Simon & Schuster's Pimsleur Spanish IV

i have bought levels 1-5, this sustem works well for me because i can listen and repeat while i drive to work. however, in level 4 the female voice was changed and another voice was used. that was not helpful because i was already use to the previous voice. the new voice speaks way to fast and doesnt speak clearly. i find myself having to rewind some parts over and over and over to eventually figure out what she is saying. the male voice has stayed the same and he speaks really clearly and slow enough to understand. all in all the course is a good introduction to the language but more practice is required

These Pimsleur courses are great! ..in any language, I think. I want to actually be fluent in Spanish and I have never taken a high school or college course. I have a couple of books and I took a couple of "conversation" or "intro" night courses at my local high school. I doubted the value of CDs.I taught Vietnamese at Berlitz years ago and when my family and I were getting ready to vacation in Vietnam I wanted to hone my pronunciation skills. I bought the Pimsleur Comprehensive IV, and although I learned no new vocabulary or sentence structure etc., it did refresh my pronunciation big-time! I was very impressed with that part, especially since Vietnamese, more than many languages, relies on intonation. Our trip was great!Because of that I thought I'd try the Spanish. I bought the Comprehensive I, II, III, and IV. I bought them one-at-a-time and I love them. I am able to get by in any situation in Spanish but there is still plenty of work to do. Therefore, I want a Comprehensive V, but they haven't yet made one. There are not many opportunities to speak to Latinos where I live so I must wait until the annual vacation trip. Come on Pimsleur; make it!Jack

This set was a very nice surprise! It was packaged beautifully, and arrived sooner than expected. Given the price - Yes, a very nice surprise! I started re-learning my high school Spanish at age 60, making use of a long commute. The Pimsleur method has been wonderful - very effective. Level 4 has not disappointed. I'm only on lesson 8, but so far all is good. I wouldn't expect anything less from Pimsleur, and I would encourage anyone wanting to learn a foreign language to try this series.

The lessons are useful, even if not quite as good as Spanish I, II, III or V. I found it on sale, so it was definitely worth getting at a sale price.[Regarding Pimsleur programs in general: ] Why Pimsleur focuses on professional, business travelers instead of tourists is beyond me. This is true of all of their language programs.One thing I noticed about Spanish IV and V that was not on my older editions of I,II and III is a trailer at the end of each lesson that is REALLY annoying. It is the English speaking moderator who rambles on for 36 seconds about how important it is to do the lessons every day, etc., etc., plus a long-winded description of the copyright information for Simon and Schuster. I found it really irritating, so I removed these trailers from all of them.This is not hard to do. There are many free audio editors out there for both Windows and Linux. If you happened to have ripped the programs to MP3 from the CDs, then the easy way to do this for Windows is to download MP3DirectCut. It is a free program that is simple to use. Make copies of the entire directory of your MP3 files, just in case you don't like the results. Then run MP3DirectCut and select 'File', 'Batch Processing'. Then click the three dots in the upper right hand corner [...] and go to the directory of MP3 files. Below, select 'Cut' and put 0 / 36 in the boxes that become activated for seconds to cut from the start / end.Then click 'Overwrite Originals' below, since you made a copy. Then 'Start' and it will ask again if you are sure you want to overwrite originals. Say yes, and it will tear through the entire directory very, very quickly, cutting the junk off the end of the Spanish IV or V mp3s.If you don't have the files in MP3, use another audio editor that handles WAV files, or whatever format you have, and do something similar.

I also have Spanish I, II, and III. The Pimsleur courses are excellent for pronunciation and establishing a basicplatform to work from. I use them in conjunction with the book 501 Spanish Verbs and a Larousse Spanish- Englishpocket dictionary. In the late summer, early Fall of 2012, I took a two month road trip by rental car thru northern Spain.Though these courses are published as learning to speak Latin American Spanish, I had no trouble being understoodin Spain. Spanish IV, as an extension of I,II, and III introduces more of the past tenses, which will help in my upcpomingadventure in central Spain in 2013. You won't be fluent in the language after listening to these programs. But they do providea good basis to build on. And with further study and use of the language, one could become fluent. It was that way for me in French.