Pimsleur Foreign Language courses

Pimsleur is a very effective method that's been around for decades. It's simple on the surface, but loaded with research that make it work so well. I love to cook and was able to use this method while cooking, which is awesome. Kill two birds with one stone! You only need to find 30 minutes each day, which makes it easy to commit to. On the downside, some lessons are more interesting then others from a content standpoint. Not a biggy and you still learn some new structures even if the vocabulary is less relevant to your interests, but there is some rigidity built-in.

I used Pimsleur Brazilian Portuguese I to prepare for a mission trip to the city of Aracaju in Sergipe, Brazil. I purchased the 30-CD set and listened to them in the car for about 6 months prior to my trip. I finished 28 of the CDs. When I arrived in Brazil, our interpreters were BLOWN AWAY by my pronunciation. At one point, I asked about a word I didn't know: "O que quer dizer a palavra 'mensagem'?" (What does the word 'mensagem' mean?) The interpreter later told me he couldn't figure out why I didn't know that word (it means 'message'), since I clearly was a native Portuguese speaker! I had numerous people tell me they thought I was Brazilian, and when I would greet people, they would immediately start speaking to me in Portuguese, because I sounded like a native! I was able to understand about 40% of what people were saying, and was able to communicate about 75% of what I wanted to say without assistance. My travel companions would call me over if an interpreter was unavailable, to ask me to help in a conversation! When we left, the missionary's wife, who has lived in Brazil for 35 years, asked which program I had used, because she wanted to recommend it to others. I told her, "Pimsleur"!!!