Pimsleur was developed by Dr. Paul Pimsleur. He advocated for the “organic learning” form of language acquisition. This is how children learn. Kids are not taught formal language structure, but instead learn by hearing and repeating certain phrases and eventually learning how languages operated.
**Format, how it works.**
Each lesson is 30 minutes long. Each lesson starts off with a conversation between two natives speakers in your target language. The instructor then breaks down each sentence of the conversation part by part, then word by word. Each word is emphasized so you pronounce it correctly. They then will give you a prompt, then go silent. The instructor will then respond with the correct answer. At the end of the lesson, they will repeat the conversation. If you are able to answer the prompt 70% of the time, you can go on to the next lesson. It seems like you don’t completely understand everything, but enough phrases are repeated that you end up recognizing some of the material from pass lessons.
It feels very hard initially. The first 8 lessons or so are quite difficult, as your brain is really trying to remember and repeat these phrases, and you might get frustrated. At some point around lesson 8-10, it really starts to click. I don’t know how to explain it.
**My experience**
I am a native English speaker who is took French in high school and college, but could not really speak. I went to France a couple of times and was overwhelmed. I began using Pimsleur French before my last trip. I finished two and a half levels before my trip. I found that I really didn’t need much more. By the time you get that far, you can speak well enough to get around. If you finish level 3 and 4, you will be pretty fluent.
The written course is fairly weak, it is okay for learning how to generally read stuff, but the emphasis of the course is speaking. you will be strong in grammar, but you will not have a lot of written vocabulary. I think if you read a newspaper in combination with the oral lessons, you will be fine. Languages in Latin script are easier to learn. I found the written Japanese to be not great.
I have been collecting these courses for years. I have almost everything they have ever made. **DM me if you are looking for Pimsleur Japanese**
5 level courses (150 lessons)
Spanish (Latin American), German, French, Chinese (Mandarin), Brazilian Portuguese, Italian
4 level courses (120 lessons)
Japanese, Arabic (Modern Standard),
3 level courses (90 lessons)
Russian, English (Spanish), Eastern Arabic, Hebrew
2 level courses (60 lessons)
Dari, Korean, Greek, Pashto (Afghani), Albanian, Arabic (Egyptian),
1 (30 lessons)
Chinese Cantonese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Farsi, Finnish, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Norwegian, Punjabi, Polish, Portuguese (Continental), Spanish (Castilian), Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Urdu, Vietnamese
Compact (10 lessons). These are really only good for getting around as a tourist.
Albanian, Armenian (Eastern), Armenian (Western), Creole (Haitian), Croatian, Haitian Creole, Irish (Gaelic), Lithuanian, Ojbiwe, Romanian, Twi, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese
Learning English. These are Pimsleur courses to Learn English, with the native language listed
Italian (4 levels), Spanish (3 levels), Russian (3 levels), Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Cantonese, Farsi, French, German, Haitian Creole, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Vietnamese