Customer Reviews

Pimsleur Vietnamese

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

 

 

If your like me and have struggled to master strange foreign tounges, look no further, this is mother of all language teaching systems. Over the years i've spent thousands of dollars trying to learn Japanese & Thai, the only thing i can say is that i wish i had discovered the Pimsleur system sooner. Amazon shipped the product within 2 days of my order and three weeks later I have a vocabulary of about 150 words that i can mix and match to form coherant sentences, that my Vietnamese freinds can actually understand. The only problem is that only the compact verson is availiable, and i want more.The company doesnt have a web site that i can find and only gives an 800 number (useless to international callers) if you want to find out when the FULL course becomes availiable. You may say that compared to other programs this is expensive, but with the amazon discount and the awesome results, its worth every penny. I am even considering buying the Full Pimsleur Thai course even though i'm fairly fluent in Thai as if's as good at the Vietnamese then it will improve my accent and grammar.

I rated this with 1 star only to counter all the positive reviews a bit. It is actually not that bad, but it is definitely not worth 4 or 5 stars, maybe 3 at best.

So what do we get with this course? 5 cassettes with 10 lessons (1 on each side) featuring 5 hours of course material. There is a lot of repetition, which I guess is one of the strengths of the Pimsleur method, but on the other hand, it is also one of the biggest weaknesses: After 10 lessons you have almost learned nothing! The other strong point of the pimsleur method is the emphasis on pronounciation. Your vietnamese friends will probably understand you quite well.
So what can you say after 10 leasons?
------------
excuse me
may I ask you something?
Yes, no
I/you (don't) understand (English/Vietnamese)
I am American/Vietnamese
I (don't) know
How are you?
I am (not) fine
and, but, or, at, here, there, now, later, not yet, definitely not
ah (meaning: that's interesting)
when?
Where is .... street?
I want to eat (lunch)
I want to drink/shop/do what/something
What time is it?
It is 1/2/3/4/5/8/9 o'clock
never mind (this is only mentioned once)
hotel, restaurant, your/my place
wine, beer
---------
You can combine above into questions and other sentences, but that is about everything you learn from this course (I may have forgotten to mention some of the words you learn, but it is not much more than what I already mentioned).
I still can't count to 10, and I can hardly say anything interesting to any of my Vietnamese friends.
Also note the course teaches Hanoi dialect, while most Vietnamese outside Vietnam speak Saigon dialect.

Summarizing: you get 5 hours course material (which you probably only have to listen once), good pronounciation, fluency in the sentences you learn, the ability to combine the words you learn in different sentences, but very few words.
Personally I think the level of this course is far too low. There is lot of repetition and you can move on to the next cassette quickly so you get the feeling of progression, but at the end of the course you have learned very little. Other courses with comparable prices offer a lot more vocabulary. Yes you have to work harder and stick to a single cassette longer, but for the same money you learn a lot more.

I have studied Vietnamese from many books but I have found that this is the right one for people who are seriously want to be able to speak the language..But It doesn't mean that you will be able to speak the language right away ..I think this program helps you establish a strong foudation for you to further your study in the advance level...It is a bit expensive but you will enjoy it as much as I do.

This is a simple audio course offered by Pimsleur, a reputable way to teach foreign languages. This set consists of 10 lessons, each of about 30 minute, every lesson contains a simple conversation at the beginning, step by step the instructor will help you to decode the message. The publisher claimed that after 10 lessons you will be able to understand about 120 Vietnamese words and their usages. The so-called Pimsleur approach was actually quite repetitive, but they said this repetitiness is dfferent and innovative because every time when you are asked to repeat, the audio course gives you about 2 seconds to think, so it enhances your memory. I had finished this simple course before I came to Vietnam, I found it easy and quite enjoyed using it, it gave me some very brief concept of the sounds and structures of Vietnamese in a lazy-to-learn way, but there're some tricky and important sounds in Vietnamese (e.g. ? that you probably can't hear the differences in the audio. There's no written copy of the dialogues in this package which could be quite annoying if you wanted to see how they were written, though this may also be a part of the Pimsleur approach, which forces you to learn a language by your ears like what you did when you were young. The only drawback of this course is its price, US$60 for 300 minutes of repetitive instructions, just too expensive per minute but you can probably find this at your local library. Note that the audio instructions are all in Northern Vietnamese.

One important thing that is not noted is that apparently all Pimsleur courses are audio-only, hence strictly for conversation.