Customer Reviews

Penton's German 24 (Pentons 24) (German Edition)

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This package comes with basically 3 programs. the learn in the car set of 9 CD's, the Vocabulearn set of 12 CD's, and the immersion set of 3 CD's. This package has a lot of german and for the money is quite a bargain. However, it doesn't hold a candle to pimsleur in quality, but pimsleur cost 10 times as much. The learn in your car set is a simple but effective way to learn german. You hear the english a pause then the translation in german repeated twice. There are about 90 units and each unit varies from 3 to 15 minutes in length. Each unit cover's a topic some focus on grammar and some useful phrases. It works, but not nearly as fun as pimsleur, which makes you almost forget your trying to working because it feels like your having a conversation.The Vocabulearn works as well, but is horrible boring, it makes an FSI course look fun. The immersion plus set is great for listing practice. Dialogs are spoken at normal speed than slow and than normal again. Only draw back is the translations in the book are rough. If you don't understand something you will have to look up the vocabulary because the translations are far from word for word. Anyway not a bad package to put in your tool box.

I ripped these lessons and listen to them on my iPod. I think Pimsleur is better in the car, but these are ideal at the gym or anyplace else where I cannot speak out loud. I especially enjoy the vocab drills while I exercise. Vocab is not fun, but I sure learn a lot in a short period of time while I'm on the stairclimber.

Note: The English and German are separated into left and right channels. Some people do not like this, but according to the manual it was intended to allow you to turn off one channel and practice without the answers.

I might have liked this well enough if the German were on the driver's side, but it's hard to hear the German pronunciation when it comes only from the passenger's side. To fix this when I made my mp3s, I used the dsp tools in db power amp to reverse the channels, as well as to increase the volume level.

The Learn in Your Car tapes are well designed and graduated so you soak up words and then hear them in another context so they get into your head several ways. The enunciation is clear and the examples are fairly useful. The Immersion conversations are fun and actually amusing and are spoken again slowly so you can really hear the pronunciation. Without referring to the excellent tiny guide book (LOVE how tiny it is, for the jacket pocket), you can hear the word said so clearly that you stand a good chance of figuring out what they said without a translation. The guidebook can also be printed off in regular sized paper and this makes a good student exercise page,to mark on and make margin notes.This is one very well designed set that is graduated sensibly with topics that stick close together. Some sets just speak random words and random unrelated sentences but the words need a framework, which Penton provides.

where you input:
information (vocab list)
program a set of rules (grammar)
and finally spit out results (fluency?)

or they are kidding themselves



there are 24 cds, i skipped arounds and ALL THE TRACKS are simply a vocab list. I admit that they had some soothing music in the background, but does memorizing words really help you?
Who the hell can memorize about 21 cds worth of vocab?
The last 3 CDs are conversations, but apperantly, you are not only expected to know all this, but become fluent in the language and spit out conversations on your own!

I hate to say it, but this is worse than rosetta stone. At it RS progresses from words to phrases, this here is just a vocab list.