Pimsleur Essential Russian is divided into 3 levels with each made up of 30 lessons lasting approximately 30 minutes each. By the completion of the course a learner is taken from no knowledge to a working vocabularly of around 200 words. Although the amount of vocabularly is small, these words are reinforced hundreds of times throughout the course so the learner will know these words very well indeed. Pimsleur probably think that it's far more rewarding that a learner should know a few core words well with perfect recall than a larger number of words poorly. And they are right - soon the learner will be recalling these words virtually instantly and can understand them without having to translate them. This is due to the course's unique learning method developed by Dr. Pimsleur. Basically, it's built upon the way we learn words as a child, by constantly hearing it being spoken and buiding up simple sentences one word at a time until the word becomes natural.
The course's content stems around traveller's vocabularly and covers areas like ordering food, feeling ill, future plans, what you did yesterday, and other basic areas. It also makes the basic verbs of motion "to go" very easy to understand and apply and this is often a very confusing and difficult area for the beginner. There have been criticisms of the course that the vocabularly of the course is not useful. However, this is simply not true. The criticisms have come from sentences such like "I'm going to St Petersburg on Saturday". The key to the the success or failure of the course for the learner is that the learner must try and make up their own sentences using the vocabularly and the course demonstrates how this can be done. For example, the learner may take the "I'm going to.." and "Saturday" parts of the phrase and mix it up with other phrases such as "be late returning from work" and make their own combined sentences like "I'm going to be late returning from work on Saturday. I'll phone you when I arrive home." Although this example doesn't exist on the course, it's made up from all words and shorter phrases that exist in the course. The key is to be imaginative and start to make your own sentences up. This will build your confidence up. For example, from having no knowledge, after using this course to it's completion, I was able to have 10 minute conversations with native Russians on the phone and talk about my plans, what the weather was like, what they were doing etc and be understood and understand them (albeit slowly). Thats a very good achievement for most learners!
So what's bad about the course? I do have some gripes with the course. Firstly, the lack of printed materials. This is a complaint of most people who use the course. Although it's supposed to be an audio-only course, it would be nice to have vocab lists or transcripts so that you can check the words. Sometimes it's really hard to understand or hear the speakers and annoyingly they often repeat simple words hundreds of times, but a complex one only once. If you miss the word or cant quite make it out then you'll learn it wrong. Luckily I have a native Russian speaker who I could check the word with to put me back on the road again. The other major critcism I have is that the course is too short. The first level goes at a really slow pace and you may find yourself thinking "get on with it!" a few times when you've repeated a simple word for the hundredth time. However, fortunately the course picks up pace from the end of Level 1 and Level 3 moves quite quickly. I had to repeat Level 2 lessons a couple of times, and Level 3 about four times before I was confident that I should move on. It would also be nice if their were Level 4, 5 and so on. About 50 levels would be nice :-) When you get to Level 3 you feel a little "empty" at the end and wishing there was more to take you further. Another major gripe is the cost - $274 per level is far too much for each level and will put off most learners.
In summary, an excellent course for the beginner, but too expensive and not enough Levels.
Our Rating:
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4 out of 5]