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The lessons are mostly listening and speaking so it is ideal if you have a long commute to work. Pimsleur German I teaches basic words and phrases that will help you with basic social encounters if you travel to Germany. This product contains an effective and easy set of CDs containing 30 lessons that take 30 minutes each to complete. Pimsleur German I would also be helpful to students taking an introductory German language course. Pimsleur will teach you to speak basic phrases without a foreign accent.
Don't expect to know how to spell the words you're pronouncing--the goal of this course seems to be centered on speaking with as little accent as possible, so they avoid letting you see the German words. This helps to build confidence, too, that you're actually learning something and can say something in German.Cons: It's a little weak on grammar rules.
There's a small reading practice booklet that is used starting at Unit 10, but the reading practice can all be done at the end. I'm on Unit 22 (there's 30 Units), and I feel like I've gotten a lot more confident in speaking German.Pros: It's mostly audio, so you don't need a bunch of books bogging you down.
The program will get you to interact in conversations (which are sometimes at the end of the lesson), which help you to use what you're learning. (It's on the Unit CDs and on a CD of its own, as well).
The German speakers normally pronounce everything clearly, and sometimes extra slow, so you can hear all the sounds. For example, it has yet to explain when to say "keine" or keinen"; although, it does make the distinction between the words, it just doesn't say in what circumstances to use them.
That way, you won't start pronouncing words using English sounds; hence, you'll have less American accent.
DO NOT.I REAPEAT>>>DO NOT BUY ANYTHIMG FROM THIS COMPANY. THEY ARE SCAM ARTISTS>>>>>They Will suck money from your account once they get your account number.RUN FAR.RUN FAST.RUN HARD.CRAWL or whatever you have to do to get away from these crooks. I ordered the smallest CD set in RUSSIAN and without asking they sent me the more expensive set.i wasn't able to buy my kids shoes and un derwear for school because of this company ripping me off.i have to get offline at the library now.Joel E Hope
this is a great program. So, I asked my German husband (he attended school in Germany from Kindergarten to when he got his Master's Degree at a University, so he should know German) and we listened to the way the male speaker was speaking and he said, yes, the man has an accent. And I've met Germans who did pronounce Ich as Ishh. I was able to keep up--kein problem :)So, Pimsleur works. ****Latest and final UPDATE***I just came back from Germany--I took one of those immersion classes and let me tell you--Pimsleur really helped me.Now, I've only been studying German for about 3 months (I've only finished Level 1 of Pimsleur, Level 1 of Rosetta Stone, all of Learn in Your Car and Rush Hour Berlitz) before my immersion class in Germany and when they tested me, I qualified a lot higher than beginner. I'm giving this only 4 stars though because of the price, and also, without the booklet, I had to take notes and translate words online so to help me with their spelling. simultaneously and so when in Pimsleur, the speaker started teaching how to prounounce Ich as Ish, it sort of raised a red flag. I have also been learning from Berlitz, Rosetta Stone etc.
So, I'm wondering, should I even continue with these lessons, since I may end up sounding like a German with a speech impediment after.First ReviewWithout a booklet I could look at and read to find out how the words they're saying are spelled, I did not think this would help me much. I have heard the newer version with different speakers, so my first review may not be applicable to you*This is my first updated review. The students in my classes were, 1, someone who's taken German in a university for 4 years, plus he had already taken an immersion class for a month in Germany a few years ago, and my 2nd classmate has lived in Germany for 4 years, could already speak German and was only working on refining his grammatical skills. or some kind of a lisp.My question is, for this price, why didn't Pimsleur have actual Germans (who don't have a speech impediment or what have you) teaching German.The bad pronounciation taught wasn't only on Ich, I've also heard it on a few other words (like 'sprechen' he says spreshen). It helped me feel comfortable in speaking the language.UPDATE to my first Update:*The version of what I have may be different from this one. The first lesson started out great (you can read my early review below), the following lessons aren't so, they're more repetitions and more repetitions, which can be good BUT--the male speaker teaching isn't pronouncing all the words properly. To my surprise, after listening once to the 1st lesson, unit 1, I could understand the real life conversation they have and I could speak several sentences. Here are some products you may also like to try: Berlitz Rush Hour German (German Edition), Learn in Your Car German Complete (German Edition) and Rosetta Stone Version 3: German Level 1, 2 & 3 Set with Audio Companion Danke.
Those were signatures to me of a thorough grasp of the language that could only be acquired after years immersed into the language surrounded by native speakers. "studied hard"). Noticing that I was German, she spoke to me in German with a slight (authentic) regional accent, and totally baffled me with her prefect use of common colloquial short forms and meaningless fill-words. I met a young lady (American) working at a tourist information in Colorado. You want to speak German the way Germans do in everyday conversation. So it was far from being perfect but a great way to collect brownie points for effort and get support from locals who didn't speak either German or English.I think Pimsleur is a great way to get started and reach the brownie point level. However, I noticed that she would only touch on subjects and then somewhat abruptly change to talk about something else; she even asked about my children out of the blue.It wasn't until years later that I learned about Pimsleur and realized that she may have bought three levels of Pimsleur German, and advanced daily from one lesson to the next (i.e. I gladly accepted her limited vocabulary (after all pretty good for one month) and that conversation was only possible while she was in charge of the topic.
In fact, my experience traveling in Russia resembled my experience at that tourist information. She told me she'd been studying German for only one month while living with friends in Germany and "studying hard". This may be a good way to start. It came to me while I was going through three levels of Pimsleur Russian and noticed similar features: unconditional confidence in saying what I had learned, native accent, overall small vocabulary covering a somewhat wide range of topics (including children), and a total of 30 lessons (that should be covered no faster than one lesson per day as per Pimsleur recommendation). So I thought. I thought she was a genius, one of those one-in-a-million who languages come to naturally. I got complimented for my perfect use of the language, including my accent, while at the same time had to explain why my vocabulary was so limited. With the confidence to speak, knowing even a little bit of a language makes a huge difference during traveling.
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