I leave tomorrow, so I thought I'd report on the CDs I've been listening to. I bought the beginner Pimsleur 5-CD set for about $15 (after checking it out from the library), but I found out my dad bought the 5 CD set from Italian with Michel Thomas. So I got to try out both. Both are listen only--no book.
The Pimsleur CD works really well--slow addition of new words and lots of repetition, saying things with the new words and then going back to repeat older things. There are good pauses so you can think of how to say the sentences before they give you the answer. Good value.
But I would probably recommend the Michel Thomas CDs. I had not heard of this supposedly famous language expert. He has much more personality than the guy on the Pimsleur CDs, and it really seems like a small classroom. The pace is much faster--He covers in the first 2 CDs what is almost everything on the 5 Pimsleur CDs.
The downside is he does go fast, so plan on repeating the disks a couple of times. And there is no pauses for you to think about how to say something--that would help a lot. I mean who has a pause button on their car CD player?
But the other "students" learning with you on the CD make a mistake occasionally, so you can learn from their mistakes. And the teacher stops sometimes to explain something about Italian, or to spell a word. That spelling really helped me. Once I knew that "I want" was "voglio", I could pronouce it much better. With the pimsleur CDs, it took me a while to get the occasional rule, where Michel explained the rule quickly and I could move on.
Neither disk starts with the traditional "Hello", "How are you" and "My name is"... Which was nice. The basics they cover are good basics that seem to be useful. The Thomas CDs even cover future tense in the last bit, which seems like a more advanced topic, but it turns out is pretty easy in Italian. Niether one though is geared to just travel, so you don't get specific instruction on hotel or resturant or other travel oriented places. Michel Thomas only covers numbers when he covers how to say time, and then only covers one o'clock to five o'clock, then eight and nine. I have no idea why he skipped six, seven, and ten.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kim,
Posts: 51 | Location: Oakland, CA | Registered: 06 February 2007
Thanks for the report, Bryan; I have also used both sets and would agree with most of your conclusions. One thing I like about MT is that he gives you some shortcut ways of thinking about how to do things.
For example, he tells you right up front about putting the pronoun after the infinitive, as in "Voglio andarci." [I want to go there.] Pimsleur doesn't get to that construction until the advanced lessons, only using for example "Ci voglio andare." Maybe they are trying to get you used to putting the object before the verb, but the first way is a lot easier for English speakers when constructing sentences. He also gets you thinking about lots of ways to construct sentences with words you know, instead of getting heavily into grammar.
That said, I do still like the Pimsleur series for getting a deeper grasp of the language, and for the way they make you think. I have series 1, 2, and 3, have gone through 2 and 3 several times, and still find it useful to repeat them before going to Italy.
So I think Michel Thomas is really good for getting you up and running quickly in a language, but I like Pimsleur once you get a bit more advanced. We've used both series for both Italian and French.
We found the Michel Thomas CDs very useful when we went to live in Italy, as he does introduce very commonly used constructions very quickly. One small drawback for families is that he doesn't use the tu form which would be very helpful in practising conversations with children.
Thank you so much for this thread!! I am glad I looked here before purchasing RS. I think believe that will be something that I may get later. But then again, I might not need to if these others work well.
Thanks again!!!
"Nessun uomo è mai divenuto saggio per fortuna." ~Lucius Annaeus Seneca~ ~~Xirian~~
Posts: 8 | Location: Iowa | Registered: 04 July 2005
I,too, had meant to update with my progress/opinion of "Tell Me More" Italian.Considering I had had 4 X 8 weeks courses at our local college I am still at level 2 on a 10 level "cirriculum" with this softwear. It seems to have extremely sensitive voice recognition, lots of repitition and recycling of vocab and there are many exercizes that require writing exactly what's been dictated and that is really giving me a more lasting understanding rather than just blurting out a phrase you've been asked to repeat. Just before leaving on my recent trip tp Italy, I went back to just constantly listening to dialogue/learn in your car CD's (of which I have many ) in order to go back to some more familiar stuff I would more likely use. But I feel the Tell Me More is something I will stick to learning with throughout the year with little or no opportunity to practice dialogue in my everyday life as it reminds more of my experience of learning French in HS.
Posts: 462 | Location: York, Pennsylvania | Registered: 03 March 2005
) in order to go back to some more familiar stuff I would more likely use. But I feel the Tell Me More is something I will stick to learning with throughout the year with little or no opportunity to practice dialogue in my everyday life as it reminds more of my experience of learning French in HS.
