Spanish [AUDIOBOOK] (Audio Cassette)

~ Pimsleur (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

LEARN TO SPEAK SPANISH

PACK A PIMSLEUR

GRAB YOUR PASSPORT

AND GO

Pimsleur immerses you in the language from the very first lesson. By taking just 30 minutes a day, you can learn Spanish at your convenience and in the comfort of your own home, car, or office. No books are required. This Traveler's Edition was developed so that you can hear, understand, and speak Spanish on your trips without difficulty.

Before your next trip, learn Spanish with Pimsleur. Now you can learn Spanish as easily as you learned English -- by listening. With Pimsleur, you listen to learn Spanish. The Pimsleur Language Program recognizes that the use of memory is the most important aspect of language learning and that you need to be able to recall and to use what you have learned.

Your Pimsleur Traveler's Edition includes 8 audio cassettes/16 complete lessons, an Owner's Manual, a handy Spanish phrase card, a language map of the world, 6 postcards, and 2 luggage tags.

About the Author

Dr. Pimsleur devoted his life to language teaching and was one of the world's leading experts in applied linguistics. After obtaining his Ph.D. in French from Columbia University, he taught French Phonetics and Phonemics, and supervised the language laboratory at UCLA. He went on to become Professor of Romance Languages and Language Education, and Director of The Listening Center 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. 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 that is based on two key principles: the Principle of Anticipation and a scientific principle of memory that he called Graduated Interval Recall. This program incorporates both of these principles to provide you with the most simple and effective learning method possible. --This text refers to an alternate Audio Cassette edition.

Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Pimsleur (December 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671315218
• ISBN-13: 978-0671315214
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 9.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,027,602 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

66 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Great product family, poor individual product, September 15, 2002

By	Steve D. Perkins (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Spanish (Pimsleur Quick and Simple) (Audio CD)

The Pimsleur family of language courses is probably the best available in the English-speaking world. Unlike most other audio programs, the emphasis is not on mindlessly repeating phrases... but rather on natural conversation. Spanish words and phrases are slowly introduced by the English narrator throughout the conversation, and you then incorporate them into conversation with the Spanish speakers (followed by the "right" response to compare yourself to). This more natural approach makes a huge difference in absorbing and retaining the knowledge.

However, the tried-and-true Pimsleur courses today are owned by the Simon & Schuster corporation... which has made some very corporate-like decisions in marketing them. The classic courses are 16 CD's/cassettes each, three course levels available per language, with all being quite in-depth and quite expensive. Unfortunately, "in-depth and expensive" is not in as high demand as "cheap with just a few phrases to impress your friends". Most people who pick up tapes and CD's at the bookstore are just trying to learn a few phrases so they can have fun with it on some upcoming vacation... they're not trying to gain actual proficiency with a language (and if they are, they're crazy for thinking that's possible with just a handful of lessons!).

Therefore, Simon & Schuster has extended the Pimsleur product line... creating 4-CD and 8-CD sets (in addition to the original 16-CD sets), to market head-to-head against other companies' products in lower price ranges. This 4-CD set is basically just the first four CD's of the original "Spanish I" 16-CD set, and the 8-CD product is just the first eight CD's of that set. There's nothing really new here but the packaging, the company is essentially just trying to squeeze some new money out of an old workhorse.

The problem is that this material wasn't designed to serve as a standalone product, it was designed to be the first four CD's of a 16-CD set. If you're hoping to just learn some travel phrases, you'll probably be a bit disappointed... your needs may be better served by purchasing some other "Repeat after me: Where is the bathroom? ¿Donde esta el baño?" product. If you're more serious and hoping to really gain some proficiency in Spanish, the only real value here is to give you an idea (before you spend allot of money) as to whether or not you want to go all-out and buy the real 16-CD set.

The Pimsleur approach is probably the best out there for learning a foreign language... so I by no means want my mediocre rating here to imply that I wouldn't HIGHLY recommend other Pimsleur products. All I'm saying is that Dr. Pimsleur originally designed courses that were comprehensive programs for serious learners, and that's been twisted around here into a marketing ploy. By itself, this 4-CD sub-set doesn't really seem to do a good job satisfying the needs for anybody.

41 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent crash course, August 21, 2001

By	James Tetazoo (Texas, USA) - See all my reviews

First a word of caution: because the Pimsleur method is 100% audio, you won't learn any spelling of words. If your goal is to learn to WRITE Spanish, this program won't be very much help to you on its own. Similarly, you won't learn (or have to memorize) any rules of grammar or verb conjugation tables. With the Pimsleur method, you learn simply by listening and speaking. You don't really learn WHY you say things this way in this case and that way in that case. You will learn the grammar more by osmosis than by memorizing rules. Memorizing rules really hampers your fluency because you're constantly thinking about the rule, how it applies to the sentence or phrase at hand, and performing a translation in your head. When you're listening to someone talking at a normal rate, you'll never be able to keep up and you'll need to ask the person to talk slowly and one sentence at a time.

One of the main points of the Pimsleur method is that this step in the learning process (memorizing rules) is unnecessary. It is not how you learned your native language and, when you become orally fluent in any language, you no longer think about these rules you may or may not have learned along the way.

Obviously, it is a great choice for travelers and commuters who want to put that wasted time in traffic or sitting in your hotel to good use. Listening to the tapes/CDs in the car (especially in heavy stop & go traffic) is not quite the best environment because you should be giving your full attention to the recordings, but it still works even in that situation and this is how I used it. However, I did find myself rewinding to parts I missed because I was concentrating on not getting in an accident and I occasionally missed my highway exits while I was engrossed in the tapes.

The Travelers Edition is a great crash course to take before going on a trip to a Spanish-speaking country, but you should ideally be visiting a major city where there is at least SOME English spoken. Don't expect to go waltzing through small towns where no one speaks a lick of English. If you complete all three levels (6 times the number of tapes/CDs in the Travelers Edition), however, you should be able to accomplish that goal and be virtually fluent (orally) and free to travel to remote villages and get around rather well. From that point, you'll mainly want to work on building up your vocabulary as much as possible and, if it's important to you, study the written side of the language (spelling, etc.) that you don't really learn from the Pimsleur method.

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great, March 23, 2000

By	Stephen H. Ellis (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spanish 8 Lessons (Basic) (Audio Cassette)

Very Pleased with series. Purchased "Learn Spanish in your Car" first and hated it. Pimsleur is much much better