kelvin921019 wrote:My experience with Pimsleur is that it only teaches you a very limited amount of vocabularies and perhaps 5 levels would have cover most grammar points up to upper beginner / lower intermediate. Unfortunately I don't believe Pimsleur can bring you that far.
Agreed. Except I do not believe it goes into intermediate territory at all. I completed all five levels of Pimsleur and what you say kelvin92109 is spot on. That is, it's a very limited amount of vocabulary.
kelvin921019 wrote:Using language transfer and then / or / or together with Assimil would be a better choice for getting to lower intermediate. Then you should follow up with speaking exercises. Completing passive phase of Assimil only takes you 113 days but completing Pimsleur will take you 150 days. The content of Assimil is much denser than Pimsleur imo.
Yes, Assimil is much denser than Pimsleur.
Dom213 wrote: If I get through all 5 levels of Pimsleur French, how far will that get me? Will I have a basic understanding of the language? I want to get to an intermediate level of speaking
Pimsleur is an very good place to start as the slow and clearly enunciated speech is excellent for imitating and shadowing as a beginner. I don't recommend skipping Pimsleur, you'll just need more than Pimsleur if you want to reach an intermediate level of speaking. Assimil is a good recommendation, but still best to start with Pimsleur in my opinion.
If you want to develop speaking ability, I advise you to speak out loud by constantly imitating as close as possible all the content found within your language learning programmes of choice (all the phrases for repetition, dialogues etc). Later if you can be sure your pronunciation is where you want it to be, reading aloud is very good too. So, mimic all of the Pimsleur audio, shadow/repeat (mimic) all of the audio in Assimil, for example.
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There has often been debate around the forum as to how far an Assimil course will take you once completed. If we hypothesize that you're aiming for B1 in speaking, which I feel is what you're indicating, by suggesting 'intermediate' (if not, then a clearer definition of 'intermediate' would be helpful), then why are we even suggesting Pimsleur will possibly take Dom213 to the cusp of the intermediate level? As kelvin921019 correctly points out, Pimsleur's vocabulary is very limited, so how can it take one to intermediate/B1, especially since Assimil which is much denser some argue certainly won't get you to B2, but B1 perhaps.
In short, no Pimsleur (all 5 levels) is absolutely not enough to get you to the intermediate level (even only just at that level) of speaking.
Still, don't be put off. Get stuck into Pimsleur, move onto Assimil or another course that interests you but will take you further. If you chip away at it daily, before you know your French will be much better than it is now!