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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great way to learn Greek without the expense of a year in Greece!, April 12, 2010
This review is from: Greek (Modern) II, Comprehensive: Learn to Speak and Understand Modern Greek with Pimsleur Language Programs (Audio CD)
Pimsleur's method offers the English speaker a way to learn modern Greek that most resembles being flown to Athens and plunked into the home of a pleasant, helpful family. Every member wants you to pick up the spoken language without being overwhelmed by swarms of unneeded vocabulary words or grammatical mumbo-jumbo.
As a former world-languages high school teacher, I was impressed by the clean, simple lines of Pimsleur's program as the student interfaces with it. Totally masked are the sophisticated underlying educational principles and great care which obviously went into its production.
As a public librarian, I invariably recommended Pimsleur materials to would-be language learners, explaining that I believed they offered them the best and most nearly painless way to reach their goals of speaking and comprehension.
As a student of modern Greek who loved Pimsleur's Greek I, I viewed the comprehensive Greek II as a much-awaited sequel, which builds upon what I'd learned before; it introduces useful new words and new ways to use them. The course's excellent native speakers gradually increase their delivery speed, but the student isn't left feeling dazed in their wake, as these conversations are built carefully upon what has come before.
Worth every penny. If you try this set, I expect you'll soon join me in begging Pimsleur to produce a Greek III, as well! Please do.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A systematic way to learn to speak some Greek, April 21, 2011
This review is from: Greek (Modern) II, Comprehensive: Learn to Speak and Understand Modern Greek with Pimsleur Language Programs (Audio CD)
Over some years I have tried various methods for learning Greek, as well as attending classes in Cyprus and Greece. I worked my way through the 30 lessons of Pimslaur's Greek I and have now managed 24 lessons of Greek II. I seem to learn best through hearing the language and hearing phrases over and over. As an American with a background in the American school system, I did not learn a foreign language as a kid, when it would have been easy and natural. In college I learned a bit of French, well enough to read simple books with a dictionary in hand.
As I do volunteer work in Greece, I have always needed to speak Greek, but I find myself overwhelmed by the traditional methods of teaching. In fact, I question whether many "teachers" of Greek have the slightest idea how to teach. I have a background in educational psychology and I was taught useful principles of learning about 50 years ago that do not seem to have filtered down to language teaching.
Pimslaur is the exception. These CD lessons take you through step by step learning the most frequently used words, gradually building up for small phrases to longer phrases to sentances. After 30 + 24 lessons I find that we are sometimes challenged with sentences as long as 8 or 9 words strung together. What is wonderful about the Pimslauer method is that each lesson adds about a dozen words at most, and uses many of the words already taught. It is systematic. Lessons usually begin with a dialogue using mostly old words and one or two new words that will be repeated in this lesson. The method mixes English with Greek, but in a systematic way. An English speaker will speak the sentence in English, you are given time to construct its equivalent in Greek and anticipate the correct Greek which will then be spoken by a different Greek speaker. You can pause the CD if the rhythm is too fast for you, as it often is for me.
I find that it takes me about 1 hour to go through a 28 min lesson, sometimes slightly longer the first time I hear it. I do one lesson per day and after the third day, I seem to have learnt the words. Sometimes I find I dont know the word when it is used in a later lesson in a sligthly different context, but I quickly learn the new context. Pimslaur clearly understood many of the most important principles of language teaching. People who are quicker at languages might find the Pimslaur method tedious and too slow for them, although they could zip through the lessons quicker than I can.
One is only going to acquire a vocabulary of about 300-400 words in Greek II, one needs many more to communicate in Greek. I would guess that Greek III and Greek IV, if ever they are produced might actually get one to a point where one could say quite a bit in the language.
Much as I like the method, there is one lacunae: one learns to speak some useful Greek, but understanding what you hear is quite another thing. The dialogues at the beginning of each lesson are a start on this, but much more needs to be integrated. The instructions (repeat, ask, listen and repeat etc) are gradually changed from English to Greek, but much more needs to be done in this way to get the student to understand Greek.
Pimslaur is the best method for teaching a language that I, a slow learner, have found. Because it teaches in bite sized portions, there is no frustration in the learning. One sees that one is gradually acquiring the language, bit by bit. Its just that 60 lessons do not go very far in the direction of really becoming fluent in Greek.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
MUST DO GREEK III, April 14, 2011
This review is from: Greek (Modern) II, Comprehensive: Learn to Speak and Understand Modern Greek with Pimsleur Language Programs (Audio CD)
So, I have completed Greek I and working on Greek II comprehensive. Here's the bottom line:
a.) easy repetitive method of learning to speak. By constantly repeating certain phrases and sounds you get to more automatically conjugate verbs, form sentences with correct word order, and not think before you speak (literally not figuratively).
b.) each chapter builds on the last - latter chapters reinforces previous ones - knowledge builds -
c.) by Greek II (actually Greek I 28-29) you are doing simple past tense and simple future - PLUS subjunctive (not to bad).
d.) right amount of vocabulary - it's not enough for daily conversations BUT, any more and lessons become harder and you would have to repeat more often to be able to memorize ... you have got to supplement the vocabulary learned with dictionaries and conversation with real folks.
at the end of the day - 60 lessons of Pimsleur is about the same as 1-2 months of INTENSIVE classroom learning (100-140 real hours). You won't "understand" the rules as explained in the class, but you'll be able to SPEAK more sentences more fluently than otherwise + you have the ability to repeat and listen (at will) ...
MUST DO GREEK III !!!!
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