Product Description

Comprehensive Spanish (L.A.) I includes 30 lessons of essential grammar and vocabulary -- 16 hours of real-life spoken practice sessions -- plus an introduction to reading.

Upon completion of this Level I program, you will have functional spoken proficiency with the most-frequently-used vocabulary and grammatical structures. You will be able to:

* initiate and maintain face-to-face conversations,

* deal with every day situations -- ask for information, directions, and give basic information about yourself and family,

* communicate basic information on informal topics and participate in casual conversations,

* avoid basic cultural errors and handle minimum courtesy and travel requirements,

* satisfy personal needs and limited social demands,

* establish rapport with strangers in foreign countries,

* begin reading and sounding out items with native-like pronunciation.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #126956 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04-01
• Released on: 2002-04-01
• Format: Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 16
• Binding: Audio CD

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.

Customer Reviews

An excellent auditory learning method
This is the third language I've learned the rudiments of via the Pimsleur method. I had Spanish and French in high school (during the last century) but I also picked up enough German to negotiate a hiking trip in Austria and I'd never learned it before. The Spanish CDs have been a boon to me and if you are primarily an auditory learner as I seem to be, I believe you will be pleased with them.

Pimsleur Spanish I Review
Good complement to a traditional Spanish language class.
Focuses completely on listening and speaking.
No written exercises or teaching. All vocabulary
learning is through the interactive excercises
which feature enough random repetition to keep
you on your toes.
Should be a good training for dialog and every day
conversation. I probably would not want to use
this as my only way of learning the language.

Price tag out of step with quality and usefulness
I'm happy to say that I didn't have to pay the ultra-high price-tag for this course. My uncle has opened a language products store and I'm running through some of the beginners Spanish courses to help him recommend one.

Pimsleur definitely has an innovative approach. It will help an absolute beginner get off the ground, for sure.

However, one would be much better off by buying the Michel Thomas beginners course (which is far better than Pimsleur and much cheaper) plus one or two others as well as the Thomas course is light-on for non verb related voacbulary.

Many lessons have a point where a speaker starts instructing you in Spanish what to ask or say. He might say "ask him if he has seen the movie." So you say "have you seen the movie?" That exercise feels like an utter waste of time, the instructions would better have been delivered in English.

I would recommend Pimsleur if it was $50, for sure. Until it hits that price I won't recommend it to anyone who isn't loaded with cash.