Customer Reviews

French I - 1st Rev. Ed. (Pimsleur Language Program)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have been a strong supporter of the Pimsleur Language Programs ever since I first started learning languages. I recently purchased French I, II, and III and have found them to meet my needs. I have, in the past, used other audio programs (e.g., Berlitz and other less expense ones); however, I have found that Pimsleur provides the best overall value.

Many complaints about Pimsleur concern the inability to be able to speak well enough to hold a conversation or understand the radio or television after going through all three levels. It's important to realize that a year or two of studying French is needed to reach that level, and this level of proficiency cannot be reached through the use of cassettes or CDs alone. I've been studying Spanish for over three years (much of which was at intensive Spanish classes abroad) and am just reaching the point of understanding about 60-80 percent of what is said on the radio or television.

I find that there are many strengths associated with the Pimsleur French language Program, as well as weaknesses; however, I feel that the strengths more than make up for any weaknesses the program may have. Several of the key strengths include:

* Learning French in an interesting, interactive, and enjoyable environment. I hate to sit down and study, but by using Pimsleur, studying seems effortless and it's interesting.

* Being placed into somewhat realistic conversations and situations rather than just repeating words. I have found that the phrases and sentences used during the audio sessions form a good foundation on which to build your own.

* Practicing pronunciation with native speakers and in your car, so you can practice without worrying about sounding funny. French especially requires good pronunciation, and Pimsleur has really improved mine.

* Being able to remember better, since the situations are realistic, and being able to speak more fluently. You may not learn as many words as other tapes, but what you learn you remember and you actually use the words into sentences. I am currently taking private lessons, and my teacher is amazed at my progress and ease in speaking.

You will not, however, get the following with Pimsleur:

* A huge vocabulary. I find, however, that when just learning words, I actually remember less than when learning words through the Pimsleur Language Program.

* A course on grammar. I have supplemented Pimsleur with a private tutor to better understand grammar and sentence structure and to have live conversations.

* The ability to carry on a political, religious, technical conversation with a native speaker. You will be able to talk about basic stuff, but what you do say will be understandable and will be spoken with good pronunciation.

With Pimsleur you will be able to speak better than using other audio materials or books and will be able to finish all the Levels, since they are entertaining, easy to use, and can be listened to while riding in the car to/from work. I am about to finish Level III, and I wish there were a Level IV or above. If you are serious about learning French and speaking it fluently, you will, of course, have to supplement Pimsleur with one-on-one or classroom courses, which I am doing, plus an occasional trip to France.

Okay, if it's the best, why only 4 stars? Well, simply because Pimsleur is not complete in and of itself. It's only the best there is. I'm saving the fifth star for the language program that will make me fluent. I challenge anyone to produce it!

All that said, the progress you can make with Pimsleur is nothing short of miraculous. I wanted to return to my High School & have a few terse words with my language teachers after seeing how effective language learning can really be!

This program is fantastic for people at every level of language learning. I've gone through the French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, & Hebrew. I have no problem switching from language to language in a given situation. I just can't hold a normal conversation at normal speeds. This is because you don't gain enough vocabulary & verb conjugation skills from Pimsleur to reach the "Pot O' Gold" known as true FLUENCY!

But hey, you'll learn more of your chosen language through Pimsleur than in any other method by far! Trust me, I know of what I speak. If you want to learn another language, start at Pimsleur, then decide if you feel the need to learn more.

For the last few years I can't seem to get past beginner/introduction level of my French classes. Last April, I bought all three sets of the French comprehensive series. It's amazing how much you can learn from 30 minute lessons a day with Pimsleur. To start off, my Parisian colleague complimented me on my pronunciation. You know how snooty the French people are when it comes to their language. I'm almost done with French III and I'm all set to go on a 9-day vacation in France with Francophone Swiss kids in a month. You get more out of this set when you can actually converse with people as you go along. Native french speakers would be impressed at how you'd know "very french" turn of phrases. "Si nous allions prendre un café? I know the course does not recommend using other sources of language study, but I got a few french books anyway. Most outstanding of which is The Ultimate French Review and Practice. The book explains grammar in a clear and concise manner and then gives one lots of exercises for each grammatical point. These two sets complement each other quite well. You'd be talking well and writing correctly. Bon courage et bonne chance!

I purchased the Pimsleur French I Language Program after trying Living Language All Audio French and two computer-based programs (Learn to Speak French by The Learning Company and Learn French Now by Transparent Language). Prior to using these programs, I had no experience with the french language.

I have just completed the Pimsleur French I course and am going to order courses II and III. Although they are expensive, I have been impressed with how much french I have learned in the past month and my ability to retain it. I have certainly made much more progress than using the other courses I mentioned earlier.

All Audio French is very good, but I didn't find that I was really learning the nuts and bolts of speaking french. The two computer-based courses are barely OK. I am an advanced computer user and found these programs tricky to install and unstable. Additionally, neither of them worked as advertised. I would avoid purchasing these computer-based courses, as they are difficult to use.

The Pimsleur course focuses on speaking the language which is what most of us are looking for. The structure of the lessons and method of repetition work well in reinforcing what your are learning. The lessons are 25 to 30 minutes in duration and are enjoyable to work through. As an adult learner, I have found this course the most effective of all that I have tried.

If you are serious about learning french, I would definitely consider making the investment in the Pimsleur courses.

There is little doubt that The Pimsleur CDs for French I will get you off the ground and learning French painlessly (if not exactly rapidly). If the thought of learning French while being stuck in rush hour traffic, or driving across country, is appealing to you, then Pimsleur is the good stuff.

Having said that, I think it pays to be aware of a few things before making the Big Purchase.

Because the price tag for these CDs is high, you might find it helpful, as I did, to try Pimsleur's "Quick and Simple" set of CDs for French first. Those CDs duplicate (with minor differences) the first 8 lessons of the French I collection. So if you wish to be cautious, that is probably the best way to get started with Pimsleur products, rather than buying the more expensive, more comprehensive products right away. You'll get a sense of whether this is the route you want to go if you want to learn more French.

Whether you start with the French I package, or the Quick and Easy CDs, you will be exposed you to the heart of what makes the Pimsleur method unique and painless. The approach is based on (1) The Principle of Anticipation (a mastery technique that is different than rote recall), (2) Graduated Interval Recall (an approach that provides new stuff to memorize at optimal intervals), (3) Core Vocabulary (an efficient, optimal selection of a small number of key words that you need to know, as opposed to an extensive vocabulary), (4) and "Organic Learning" (learn speech, eg sound, rhythm, intonations, as opposed to a bunch of textbook gramatical rules). I should add that there's something subtly humorous about the content of the CDs, so if you have a sarcastic or wicked sense of humor, you won't be totally bored. As in, "Yes, I'd like to drink some wine with you mademoiselle."

Like many, I found the approach efficient and useful, and I had lots of fun with the CDs as I drove around town blathering away in French.

But it is worth emphasizing that Pimsler is not the only game in town. There are other very high-quality competing approaches that are generally less expensive. A good supplementary book is "The Ultimate French Review and Practice."

I think it pays to be aware that with Pimsleur you are learning a very general form of French that does not always play well in all French-speaking countries. A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing!

The culture-specific meaning of some words is a big issue. We may think we understand the implications of familiar words in, say, Quebec, Canada, especially after learning a little French, but newcomers are unlikely to understand their deep and subtle meanings within the context of (for example) Quebec culture.

So, I think it pays to learn phrases and code words from a specific culture or country that most strongly interests you (something you'll never get from plodding through the simple and general Pimsleur approach). To this end, there are books that often discuss a specific country's idiomatic expressions or slang. For instance, I've been interested in learning more about Quebec's version of French, as well as its culture. I benefitted greatly from a number of books: "Canadian French for Better Travel" by Garayt & Corbeil; "French Fun: The Real Spoken Language of Quebec" by Timmins, "Sacre Blues: An Unsentimental Journey Through Quebec by Grescoe." In the case of French in France, "Contemporary French Cultural Studies" edited by Kidd & Reynolds can provide a deeper sense of the French and their language. I might add that travel guides for specific countries, such as the Insight Guides, often provide a few words of slang that are unique to specific regions.

It pays to have a fluent French speaker as a co-worker, friend and/or lover while you are learning from the CDs, as they might, on a good day, rescue you from whatever linguistic cliff Pimsleur sends you over. If you don't yet have a French speaking lover, you may need to purchase some additional resources, e.g. "Wicked French", "The Lover's Dictionary," or "Hot International Phrases" to help you get into/out of trouble. And don't forget to stock up on Vanessa Paradis CDs (OK, a bit dated...) or more modern music CDs!

Don't be fooled by the $$ coupon that comes with the Pimsleur CDs. In my experience, a much better price can be found using Amazon.com. I might add that you can save considerable $$ by buying the discs used, and considerable space by moving them to MP3.

I won't repeat the praises of earlier reviewers. This is an enjoyable and effective way to learn a language. With volumes II and III to graduate to, this is your best bet if you're willing to invest the time and money. The Michel Thomas course for French uses a similar method. It is an 8 CD set and is substantially less expensive. The one thing I prefer about Michel Thomas is that his course involves you in a learning environment with two other "real" people who are learning the language for the first time. This created a friendlier and somewhat less academic environment than Pimsleur. But if you are willing to make the financial investment, Pimsleur provides an equally effective and significantly more comprehensive system.

Several years ago I bought Pimsleur I & II and went through the courses. When given the chance to speak with French natives visiting America, they always have very positive compliments on my ability to communicate in French. Once I approached a man and woman at a bus stop and asked if they were waiting for the bus I wanted, the man replied "We are from France, I don't speak English very well" I was able to repeat my question, en francais, and spent the next hour and a half talking with them. Thanks to Dr. Pimsleur I have acquire several similar stories over the years. The real payoff was years after purchasing the tapes, returning to the store where I bought them to thank the clerk, but she was not working that day. As an impromtu joke I pretended to be ignorant of the French tapes and took their free test. After responding correctly to each question, the clerk said, "Are you from France?"

No hesitation in buying the French III.

I took French in high school, but wanted to brush up on it.

I just completed French I, and I was pleasantly surprised. To achieve spoken competence requires a hugh amount of repetition and drilling to internalize the patterns. But different people have different learning styles; some respond well to reading and practicing grammatical principles and paradigms, others are more ear-oriented. At first, the endless repetition was frustrating; I must have heard "Would you like to drink something with me?" about 40 times. And "Where is Saint Jacques street?" about 30 times. For someone who remembered some of his school French, it was a little much.

The pace picks up in later lessons, and it began to get a little more interesting and challenging as new vocabulary and grammatical structures are added.

All in all, it was an enjoyable experience, and I think a pure beginner would do very well with these tapes.

If only they weren't so hideously expensive. Fortunately, my library system carries all 3 levels of the French series, so I'm all set. Before paying for the full set, you might want to pick up the smaller 4-cassette version to see if it suits your learning style.

Pimsleur are absolutely the best.

I have brought the complete sets of three volumes for both French and Russian. I recommend them with glowing enthusiasm to many friends and work colleagues. In fact I would say I rave about them - something I seldom do.

I am a fluent speaker of English, German and Japanese. I have taught languages myself and have additionally studied French and Latin in the past. I am something of an amateur linguistic with a life-long love of languages. When I speak German (I studied it at university for a year) poeple's jaws drop because I sound like a native speaker. I love reading Goethe in German and also read technical journal articles on molecular biology, but I really wish I'd discovered Pimsleur earlier. Over the decades I have been exposed to countless different linguistic approaches to learning languages, but none have impressed me as much as that of Pimsleur. I have even ordered CD courses in German from Amazon.de from companies such as Langenscheidt. The language CDs available in German are far superior to the vaste majority of the courses you can get in the English language, but still only Pimsleur teaches language in the same way that I intuitively learned to learn languages on my own over the years. I am so happy that someone has gone out and 'bottled' the secret techniques of good language learners so that people everywhere can discover how much fun learning languages can be.

If you buy cheaper alternatives to Pimsleur you are short changing yourself severely. Costly though you may think they are, enrolling in a course or getting private tuition will cost you as much or probably even more. Being a fluent speaker of a language and being a good teacher are also quite different things, so you may yet end up with teacher who is fluent at a language but poor at teaching it. With Pimsleur you are guaranteed a meticulously structured approach to learning in which you can have complete confidence. Also many of us lead busy lives and may have trouble making it to classes. With Pimsleur CDs and an MP3 player you can learn while you drive, while waiting in long queues or while going around the supermarket. Half an hour here and there soon adds up.

Needless to say my Russian friends are floored when I speak Russian. They say I speak with virtually no accent. With time I think I will expand my knowledge to the point that people think I am a native speaker. I did that with German and I have every reason to believe that I will do it with Russian. I plan to one day read Dostoevsky in Russian. As for the French course I brought that for my partner. I also quickly did as many CDs as I could before our trip to France and again people were pleasantly surprised at the quality of my French.

Lastly my minor list of criticisms:

1. Although the intuitive natural learning techniques of Pimsleur should be the basis of learning languages, I am still a great believer in studying old fashioned grammar (I did Latin!). For every language you can find yourself a ready nice grammatical text. I wish Pimsleur would sell a text book companion to their recordings that makes learning grammar as fun as their recordings.

2. The recorded sound on my Russian CDs was washy. The words sometimes sounded unclear. The French CDs so far have been good, but surely for this price I can't believe this is an issue.

3. Lack of full printed transcripts of all of the recordings. Maybe they can provide this on a CD-ROM if printing it is too expensive.

As someone who has studied many languages using many different methods, I was skeptical about using this method. I was a good ole traditional method person. I even bought a pimsleur method years ago, but never gave it a chance. Well, now after many times trying to learn French (and after spending alot of money on lessons and books), I have finally found the method that works! You will learn, and you will learn well! The money is worth it considering that you spend much more on other methods combined! As for the other reviews that complain about the writing, please! You are missing the point! Those reviews help you become familiar with the use of accents and the pronouncation of vowel groups without worry of translation! It accomplishes what other seperate pronounication tapes do! The combination is great, they know what they are doing! Trust them and they will have you speaking french in no time! I can't wait to surprise my friends!