This article was written by a friend of mine here in the Lake Chapala area of Mexico where I live. Alison told me that she liked Pimsleur Spanish, so I asked her to do a guest blog post. She’s a professional writer so I got a good one! See also my Pimsleur Spanish review on my website. – Rosana
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Two years ago my partner and I made the brave, crazy decision to move to Mexico. We’d vacationed here several times and when friends of ours moved to Lake Chapala and bought a home, we decided we’d do it too. Up until that point, whenever we visited Mexico, I would go to the public library, get out a “teach-yourself-Spanish” cassette and try to learn a few key phrases. I knew how to say, “where is…?” and a few other basics, but not much more. But now I was determined that I would get serious about studying Spanish. We made the decision to move in February with a goal of moving by June, so that didn’t give me very long.
The first thing I did was borrow whatever audio-visual programs the library had in Spanish. I quickly discovered that some of these were hopeless – one was a cassette that just rattled off long lists of words, hardly something you could remember or use. One was a computer program and I found it very helpful for recognizing words and phrases but it was a very passive form of learning. I could translate the phrases into English, but couldn’t form them myself in Spanish.
Then my friend sent me the 3 MP3 discs with approximately 60 lessons from Pimsleur. Pimsleur is a Spanish conversation system that has you repeat words and phrases over and over again. The lessons are approximately half-an-hour long, which according to their philosophy is about as much as anyone can take in. Every lesson includes a recap of the previous lesson. I believe there is a written book that goes with the course, but I didn’t have it, and I didn’t feel that I lost anything by not having it.
I found this course ideal for learning in the car on the way to and from work. I would pop the CD into my CD player and then just follow the instructions, repeating phrases over and over again. I think if I’d have tried this at home, I might have become distracted, but doing it while driving was perfect. I listened to the same lessons many times so that I knew some of these phrases off by heart and I found that my brain would connect them with a location. As I drove past the hospital, my brain would repeat, “yo me quedo, pero ellos no se quedaron.”
I worked my way through approximately 25 lessons before we got to Mexico. Was this enough to get by on? Not always. When we crossed the border and went to our first taco stand to order lunch, I couldn’t understand a word being said to me. (Who knew that in Mexico, they don’t ask what you want to drink – beber, they ask you what you want to have – tomar?) But in general, people commented on how good my Spanish was, and also on my accent, (which sometimes made them think my Spanish was better than it was!) I joined a Spanish class, but found that it was hard to learn with other people, who all had different learning styles and different speeds of learning. (I’m a quick learner with little patience for those who aren’t!) So I went back to the CDs and worked my way through the remaining 35 lessons, listening to them on my computer while I wrote down words and phrases I particularly wanted to remember.
I believe Pimsleur provided me with an excellent foundation for my Spanish. My only gripe with them is that the lessons stop too soon. If only they’d made an advanced series which included the more complicated tenses, I truly believe I could have used them to become completely bilingual. As it is they were a great first step on my Spanish journey.
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See my Pimsleur review for more information, and here is one from Amazon:
This is a good one to try out Pimsleur Spanish
