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

Pimsleur (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 074355146X | ISBN-13: 978-0743551465 | 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.

Turkish, Conversational

• Sixteen 30-minute lessons of spoken Turkish language instruction. These sixteen lessons are the same as the first sixteen lesson of Pimsleur's 30-Unit Comprehensive Program.

• Each lesson includes an introductory conversation, and new vocabulary and structures and includes practice for vocabulary introduced in previous lessons.
• Essential grammar and vocabulary. Topics include: greetings, numbers, meals, shopping, telling time, scheduling activities, and asking and giving directions.
• No mindless repetition! Converse with native speakers in natural (and useful!) conversations.
• Easy, fast, fun and effective language acquisition.
• Completely Audio - anytime, anywhere. No computer necessary! Unlike expensive software programs which tie learners to a computer, Pimsleur courses are available in CD or mp3 format to meet your needs.
• Receive an instant credit of $150 to trade up from the Conversational to the full Level 1 Comprehensive CD course.

Pimsleur® equals success. Just one 30-minute lesson a day gets you speaking and understanding like no other program.

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

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: 074355146X
• ISBN-13: 978-0743551465
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 8.2 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #156,994 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #8 in Books > Education & Reference > Foreign Languages > Turkish
  • #8 in Books > Education & Reference > Foreign Languages > Instruction > 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

90 of 91 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worth The Wait, December 25, 2006

By 

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

This review is from: Turkish, Conversational: 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!

41 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most successful way I've found to learn Turkish, October 9, 2007

By 

Simon Cohn (Lebanon, NJ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

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

I've wanted to learn Turkish for a long time now. My wife is Turkish, and I can't communicate with her family (yes, I know, to some that would be a problem not worth fixing).

This is an excellent audio course, and it has no fluff in it whatsoever. You start playing the CD, and GO! I use it during my 1 hour commute each way in the car. As others have said, I sometimes need to rewind because I can't always think as fast as they want me to, but I transferred it to my mp3 player, and it's easy to go back a few seconds and try it again.

I've tried Rosetta stone, but basically it just sat there because I had to dedicate the time to sit in front of a computer and do it. For me, this is much better.

Be forewarned, however, that you need to repeat things out loud constantly, and if you are not in a private place, it's not going to work out.

In the very first lesson, they start by saying, "Listen to this conversation in Turkish." Only 30 minutes later, you listen to the exact same conversation and you understand it!

5 stars.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good for listening to in the car, July 4, 2007

By 

pak (South Carolina, USA) - See all my reviews

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

I am supposed to be going to Turkey to teach there for a year, so a few months ago I bought this program to start learning Turkish. I chose Pimsleur over Rosetta Stone for a few reasons: 1. It's much cheaper. 2. I can listen to it in the car while driving around instead of having to find time to sit in front of the computer. 3. Pimsleur teaches useful phrases whereas Rosetta Stone really does not in its whole language approach.

Overall I am pleased with Pimsleur. There are sixteen 30-minute lessons. I find I need to listen to a lesson at least three times before moving on. There is plenty of review though; each new lesson also reviews old material. They do explain some of the grammar but do not overwhelm you with it. It seems to me that some lessons introduce more new material than others. For example, I got through lesson ten rather quickly, as there was not much new, but I am now on lesson eleven which seems to introduce quite a bit of new material.

One thing I don't like about the audio program is not knowing how to read and write what I am learning to say. It is a good idea to purchase a Turkish grammar book and study that to supplement Pimsleur. Unfortunately there is no text or phrasebook included with Pimsleur, just the CDs in their own little case. I also bought "Teach Yourself Turkish" and although it is good, I just haven't devoted the time to it that I should.

As an experienced language learner (I speak French and some Spanish) and language teacher, I find Pimsleur great for an audio-lingual program. It helps teach proper pronunciation and intonation whereas simply studying a grammar book would not. However, I think it is best to purchase both Pimsleur and a book and devote time to both. The most effective language learning and teaching should involve not only listening and speaking, but also reading and writing.