Pimsleur Spanish: An Honest Review

Jim here with a quick note. Pimsleur is one of the most reputable language companies out there, and we wanted to provide you with an honest review of their program. Our goal with product reviews is not to sell you on a program, but to share our opinion on a variety of language resources so you can decide if they’re right for you. 

We will be creating a video review in the near future, but since I am an advanced Spanish speaker, we wanted to give you a review from the perspective of an intermediate learner. So we asked our team member Madison to review the course and share her honest feedback about the program. 

Take it away, Madison!

Welcome to yet another honest review by yours truly. I have to admit, I’m super excited to share my thoughts with you guys about Pimsleur because it’s very different from the other language resources that I’ve used in the past.

For those of you unfamiliar with The Pimsleur Method, it’s a learning system developed in the 1960s by Dr. Paul Pimsleur. It’s all about audio learning. The 30-minute lessons are perfect for beginner students or anyone who wants to work on their pronunciation as the emphasis is on listening and speaking. The website refers to the method as “graduated interval recall,” which is a part of the widely known spaced repetition approach for learning languages. 

Reviewing learned vocabulary at increasingly longer intervals is a method that is called “graduated interval recall.” For example, you learn the word “Gracias” in Spanish, which means “Thank you.” Then you keep on remembering it every few seconds and then minutes and after hours and keep on recalling it every day, which will help move the vocabulary into long-term memory.

Pimsleur offers over 50 languages, and I switched it up this time — instead of doing the Spanish course, I just finished up 30 days of the Brazilian Portuguese Premium Course. Before I started my Spanish journey in early 2019, I had spent almost 4 years studying Portuguese. But I was only listening to my friends talk every day, not learning the “proper” way as I’ve done with Spanish. I had lost a lot of that Portuguese knowledge (“use it or lose it” is real people!), so I decided to brush up on that with Pimsleur. 

You can access Pimsleur on your tablet, via the web app for your desktop, or you can download the Pimsleur app on your mobile phone. On the app, you can choose to stream the audio or download it for later if you’re worried about not having data for listening on the go. Most languages include five levels containing 30 audio lessons each. Each audio lesson is about 30 minutes long. 

There are pros and cons to using this platform, but I genuinely think this is a valuable resource for beginners and those looking to improve pronunciation or accent. If you are intermediate and above, this probably is not the resource for you.

For starters, I love how the narrator breaks down each sound in each word of the conversation. I can’t express how helpful this is! It dramatically reduces the chance of the “gringo” accent. 

You listen to each lesson like you would a podcast; there are no words to read. This allows you to focus on the basics and not get distracted by making sense of how words look. It’s all about the core foundation of listening and speaking!

First Lesson

So, thinking back to Day 1 of the course, I was already impressed after the first 30 minutes. I remember understanding the entire first conversation, so it’s not like I was starting as a complete beginner, but I did gain a lot of insight from that lesson in terms of how I was pronouncing certain sounds. 

I realized that I was pronouncing some of the R’s in Portuguese the wrong way! Crazy, right? You’d think that after 4 years of listening to people speak it every day, I’d be saying everything correctly, but some of those R’s were much more breathy and light compared to how I’d been saying them. But also, I had never sat down and done the groundwork for my accent either. It’s more important than you think — at least if you want to sound natural.

In my opinion, the “ão” sound in Portuguese is one of the hardest sounds for English speakers to learn and I wish they had gone over that in the first lesson, but they hit it in a later lesson. They didn’t want to scare off the students too early I guess!

In this Brazilian Portuguese course, there are 5 levels and 30 lessons in each level. Each lesson is 30 minutes and at the end of each one, the narrator reminds you that it’s most effective to do a lesson every day to maintain your progress.

What’s Included in Each Lesson

Each lesson isn’t JUST an audio lesson. There are a few other resources that Pimsleur includes. One is a cultural overview. On your phone, you simply swipe left to reveal one fact about Brazilian culture. 

Cultural context is very important to learning a language. It helps you develop a deeper understanding of why certain regions in the country pronounce things differently, how a country’s slang has developed the way it has and just provides a better grasp on how people in that country think.

Digital flashcards for all the new vocabulary are also available for each lesson. You can choose to go from English to Portuguese or vice versa with the cards.

The next option is called “Quick Match.” It’s basically a series of 10 multiple choice questions testing what you just learned. While this is helpful, it would be nice if after you clicked on your response, the word would be repeated out loud, similar to how phrases are repeated back to the listener on DuoLingo.

Moving on to the “Speak Easy” section, this is a small component of the lesson where you listen to a brief conversation and repeat each line as you hear it.

Next up is the “Speed Round.” It’s a mini-game. As the words appear on the screen, you have to match them to their English equivalent and you score points based on your reaction time.

Lastly, there is a reading session. Pimsleur focuses on reading individual words (20 of them per lesson) that have nothing to do with the actual audio lesson you just listened to. Instead, they might choose a specific sound that you worked with and give you similar words that branch off of those sounds.
For example, one series of words might be: chamo-chova-chamamos-falamos (this works on the “ch” [sounds like “sh”] and “amos” sounds). Or maybe: comigo-amigo-comida-fica (this works on the “go” [sounds like “goo”] and “i” sounds). This selection of 20 words allows students to draw comparisons between words without trying to teach word meanings because again, that just confuses things this early in the language-learning process.

Other Perks

I did fall in love pretty quickly with the audio lessons, but here are a few other bonuses that are included that I also really enjoyed.

I really enjoyed the fact that a registered user can share a premium course with up to 3 other users — basically a family account option for the same price as an individual option. You and your family or friends can learn together and I think that’s a pretty cool deal since most platforms charge individually. It saves each person’s progress too so you can all work at your own pace without getting confused.

There is a driving mode option so that you can listen while you drive, but I only recommend that if you are good at multitasking. Otherwise, you might not retain much. I did find it helpful to use the driving mode once in a while though on my particularly busy days when I wasn’t going to have any extra free time to study at home.

Although I did use Pimsleur exclusively on my phone for the last 30 days, you can also use it on a computer as well. On the app, you can download individual lessons and save them for later, if streaming them live won’t work for you. 

As with most apps these days, you can share your progress on social media too! I know that that keeps some people motivated.

There’s also an option to save certain vocabulary words from the flashcard section that you would like to work on in more depth. All these words that you save can be found in the “My Saved Vocab” section.

Also, a great incentive is the “Refer a friend, get $20” deal. Both you and your friend get rewarded for spreading the good word about Pimsleur. 

If you’re a sucker for smart home devices, invite Alexa to the language learning party! There’s an option to hook up Pimsleur to your Amazon Echo.

And lastly, the phone app reminds you from time to time with a pop-up message that you can shake your phone if you need help with anything. 

All of these perks are pretty small things if you think about it, but they can also make your language-learning experience a little easier. It’s the simple things after all, right?

How Pimsleur Compares

As a long-time lover of language platforms Lingoda, italki, and Baselang, I wasn’t sure if I’d be a fan of Pimsleur, but I do think it’s worth checking out. My top 3 resources are all pretty structured platforms, so I like that Pimsleur has picked one method that works well and that’s what they focus on.

With that being said, I don’t think that you could use Pimsleur by itself to learn any language at any level. It’s a great addition to a language journey and will help in the very beginning, more so than Duolingo I think, which is what I usually use in the very beginning stages of learning a new language. 

But 30-minute lessons, even if done every single day, are simply not enough. I think there has to be a visual learning component when studying a second (or third or fourth) language. The reading lessons are only available after lesson 11 of each level of the course, which I think is a little late in the process.

Bottom Line

Pimsleur is a solid resource. It’s best for beginners and those wanting to improve their accent/pronunciation. If you don’t fit into either of these categories, it might not be for you.

You have nothing to lose by trying out the 7-day free trial, so check it out and see if it meshes with your language needs.

After the trial, Pimsleur charges a monthly subscription of $19.95 USD. Their Spanish Premium Course offers five levels with 30 audio lessons in each level. This means there are about 15 hours of audio content in each level. Putting things into perspective, the amount you pay for the value you’re getting is very reasonable. How much is getting a solid foundation in your target language worth to you? Because Pimsleur can certainly get you there.

Here at Spanish and Go, we always love to hear people’s experiences with different platforms so check out Pimsleur and let us know about your experience and whether or not you found it .