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DO NOT>>>> I REPEAT DO NOT BUY ANYTHING FROM THESE PEOPLE BECAUSE THEY WILL TAKE MONEY FROM YOU>>>>>> Joel E Hope This company sent me a set of 16 CDs that I din;'t ask for and now they are trying to bill me for this set I didn't order.I did order a set of 4CDs for $9.95.and then they sent me a set of 16 CDs for $200.00+ I treid to send them back.NOW I don't have CDs or $$$$$$$ RUN HARD.RUN FAST. RUN FAR.
It is strictly by rote, they do not spell the words or show them on a screen which would be so helpful. Do not purchase this item, I was throughly disappointed and feel misled by all the positive reviews. A total waste of money. You simply sit and repeat back what the instructer is saying, it is not only ineffective but very, very boring. They can't possibly be real. It is impossible to learn a language via this method.
You're actually thinking in the language, even in the early lessons.I've always had this fantasy about learning a some French and then just waking up one morning, suddenly speaking and understanding all, as if by magic. It makes the work go faster and I feel like I'm accomplishing two things at once.Some people have complained about the lack of visuals with Pimsleur. I bought the "teaser" first 8 lessons of Pimsleur French. It forces you to think about the way you put words together to form a sentence.
I highly recommend it. I ended up buying the whole first course and then went on the buy the second and third.The lessons start with the most commonly spoken phrases and subjects, like greeting someone, asking for directions, telling time, and talking about everyday subjects. The other complaint I sometimes read about Pimsleur is that it's expensive. Over the years I've accumulated a drawer full of these.I first met this Pimsleur language courses on a business trip years ago when I needed something interesting to listen to an a 2 hour drive. That drawer full of discarded language tapes and CD's that I couldn't use probably added up over time to a lot more than a Pimsleur course.
I always thought I was a visual learner, but I found that I learn just fine with the audio. The French courses gave me the ability to converse with people when we went to France on everyday type things and even more importantly it gave me enough knowledge of the language to build on it. One lesson builds on the next and there is lots of repetition so this has worked very well for me. You aren't just parroting back phrases with mysterious words. These lessons have you participating in conversations right from the start. The words were completely clear, repeated several times by male and female voices, and there was never a question of what you were hearing or what it meant. Have you had the same history of learning a language in the past as I've had. I also listen on my iPod often when I'm doing some mindless task.
Unfortunately it doesn't work that way and you do have to apply yourself to learn, but for me, Pimsleur is the most painless way to learn a language. And I can find more time to listen than I can to sit down with a book. And one lesson builds on the previous, adding more phrases and using words from the last lessons combined with new words. You buy a set of CD's or tapes, listen to the first one or two and find that you can't quite hear the pronunciation of a simple word or phrase. There are a few words that they go over for pronunciation in a little booklet at the end of the lesson, but most of it is audio. It's tiny enough to keep on the side when you're reading a book or magazine, and has over 100,000 words. Unlike some other language courses, Pimsleur doesn't just teach you phrases, it teaches you what each of the words in the phrase mean and rearranges them in several different contexts. Amazon also carries magazine subscriptions to a couple French magazines and a newspaper which come out weekly.
I can't tell you the number of times I've sat in the driveway after returning home to finish a lesson.I try to get through one lesson every day or two. That word builds on other words and phrases and before long you find you don't understand what you thought it meant and the CD's or tapes end up thrown in a drawer never to see the light of day again. And amazon.fr is a whole new world in French. What has worked for me is to count the number of errors I make and go on to the next lesson when I make 10 or fewer errors in a lesson. I looked up a few French newspapers online and practiced reading those. Of course, I wanted to also read French in order to practice my language skills.
My subscription to Paris Match was interesting enough to keep me reading, sometimes a couple hours per day. The Pimsleur courses are fun to use and you actually learn something.
For me, I figure you get what you pay for. The lessons are a little under half an hour each, and even a trip to the store is at least 10 minutes each way, so I get through the better part of a lesson.
(And to my delight, after logging in there, my "1 click" magically works just like it does here). These lessons were different than any other language CD I had listened to in the past.
After several lessons I bought the Oxford French Mini dictionary that you can find on amazon. Some are more difficult and take several repetitions, some are easy and I can comprehend in a couple listens.
The voices are very clear, you never have a question about what was said. It doesn't feel like a chore.The way I went about learning French I, II and III is to take the CD's along whenever I get into the car.
Following your instructions for a Refund, the return of the item by Insured Parcel Post cost me an additional R 320.75 plus VAT of R 4.67. {I think that the system was purposely designed to make it impossible to do so.} I then sent several e-mails to you{your Contact Us details are useless and no responses to my e-mails only aggravated the whole issue.I then had to wait for the parcel to arrive and paid R 100.00 Customs Duty on the one item to be returned. I want this money back.Right now I am one very, very unhappy customer.Regards, Francois Snyman Hi,I suppose that the product is fine but the execution and treatment of the Order by Amazon.com left a hell of lot to be desired.The Order was duplicated and your System definitely does not allow one to amend or cancel part of, or the whole order. Try as I might, shunted from one page on your web site to another and back again, I could not amend or cancel the order.
Pimsleur is doing it for me. I admit to being a bit bored in French I, since I knew most of the vocabulary and concepts. I also find it possible to read some French blogs without resorting so often to the dictionary. There are a number of excellent positive reviews of Pimsleur's French on this site and I agree with what they have to say. I find that it's not that hard to plug in previously learned vocabulary to the structure I am learning. You can always repeat or take more time on a lesson, if you don't feel ready to move on. And I'm excited about speaking French when I go to France in a month.
This is not a rote method, it requires you to retrieve words from memory and put them together in different ways, not just parrot back preconstructed sentences. I find myself thinking and forming little sentences in French and that is very rewarding. I have worked on this sporadically over the last 3 months and am now upping my frequency to two lessons a day. The pace is good, giving you very simple building blocks to start, in all the general areas of gender, those essential linking words, different tenses, personal pronouns, numbers, days of the week, etc. Directions are given in French, and at first they are hard to understand, but by the time I got to French II I was understanding them much better.
My perspective is a little different, since I have been reading French haltingly since high school, have passed reading exams on the university level, have sung melodies from memory in French for 25 years, BUT I still had no confidence in forming French sentences. I stuck with it because I wanted to gain more confidence in pronunciation and in quickly using what I know, and now I am glad I did, because French II builds on that foundation and gets harder. After new words or concepts have been introduced, the lessons generally cycle back to something easy so you can feel more confident. The audiochip format is very convenient and easier than dealing with CDs. Then you build skills gradually.
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