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Dr. Paul Pimsleur devoted his life to language teaching and testing and was one of the world’s leading experts in applied linguistics. After years of experience and research, Dr. Pimsleur developed The Pimsleur Method based on two key principles: the Principle of Anticipation and a scientific principle of memory training that he called “Graduated Interval Recall.” This Method has been applied to the many levels and languages of the Pimsleur Programs.
A lot of people try to state that they learned a lot or a little, but not what they actaully learned. I just finished this course, here's a quick rundown of the contents:
*Present tense of quite a few verbs, including those for shopping, saying where you are going and staying, eating and drinking, where things are or aren't, what you want and don't want, what you can and can't do, and who you are doing things with. You learn them in present tense, a very simple form of the future tense, and they introduce the past tense in the second to last lesson. Asking questions is emphasised in this course, you do it almost as much as you answer them.
*You learn few nouns other than those needed to use the verbs; it feels like they made a point to not include a lot of nouns. You will learn the words for your immediate family, beer/wine/sake and some other random nouns like "hat". This is the biggest drawback to the program, but it is easily overcome by a good set of vocab lists.
*Also, very few adjectives. Big, small, expensive, fast, far away are among the few. You learn how to say "too" fast/expensive. But you learn how to use them very well, so it would be easy to add more with the aid of a dictionary.
*You spend a lot of time talking about money. How much you have, how much you need, vocab for currency exchanges and shopping. You also learn the numbers 1 to 199. And, weirdly enough, you learn how to ask people for money.
*You learn how to talk about your car, including how to ask for gas and how to give and take directions.
*In the last couple lessons, you learn how to ask what words mean in English and how to say words in Japanese.
*You learn how to talk about time and tell time.Read more ›
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97 of 103 people found the following review helpful
I'm a Japanese, have listened to Pimsleur courses in English, which I found very interesting and useful. I have listened only to sample tracks of the Japanese course and I am not here to evaluate it, the 4 stars above are dummy. However, since someone suspected that the female speaker may not be Japanese native, I'd like to write my impressions here.
Well, the woman's voice sounds a little bit peculiar indeed, but it does not sound accented as Chinese or any foreigner. I think her intonation is too flat even by Japanese standards and each word is a bit too strongly articulated, which reminds me of Japanese old-fashioned voices of radio announcers we sometimes hear in historical recordings.
So don't worry, friends. The pronunciation is passable after all. The mode of intonation in Japanese differs greatly by dialects, genders, and generations. In particular, the difference between manly and womanly intonation may be very important, tremendously so in certain situations, but too subtle to learn easily. For this matter, the (too) neutral intonation of the woman's voice, sounding a bit like electronically synthesized one though, may be rather not so bad to avoid unnessesary misunderstandings. I mean, you can safely speak like her regardless of your gender.
Hope this helps.
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55 of 58 people found the following review helpful
I have gone through the complete Pimsleur series for several European languages --- Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, and Greek (only Level 1 available). I have supplemented these with the Ultimate Italian, Portuguese, etc. material (book only, not the CD) from Living Language because I want a more systematic presentation of the grammar than Pimsleur gives. Also Just Listen 'N Learn from Passport Books (now McGraw Hill) and the Take Off In series from Oxford University Press, in order to expand my vocabulary. I go through each Pimsleur lesson at least twice the first time through, with lots of use of the pause button and backspace button on my player. And when when I've finished one level, I go back to the beginning and listen to it all over again. With this preparation, I was able to travel in Greece and Italy and briefly in Portugal (which of course required a readjustment from the Brazilian form of the language) and even have friendly conversations with some people who spoke little or no English.
But the Pimsleur method doesn't work as well for Japanese as it does for European languages. You will certainly learn a lot of Japanese, but you won't speak Japanese.
This is a review for all three levels of the Pimsleur Japanese. The Pimsleur materials provide a good starting point. I would never try to learn any language without starting with Pimsleur. (I haven't tried Rosetta Stone. I did eventually get the Linguaphone series for Japanese, which is forty years old and completely dreadful.)
There are two big problems with the Pimsleur approach to Japanese: vocabulary and grammar. Five hundred words just doesn't take you as far in Japanese as it does in European languages.Read more ›
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46 of 48 people found the following review helpful
Atually, I would give it 4 1/2 stars, but that is not possible. It's not perfect (but then, what is?) My wife and I (kanai to watashi) are going to visit Japan in a few months and we wanted to get a basic working knowledge of the language. I though we really would be missing too much if we didn't know any Japanese.
After going through several audio courses (some spoke so fast we were about ready to give up in complete despair), I found Pimsleur and this course has been by far the best of any. Yes, they are expensive, but the quality is far superior to others and generally the teaching speed is about right (although by the end of the first set and the start of the 2nd set), the pace really picks up. Sometimes, phrases are not repreated, which is frustrating, but all in all, it's very good. We found that we can actually have some simple conversations in Japanese - pretty amazing for two people who didn't know a word a few months ago.
I would recommend though that if at all possible, make it a point to get a good Japanese/English dictionary and also a good grammar book. "Japanese for Busy People" is excellent. Both of us are "visual people" and we need the reinforcement of the written word. We're also doing reading in Romanji - maybe technically not the "correct way", but then again it will be "close enough." Maybe our accent won't be quite right, but so what. Does it matter that much? At least we are making the effort and trying to do our best.
Other reviewers also have the right idea when they recommend "practice, practice." In the car is fine, but wait until after you have heard the lesson at least once before. It's too hard and dangerous to try to "get it" the first time while driving.Read more ›
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