Customer Reviews

Spanish Plus

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

 

 

This course is intended to be used after the Pimsleur Spanish III comprehensive course. It consists of 10 audio only lessons, each around 30 minutes. There are no reading lessons. In general, the lessons seemed to be slightly less challenging than the lessons in the earlier courses

The lessons pick up approximately where Spanish III left off, introducing new vocabulary and phrases and reviewing the material covered in the earlier lessons and courses. However, it seems that much of the material presented towards the end of Spanish III is never really reviewed.

An additional complaint I have is that a fair amount of the new vocabulary is pretty specific to the publishing industry, such as "publishing house", "book fair", "author's rights", and so on. It seems there are a lot of other words and phrases that would be much more useful to most people.

Something which is different than the earlier courses is that there are two different sets of spanish speakers. The female speaker in lessons 1-5 seems to have a different, or perhaps stronger, accent than the other spanish speakers. I found her speech somewhat more difficult to follow. But on the other hand, it provided good practice in understanding slightly different pronunciation.

All in all, I found the Pimsleur method to be an extremely effective and painless way of building and retaining a strong and practical foundation in Spanish. I think this Spanish Plus course is a bit less useful than the other courses in this series, but is still worthwhile, and will provide some additional knowledge and practice beyond Spanish III.

I confess, I am a Pimsleur addict, so I don't regret buying these in CD format. However, I must warn that these lessons were obviously developed for in-house publishing employees. The content is completely centered on the world of publishing, and will add very little new and useful vocabulary for others. Except that you will learn to discuss the novel you are reading with others. It does give you more experience with putting together the grammar you know, and adds a few new general phrases. But, it is not really providing much new material past level three. I wish Pimsleur would develop a true level IV with more grammer and content, or even "vocabulary supplemental" with the past grammar and tenses, but with lots broader conversational content.

Spanish Plus was produced with the same high production quality as the first three levels of Pimsleur spanish, but the reason i can only give it two stars is that it is much too centered around the publishing industry rather than the general conversation paterns of the first three levels. Also i was expecting more generalized coverage of the subjunctive tenses consdering how important they are in spanish as in other romance languages. The future tense could have been introduced also. It can be expressed with the verb "ir" but understanding it will be difficult without practice. In a nutshell, not enough new general material was introduced and too much time spent on a very narrow area. As happy as i was with the levels I, II, and III, i regret purhasing this one.

Aside from the narrow focus of content area (others have commented about being stuck in the publishing world--which could be worse, I suppose: now I can proudly say "author's rights" in Spanish), I have criticisms about the method, at least as it is applied to what is allegedly an advanced level course. We are told that this course will not be effective unless we've taken Pimsleur 1, 2, and 3. What nonsense. The coverage of grammar is narrow (present and preterit, with a smattering of past perfect, applied to a handful of verbs) as is the vocabulary. It's as though Pimsleur doesn't trust its own method. Surely, if someone has "graduated" all previous levels, one wouldn't have to be drilled in words like "vivir," "autor," "novela," "leyo," etc. The drills not only consist of multiple repetitions of many words, but may include repetitions of the syllables of the word, as well. There are also drills of Spanish names for such foreign cities and countries as Melbourne and England. Even if a Pimsleur "graduate" student hadn't come across those before (not likely in the case of England), wouldn't their ear have been trained well enough to "get it" the first or second time? In short, much time is wasted. I'd estimate that the material, which is quite skimpy, could be condensed into half the audio space and another 50% of content added, without sacrificing the benefits of the interactive method.

On the plus side, the diversity of Hispanic speakers--speaking clearly and at a moderate pace (though for the advanced student, a slighly faster pace might have been more appropriate, at least further along)--is quite enjoyable, though with one exception. That is the use of a speaker from Argentina, with all the idiosyncracies of that accent to muddy the waters. Unless one is already familiar with Spanish as spoken in Argentina, how is one supposed to hear, "eja" as ella? What is the instructional value of such a choice (added to the fact that the speaker has, to my ears, an slightly shrill, nasal sound)? If the country were just south of the border, OK, that would make sense. The result is, that you have, for example, an odd situation where the Argentinean speaker asks (in her fashion) her publishing colleague if he speaks "Castellano [pron: castejano]." Another reviewer has commented on this inappropriate use of a term used exclusively in Spain, so Pimsleur now combines questionable usage with irrelevant accent.

I'm pleased (if that's the word) to say that I rented this set from the library and so didn't have to waste my money as well as my time.