a bit of Pimsleur Spanish III (3) criticism

Hoy estudiado leccion cinco de Pimsleur Spanish III.

Today I studied lesson five of Pimsleur Spanish 3.

Normally, I'm not very critical of the Pimsleur Spanish lessons. Taken as a whole, I think they're quite decent at imparting spoken Spanish skill to gringos like me.

But now that I've been through the first several lessons of the third set, I can point to some things I'd rather they did differently.

There is entirely too much repetition of content in the past several lessons. Pimsleur is legendary for beating certain things right into the ground, and this is something of a selling point when one considers the value of mastering a core subset of Spanish such that it rolls right off the tongue when needed.

But in the early lessons of Spanish 3, I think way too much emphasis is placed on ordering two plates of the specialty of the house. I am deadly serious about this and even found myself shouting "Enough, already!" at the CD player this morning.

Truth be told, if you have been faithfully working your way through Pimsleur Spanish this far, I suggest skipping the first half of lesson 5 in its entirety (not counting the listening comprehension bit at the beginning, because novice Spanish speakers probably can't get too much listening comprehension practice).

I'm also way sick of the words "engineer" and "engineering" beyond expression. For god's stake, stop it.

The second half of lesson 5 introduces some useful terms, but because so much time is wasted on pablum in the first half, I feel they had to rush through the good stuff.

I'm still really enthusiastic about the Pimsleur way of learning a spoken language. But when they hit a lull, they really commit to it. heh