Customer Reviews

Spanish (L.A.) III - 1st Ed. (Pimsleur Language Program)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The negative reviews here kept me from ordering this for a while, but ultimately it comes down to whether you can afford it, and whether you want to stay in the nest a little longer before being kicked out of the tree. Don't worry about about being confused because you don't know two commonly used tenses. You are going to be confused because even small children know a few thousand more words than you do.

Spanish III reviews the old and adds the use of the imperfect tense (used to), the past perfect tense (had..., or would have...), and the past tense in the plural and informal forms. In fairness to the critics, it is wrong to ask you to say something in the future tense (will ...) and then give the translation in the near future (going to ...). But you are going to have to learn a lot on your own anyway, and the future tense not very hard. I learned more Spanish than I ever thought possible, and I can express myself comfortably within my vocabulary without going through English. Pimsleur made learning a language a wonderful experience, but the learning doesn't end with the course.

I'm not sure why there are so many negative reviews here. No, this is not a program to start with level III as a review. IT IS A STRUCTURED THREE PART SERIES that is the MOST EFFECTIVE language series I have tried. (And I have tried them all, including high school and university classes!) It is misleading to say that Baron's is better. I have basic and advanced Barrons in Spanish, French and German, and although they give you more vocabulary, they do NOT give you more facility with verb tenses. In fact, some tenses covered in level I in Pimlseur are not covered until Advanced in Barron's. And, they are ancient (from the 1950's and it shows.) So many of the complaints are misleading. Pimsleur is the best, albeit very expensive, method to learn to actually speak and understand. I went to Spain this summer and was able to deal with hotel/restarant/airport situations, without speaking English, as well as to converse with natives. Supplement your Pimsleur vocabulary with Ulimate Spanish. Forget about Barron's if you can afford Pimsleur.

Pimsleur's Comprehensive Language Series is among the best audio programs available for novices wishing to rapidly learn a new language. Level III takes up where Level II left off, drilling the student with commonly used phrases and grammar until basic/intermediate conversational and survival skills have been obtained.

I began Pimsleur's Level I - III courses, in conjunction with weekly Spanish instruction, with no prior knowledge of Spanish. I found that within seven months, upon traveling to Spain, that I was able to sufficiently perform all of the necessities (e.g., hotel reservations, dining out, sightseeing, etc.) in Spanish and have basic conversations with native speakers.

I have tried other Spanish cassette programs and none have the depth and patient, systematic approach of Pimsleur. My only complaint: Pimsleur has not yet followed up with more advanced editions.

i have gone through all three levels of pimsleur spanish and found them quite effective in helping me lock away in my memory what is probably the core of the language. i can converse with native speakers at work in ordinary chit chat and am complemented upon my pronounciation. i have no doubt i would be ok in an area where nothing but spanish is spoken. what undoudtedly helped was the fact that i had for severl months before starting this series studied grammar books and bilingual reading books. if not for that i probably would have had some problems with this series if i had started it with no previous knowlege of the spanish as i am one of those visual learners...hence the 4 stars and not 5. no one source can make you fluent. but attacking it with several differnt types of sets including fsi, vocabulearn, slang sets, verb sets, and practicing with native speakers can bring you very close. do you have to have formal instruction? no not really...i knew someone who took three years of spanish in high school and still could not order dinner. what you really need is a huge appetite for what you are attempting to master and some logical common sense planning! pimsleur is a great place to start!

You know you're in trouble when a level III Spanish listening course begins with lessons on how to introduce yourself. What should be a thorough review of conversational Spanish coupled with an intensive introduction to future, conditional and subjunctive tenses is nothing more than a cursory review of first semester Spanish. Granted, listening to all the conversations on these 24 CDs will undoubtedly help your pronunciation and ease with common conversational situations, however, why should you or anyone shell out nearly three C-notes when you can get the same and more from the Barron's Institute "Mastering Spanish Level 2" for less than a Franklin. Of all the audio-language learning courses I have taken in French and Spanish, Barron's is by far the best course and the best value for the money.

It is true that the tapes do not cover some advanced grammatical forms. However, if you are trying to learn to speak Spanish without translating and want to really remember what you've learned, this method is suberb. The lessons are extremely well-designed. Most people can't remember something after saying it just once or twice, and this method takes average memory decay time into account. Yes, they should come out with a more advanced series, but no series of tapes does a better job of teaching people long-term learning of a language than this one. Period.

The Pimsleur method is without a doubt the best learning system ever devised. It recombines words and phrases in such a way as to enable the student to speak in the foreign language without rote memorization. When measured with other systems there is no comparison. I know there have been some complaints about the cost. But in my opinion if you purchase all three Pimleur levels you literally purchase the ability to speak at the intermediate level. It is that good. I believe it is far more cost effective than spending money on several different travel pack type courses and never really getting what you want. If you are a serious language student, this is the way to go. If you are apprehensive, my suggestion would be to go to the website and listen to a sample. Or better yet purchase the small compact version. In any event, you should buy all three levels. Not just Spanish III. In fact, it is essential to purchase the first two before going on to the third. I think that the negative criticism may have come when individuals bought the third level only. For me Pimsleur is the best. This course has been a great asset to me in my job. Unfortunately, Pimsleur does not offer full length courses in all of the languages I want to learn. But the learning material they do offer cannot be beat.

I bought the Spanish 3 set series when my boss informed me he was sending me to Venezuela for 3 months. Unfortunately, he sent me to Austria instead. Nevertheless after knowing no more Spanish than si, senor, amigo and adios I have found that using the tapes quickly enabled me to develop a basic conversational ability in Spanish that I have been able to use in practical contexts. During the start up of a new technology factory we had a dozen Venezuelans from a similar operation training our operators. Their English was variable and the Spanish that I had learnt enabled me to express and understand ideas in Spanish quite easily. Whilst leaving me far from fluent I believe it has enabled me to develop a sound basis for further language development when using it in the real world. The Venezuelans, as with any nationality, appreciate people that make the effort to learn their language so the value is far higher than the words and sentences you recite. I listened to the tapes in my car on the way to work each day and spoke aloud for the responses. The Venezuelans commented (genuinely) that my pronunciation was excellent and I believe that is one of the main advantages of this method of learning languages. You will not become fluent, will not be able to construct sentences that cover all of the ideas that you wish to express and not be able to listen in on native speakers talking and understand everything they say but you will be able to have meaningful one on one conversations that will enable you to build on what you do learn through the tapes.

I am now "hooked" on the Pimsleur tapes and intend to learn other languages using this method ...... when I can afford to.

My husband and I used Pimsleur Spanish I,II, and III before going to Costa Rica for our month of intensive Spanish. I came back really appreciating the methodology behind this program. While nothing can take the place of studying in a Spanish speaking environment, Pimsleur focuses on what can actually be done and doing that very very well indeed. It does not try to teach every tense of every verb (the completeness approach favored and never learned in academic settings). Instead it carefully introduces those tenses and structures you can actually use and build on (without being an audio phrase book, which is pretty useless for really learning the language). I am now going back through III and appreciating it more than before I left. This is really excellent. The schools would do well to look at the structure of this course, particularly for teaching conversation.

I need to add something to this review which I wrote about a year and a half ago. Shortly after I wrote this review, I took a trip to Spain. What I learned was that I understood enough not to feel completely confused, but I would be delusional if I felt I could really speak Spanish. Since that time, I've used Rosetta Stone and I read and listen to the radio constantly. Possibly the best move was hiring a good private tutor. There are times when I understand things perfectly and other times when I hear a rocket fire procession of consonents and vowels.

In hindsight, I can recommend Pimsleur as an excellent overview for a language, especially if time is a limitation, but it takes a lot more work after that.

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I love learning languages. For 8 years, I've studied Russian with private tutors. I think I speak decently for never having lived in that country; however, I do struggle a bit with native speakers, and I'm not sure if it is because it is such a tough language, or perhaps my method of learning it wasn't so effective, or maybe I just need to live there.

I also took Spanish in high school for two years, and didn't learn how to say anything, just pass some exams.

For a laugh, I started with Pimsleur Spanish I just to see what would happen. I'd read so much about it. I thought I might impress my Spanish speaking boyfriend. My goal wasn't really to learn it or anything, but to have some fun. The first lesson made us both laugh pretty hard. He rolled his eyes in the kitchen as I began listening to and repeating my first words. But the lessons were fun and so I continued.

Three months later, I have twenty more lessons to go in Level III. It's shocking how much I've learned in such a short period of time, and it has not been painful; rather, it has been a complete joy. Now we speak Spanish on a daily basis, and every day I can speak just a little bit better than the day before. Every time I attend one of his many family gatherings, I understand better than I did before. And I can never wait for the next lesson.

People think learning languages has to be difficult. Granted, Russian is hard, but I'm tempted to start over using Pimsleur just to see what would happen. Learning Spanish has been such a pleasant surprise. For some reason, a half-hour a day is a enough for me, although sometimes I have to play a small section again. I don't tend to worry about perfection, because it's always repeated in some way later on. And with every word I learn, there's always this sense of discovery, like, "Oh! So that's how you say it!"

As a supplement, I by accident found a copy of "Spanish for Reading" at a local bookstore. I highly recommend it. It actually explains what the tenses are. I don't stress over this either: just an exercise a day and my vocabularly gradually increases.

And I've also just signed up at a local Spanish language school now that I think I've got a decent base. The ability test was conducted on my cell phone with a really weak connection, and still I tested as an Intermediate. After three months? I think that's pretty good. It took me five years to reach that level in Russian with classes and private tutors, and I STILL can't say, "Te dije, ?Podr?as traerme una cerveza?"