2 Level classic literature from the 19th and the audio tracks are narrated by volunteers, not paid, voice-trained professionals who provide a much more pleasant listening experience. Content – More Pleasurable Bang for the Buck I challenge your unstated, but implied, assertion that the content of Think Spanish is equivalent to that of readers. While the content and style of some audio-magazines are directed specifically to younger readers (pre-teens, teens, young adults), several publishers, including Think Spanish, provide content that is specifically designed to interest adult readers. That is, the articles often cover the history, geography, arts, music, cooking, and general culture of the people and places where the target language is known to thrive. Accordingly, the vocabulary is vaster, richer, more varied, more modern and, quite simply, more likely to interest the average adult language student. In contrast, the graded readers seem to fall into two categories: (1) readers that are directed specifically to younger audiences wherein the story-lines tend to reflect the love-interests and mock-dramas that, apparently, pre-teens, teens, young adults appreciate, and (2) readers that are directed mostly to adults wherein the texts are, almost invariably, simplified versions of 19th century classic literature. Having read upwards of 150 of these readers in Spanish, Italian, and German, I am left with the impression that the vocabulary of the readers is strikingly narrow and repetitive and that it does not, in any respect, approach that of audio-magazines of an equivalent CEFR level. My Own Personal Use – Banged That Particular Buck! Yup, I’ve read them all! Generally speaking, I take the following approach: I read an article thoroughly and look up every new word in the dictionary, including all of its associated words, and then I listen to the corresponding audio while attempting to visualize the printed text. I refer to the text only for clarification of words that I find difficult to grasp. I do this about five times, at which point the audio and text begin to merge for me. Sometimes, I reverse the procedure, beginning with the audio. How effective is this? Hmm, that’s a little hard to say. There has been an definite improvement in my reading ability and I "think" that there has been an improvement in my listening ability, but to be quite honest, I’m not really sure, as I seem to reach a point where I have almost memorized the text and audio. So, have I really improved? I’m not sure. While there has not been a large improvement in my speaking ability, I firmly believe that a solid vocabulary is being absorbed that I will be able to draw upon, providing that I keep the process alive. Quality of the Material versus Typographical Errors – Sputtering Misfires with the Buck? I do not dispute the reports of typographical errors in the publisher’s "Read and Think ..." books. I own the Spanish and Italian versions and I can confirm that the texts are exact reproductions of the corresponding articles in the audio-magazine. However, reports of the frequency of these errors are greatly exaggerated. Sadly, such errors are found in many other publications, be they newspapers, magazines, novels, or even in textbooks in their 7th editions, n’est-ce pas? Does the generalized and lack of proof-reading and sloppy editing in the publishing industry justify the occasional typographical error in the Think Spanish audio-magazine? No, of course it doesn’t. Generally speaking, I find that their presence is a minor irritant that does not affect the overall quality of the material. My advice to users would be to consider these errors as "mini tests" of one’s reading ability. If we can’t avoid them, let’s embrace them! Other Learning Opportunities My suggestion that Bolio consider subscribing to Think Spanish was just that, a suggestion, nothing more. Obviously, other audio-magazines exist as do other media and learning methods. Nonetheless, having given this particular ball a shove down the hill, I suggest that we call it quits. If this turns into a debate, I suggest that we open a separate discussion thread. I rest my case. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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