Turkish, Comprehensive: Learn to Speak and Understand Turkish with Pimsleur Language Programs (Simon & Schuster's Pimsleur) [Audiobook, Unabridged] [Audio CD]

Pimsleur (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 074353381X | ISBN-13: 978-0743533812 | Publication Date: December 12, 2006 | Edition: Unabridged

Turkish is a branch of the Turkic language family and is spoken as an official language by about 70 million people in Turkey and in Northern Cyprus. Pimsleur's Turkish teaches standard Turkish, which is based on the dialect spoken in and around Istanbul.

The Pimsleur® Method: the easiest, fastest way to learn a new language. Completely portable, easily downloadable, and lots of fun. You’ll be speaking and understanding in no time flat! Turkish, Comprehensive includes 15 hours of spoken language practice and one hour of reading instruction in thirty, 30-minute lessons.

• In the first 10 lessons, you’ll cover the basics: saying hello, asking for or giving information, scheduling a meal or a meeting, asking for or giving basic directions, and much more. You’ll be able to handle minimum courtesy requirements, understand much of what you hear, and be understood at a beginning level, but with near-native pronunciation skills.
• In the next 10 lessons, you’ll build on what you’ve learned. Expand your menu, increase your scheduling abilities from general to specific, start to deal with currency and exchanging money, refine your conversations and add over a hundred new vocabulary items. You’ll understand more of what you hear, and be able to participate with speech that is smoother and more confident.
• In the final 10 lessons, you’ll be speaking and understanding at an intermediate level. In this phase, more directions are given in the target language, which moves your learning to a whole new plane. Lessons include shopping, visiting friends, going to a restaurant, plans for the evening, car trips, and talking about family. You’ll be able to speak comfortably about things that happened in the past and make plans for the future.

Reading Lessons are included at the end of Unit 30 to provide you with an introduction to reading Turkish. These lessons, which total about one hour, are designed to teach you to sound out words with correct pronunciation and accent. A Reading Booklet to be used with the audio lessons is also included in PDF format.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Pimsleur programs provide plenty of positive reinforcement that will keep learners on track, and we found that Pimsleur gave us more proficiency and confidence in speaking the new language than any of the other language programs we reviewed." -- AudioFile Magazine

"EXTREMELY ACCESSIBLE...each section within the lessons is short enough to hold our attention, and there is enough repetition to teach even those who consider themselves slow learners...Pimsleur [programs] are extremely thorough and easy to use -- quite lively!" -- Boston Herald

"Learn French while commuting, German while jogging, Spanish (or Russian, Italian, and Japanese) while cooking all with NO WRITTEN MATERIALS!" -- New York Daily News

"Designed for the ear and not the eye...the lessons provide PERFECT 30-minute bites of work." -- St Louis Post-Dispatch

"Learn to habla español or parlez français before your next trip aboard. The interactive LESSONS CHALLENGE STUDENTS to use new words in conversation instead of memorize them." -- American Way (American Airlines inflight magazine)

"I tried other language programs with little success...This is the best by far!" -- Pamela A. Mitchell, Pilot, International Society of Women Airline Pilots --This text refers to an alternate Audio CD edition.

About the Author

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.

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Pimsleur; Unabridged edition (December 12, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 074353381X
• ISBN-13: 978-0743533812
• Product Dimensions: 12.9 x 11.2 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #944,983 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #45 in Books > Education & Reference > Foreign Languages > Instruction > Turkish
  • #50 in Books > Education & Reference > Foreign Languages > Turkish

More About the Author

Dr. Paul Pimsleur (b. 1926, d. 1976) devoted his life to language teaching and testing and was one of the world's leading experts in applied linguistics. He was fluent in French, good in German, and had a working knowledge of Italian, Russian, Modern Greek, and Mandarin Chinese. After obtaining his Ph.D. in French and a Masters in Psychology from Columbia University, he taught French Phonetics and Linguistics at UCLA. He later became Professor of Romance Languages and Language Education, and Director of The Listening Center (a state-wide language lab) at Ohio State University; Professor of Education and Romance Languages at the State University of New York at Albany; and a Fulbright lecturer at the University of Heidelberg. He did research on the psychology of language learning and in 1969 was Section Head of Psychology of Second Language Learning at the International Congress of Applied Linguistics.

Dr. Pimsleur was a member of the American Association of Teachers of French (AATF), American Educational Research Association (AERA), Modern Language Association (MLA), and a founding member of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL).

His many books and articles revolutionized theories of language learning and teaching. After years of experience and research, Dr. Pimsleur developed a new method (The Pimsleur Method) that is 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."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worth the Wait, December 17, 2006

By 

G. Scimeca "GDS" (Richmond, VA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Turkish, Comprehensive: Learn to Speak and Understand Turkish with Pimsleur Language Programs (Simon & Schuster's Pimsleur) (Audio CD)

Turkish has been a pretty glaring hole in the Pimsleur catalog for some time now. It always seemed a bit strange that a company that takes the trouble to make programs for Irish, Ojibwe and Lithuanian would overlook a language with over 60 million speakers in such an important part of the world. Further, Turkey does everything it can to reach out to the West, economically, culturally and politically.

But after studying Turkish on my own for a while, I came to see why it may have gotten pushed to the back-burner. It is not a terribly difficult language to learn, but it is quite different in its structure to languages that have previously been produced by Pimsleur. Like Hungarian and Finnish - other popular languages that don't have Pimsleur courses - Turkish is an agglutanized language, which simply means that sentence structures are formed in large part by building on the base word. For example, they don't use prepositions as we do in English, they merely add a suffix on the word. "Sut" means "milk", "sutlu" means "with milk." School is "okul" - from school is "okuldan." And so forth.

While this concept alone doesn't make Turkish improbable for the Pimsleur format, bear in mind that words can become quite complicated when you begin adding attachments for possessive cases, plurals, location, tense, etc. It is not uncommon for words to eventually grow into the size of small sentences. And note negation; "I understand" is "biliyorum" but "I don't understand" is "bilMIyorum." So proper listening requires you to catch agglutinzed portions of the word in the middle of the sentence, otherwise the meaning is completely the opposite of what is understood.

Ok, with that out of the way it must be said that Pimsleur did a superb job of comporting Turkish into the script format that has remained pretty consistent through the various languages. Unlike Spanish or Italian, the pace is a little slower to make sure you "get" what is being accomplished as the vocabulary is built up and key concepts are explained. But the pace does keep up, which I found to be very satisfying. One of the great assets of Pimsleur (as opposed to say, the "Rocket" audio programs) is the lack of pointless chit-chat in English, and the steady pace to keep you focused on the target language. The Turkish script not only navigated the tricky points of Turkish quite well, but also happened to give among the most clear and concise introductions into the points of grammar as they came.

Again the voices are good, the speech is clear, and the vocabulary is useful. This one is a winner. Turkish is a great language, and very easy to speak with regards to pronounciation (say, compared to Arabic, Chinese or Russian). A month invested in this program would be all you would need to have a fantastic time in Turkey. Though I have not yet visited, my Turkish friends say if you know a little of the language, the hospitality is overwhelming and you will never be lacking for an invitation for dinner. I imagine with this program under your belt you'd eat like a king in Turkey!

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It's a very good program, but...., February 7, 2007

By 

Michael Joyce "Turk Lover" (Fredericksburg, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Turkish, Basic: Learn to Speak and Understand Turkish with Pimsleur Language Programs (Simon & Schuster's Pimsleur) (Audio CD)

Pimsleur's new Turkish program is very good. However, it comes in three sizes. 1) a basic program of 10 CD's. 2) a conversational program of 16 CD's. 3) A full program of 30 CDs.

Each program, however, repeats the revious program. So, If you bought Conversational Turkish, you have a 10 CD repeat of Basic before you get to six CD's of new material. If you buy the full Turkish program, you get 16 CD's of repeat and 14 new ones.

I found Basic and Conversational to have a good foundation of the basic language necessities to get by in Turkey.

As for the method; I found it very good. You practice a new lesson for a half hour every day. You can review, if you need to or wish, but only one new lesson a day.

Having worked at Turkish for several years, I have tried several programs. Pimsleur is quick, efficient and natural. A good program for the beginning student.

However, if you are seriously interested in Turkish, buy the 30 disc program, "Pimsleur's Turkish." You save money in the long run and, really, the Basic and Conversational courses don't quite give you enough.

So, for a Turkish learning program, I would give the lessons 5 stars, but, since this (Basic) and the following program (Conversational) are not quite enough, 4 stars.

As a footnote, if you are a person with a busy schedule, I believe Pimsleur is the method for you.

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Basic and conversational are the same CDs, February 12, 2007

By 

M. McPhee - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Turkish, Basic: Learn to Speak and Understand Turkish with Pimsleur Language Programs (Simon & Schuster's Pimsleur) (Audio CD)

I really like the Pimsleur CDs, but do NOT buy both the Basic AND Conversational, as Amazon suggests. Basic consists of 5 CDs, and Conversational has the same 5, plus three additional. My recommendation is that you just buy the conversational and call it a day. My only other complaint is that I wish there were more than just the 8 CDs. To get a decent amount of Turkish, it looks like you need to spend >$200 for the full set. There needs to be more intermediately priced options.