German [Abridged, Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

Pimsleur (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2002 | ISBN-10: 076074436X | ISBN-13: 978-0743525817 | Edition: Abridged

Speak German Instantly!

The Pimsleur® Method provides the most effective language -- learning program ever developed. More than one million people every year use it to gain real conversational skills in new languages quickly and easily -- without books, written exercises, or drills.

Easy and Practical

This package contains sixteen lessons that will get you started speaking today! Simply listen, follow the instructions, and then respond out loud, just as you would in an actual conversation. Complete one lesson each day, in consecutive order. When you've finished this program, you'll be thrilled to realize you can hold a real conversation in German!

Go beyond the 8-lesson Quick & Simple -- and double your language skills

Simple, step-by-step instruction

No classes to attend -- learn at your own convenience and pace

No books, written exercises, or memory drills

Listen-and-respond method lets you self-test your mastery

Increase Your Language Skills

Learning a new language is a tremendously rewarding achievement. Once you see how much you've learned in these sixteen lessons, we think you'll want to continue with the complete 30-lesson Pimsleur® Program. To help you, we'll give you a rebate of $150.00 when you purchase the Level I German Comprehensive Program. Please see bottom of package for details.

Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Pimsleur; Abridged edition (March 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 076074436X
• ISBN-13: 978-0743525817
• ASIN: 0743525817
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7.9 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,436,462 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #81 in Books > Books on Cassette > Languages > German

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Laying firm foundations for spoken fluency, March 9, 2003

By 

E. Springer (Connecticut) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: German (Pimsleur Instant Conversation) (Audio CD)

It's true that this set is repetetive -- that's the point. It's not boring, however. I'm halfway through the set. Since I had studied a bit of vocabulary beforehand, I find myself wishing occasionally for a faster pace, or less "white space" for practice. Still, it might be wise to err on the side of making sure a day's worth of material can really be retained. The method is quite sound: the student is coached through listening to and repeating the ingredients of simple and then more developed conversations, with frequent tangents on how to recombine those building blocks in more complex and varied ways, so each word becomes "live" for one's neural connections.

These 8 CDs include far less vocabulary than many other introductory sets -- after a week, I can have comfortable conversations about a few limited themes, but with this set the student can internalize the syntax and pronunciation *very well* for that initial vocabulary, without having to do any written notes at all. Vocabulary from earlier lessons is sprinkled through later lessons, to keep all the vocabulary live and fluent. A couple of times, I did want to see spelling for a word, and looked it up in a dictionary.

Having spent time in graduate school with many bright people who studied English as a second language as adults, I'm inclined to agree with the Pimsleur warning that memorizing words based mostly on written cues before getting a solid grounding in pronunciation and intonation leads to a permanent handicap. I'll dive back into my heady grammar text and hundreds of vocabulary cards *after* training my ears and core intuitions with Pimsleur I and II.

0 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars repetition is good ... sometimes, October 2, 2005

By 

Belinda Jo Adams "author - teacher" - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: German (Pimsleur Instant Conversation) (Audio CD)

I think the repetition used for these tapes is a good thing. It helps us learn the words and phrases better. The thing I don't like, from a teacher's point of view, is that there are only two drinks used in the examples...up to lesson 8 so far, anyway, ... and they could have chosen different drinks for each tape, helping us learn more words. It's not that hard to learn the two they used being they are almost the same as in English.