More Pimsleur Samples

There are more Pimsleur samples on the site. Listen to a free first lesson of Pimsleur in any of these languages - Farsi (Persian), Russian, Hebrew, Dutch, Greek, Hindi and Polish. If you are learning or interested in learning any of these languages, it's a great way to see if you like the Pimsleur method or think it would be a good fit for you. I highly recommend trying out any method or program before you buy it whenever possible.

Pimsleur First Lesson Free

I've been adding links to product demos a lot lately. I find that people can get a much better feel for a language method if they can try it. Unfortunately, not all publishers offer a demo of their products.

Transparent Language offers a Lite version of their BYKI software and I've included a link for every language page that I have on the site. Rosetta Stone offers a demo of their software, and all language pages on the site (for which Rosetta Stone has a product) now have a link to their demo.

Pimsleur is a little different. They do offer the first lesson of their audio programs for free. Finding them is a little tricky. I am adding an audio player and link to the first lesson for all of the languages that Pimsleur has a product for. This will take a little time, however. I've added Chinese, French, Spanish, Italian, German and Arabic. Others will be coming along, but if you can't wait for a language that you are interested in, contact me and I'll make that language a priority.

Pimsleur Reviews

There are more new Pimsleur reviews on the site that have been added by visitors.

French Pimsleur Review is a review of Pimsleur French. Although, the reviewer does not mention which product he used, it is a 10-lesson cd set, which means it was probably a French Basic course.

(Simon and Schuster uses the same material for each course. The first 8 lessons for Quick and Simple, first 10 for Basic, first 16 for instant Conversation etc. So, a review of one product is applicable, to a certain degree, to other products for the same language.)

Other recent reviews were of Pimsleur Romanian, Mandarin Chinese and others. To read some visitor Pimsleur reviews, go to Pimseur Reviews.

Pimsleur Russian and Pimsleur Norwegian

Pimsleur is probably the language learning method with the best name recognition. Whether its price tag is worth it is entirely up to the individual, but the vast majority of people who use it, love it. Even those who don't like it generally give it a very fair review.

I am a fan of Pimsleur, but in order to be fair, I thought I would go out of my way to point out when a visitor leaves a review of Pimsleur that isn't so positive. One person wrote a review of Pimsleur Russian that wasn't a recommendation to buy it, like most are. This wasn't the first time that I have heard the Pimsleur cds didn't work as well for Russian as it did for some other languages.

However, the reviewer mentioned that Pimsleur was very effective at teaching pronunciation and conversation ability. That is Pimsleurs greatest strength. The reviewer also noted some things that are consistently brought up as question marks for Pimsleur. Overall, a very fair review.

Simon and Schuster have also recently released a Pimsleur Norwegian Comprehensive set for Level 1. This is another good step forward. I like that they are adding to the Pimsleur collection, but I wish they would do it faster and be more complete. Do they have a Norwegian 2 and 3 right on the heels? Probably not. Maybe I'm just bitter because I want a Swedish Comprehensive.

Visitors Center

In my previous post I mentioned that I would be adding visitor contribution pages to the site. In addition to the one mentioned, I've since added pages on language learning experiences, visitor Pimsleur reviews and foreign language experiences. These pages (and many more to follow) can all be found at the Visitors Center on the site.

Your contributions will become a web page on the site for other language learners to read, learn from and comment on. This will be very exciting as contributions begin to come in and we can all learn from each others experiences!

Pimsleur Swedish

I've written a review for Pimsleur Swedish . I've decided to begin to add language-specific reviews of Pimsleur products that I've actually used. Although the format of each Pimsleur product is pretty much the same, I thought at least I could highlight some of the differences that come up with some languages. And, of course, I could explain with some examples why I don't like their shorter products but do like the Comprehensive courses. I'll be adding others for Spanish Comprehensive, Japanese Instant Conversation, French Comprehensive and Italian Comprehensive. Other examples of shorter courses will probably follow.