I recently completed the Pimsleur Conversational Italian audio program. This article is a product review of Pimsleur Conversational Italian only, although I have also completed and reviewed the full comprehensive versions of other Pimsleur programs, including Arabic and Russian, so I have knowledge about the Pimsleur Method in general.
The full Pimsleur Comprehensive program consists of Parts I, II and III; each part contains 30 lessons; each lesson lasts 30 minutes. A Pimsleur Basic program consists of only the first 10 lessons from Pimsleur Comprehensive Part I. A Pimsleur Conversational program consists of only the first 16 lessons from Pimsleur Comprehensive Part I. The Pimsleur Basic and Conversational programs are meant to give the learner the basics for conversation in a language.
The Pimsleur Conversational Italian audio program was very easy and fun to use, but it was also very basic. The Pimsleur Conversational Italian program is meant to be started by someone who has zero prior knowledge of Italian. The first lessons start with the most basic of words and the Pimsleur Method goes into great detail on pronunciation. If you have a basic knowledge of Italian already, or you already know how to pronounce Italian words correctly, then you will learn nothing from the Pimsleur Conversational Italian audio program. As a beginning learner with some prior knowledge you would do better to skip to one of the Pimsleur Comprehensive programs, perhaps even straight to Parts II or III. This is, of course, entirely based on your knowledge level.
If you have literally no knowledge of Italian, then the Pimsleur Conversational Italian could work well for you. By listening to one Pimsleur lesson a day, you could complete this entire program in 16 days. According to the Pimsleur Method, listening to more than one lesson per day is more information than your brain can adequately process.
People love the Pimsleur Method program because it is fun and easy to use and requires no studying or note-taking. Pimsleur requires no effort for language learning other than just listening to one 30 minute lesson per day. You may have to listen to a Pimsleur single lesson twice in one day if you didn’t understand it fully the first time.
The advantage to this lack of studying or note-taking in the Pimsleur program is that it is very natural. Babies don’t study when learning their first language. The disadvantage to the Pimsleur program is that this is a very slow process and lacks quantity. If you are a serious student who can put time and effort into studying a language on your own, the Pimsleur Method will be ineffective for you.
The Pimsleur Method claims that by listening to the full 90 lessons in the Pimsleur Comprehensive program you will achieve fluency. This is not the case. Achieving true fluency in a language takes a lot of time and work and can’t be done using any one language learning program alone. No one program, short of living in a foreign country for an extended period of time, can give you language fluency by itself.
What Pimsleur Conversational Italian can give you is a fun and easy way to get the basics prior to traveling to Italy. First, Pimsleur Conversational Italian teaches you how to say hello and introduce yourself in Italian. Pimsleur Conversational Italian then teaches you how to ask for things at a restaurant. Pimsleur Conversational Italian covers basic verbs such as: to give, to know, to be, to say. It teaches how to conjugate those verbs into the first person. It teaches a few basic nouns and adjectives and then it’s over.
The conclusion of my product review of the Pimsleur Conversational Italian program is that it is fun and easy to use but lacks quantity and not recommended for those who already know the basics of Italian.
Pimsleur Conversational Italian is:
Recommended for: casual students with no prior knowledge of Italian
Not recommended for: serious students or those with a prior knowledge of Italian
For a more comprehensive review of the Pimsleur Method compared to other audio language learning programs, read my review entitled Four Audio Only Language Learning Programs Reviewed, located at http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1863391/four_audio_only_language_learning_programs.html?cat=16
