Pimsleur Korean Level 1 Lessons 16-20 by Pimsleur
There is still a lot of "buying stuff", but it feels this is finally branching out into a little more useful Korean. It would be useful to just go through some general counting rather than have random numbers here and there.
Pimsleur Korean Level 1 Lessons 11-15 by Pimsleur
In the third installment, there is a lot of time spent ordering bottles of wine or cans of beer. These lessons are not particularly useful and are difficult to stick. The numbers are covered in various times, but just don't seem to stick either. Korean does have a couple numbering systems, making it even more confusing. This is a time where drilling or using audio and video together would be more useful.
Pimsleur Korean Level 1 Lessons 6-10 by Pimsleur
I was getting lost going through these ones. There was a lot of ordering beverages and greetings. It seems more bits would fade than stick. I'll try going through again.
Pimsleur Korean Level 1 by Pimsleur
Amazon doesn't have a link to the current full level one, so I linked to an old CD. This has 30 30 minute lessons. You are supposed to do one per day. You can check it out for 21 days at the library. This leads to a small math problem. The content seems ok, but I find it better to check out the individual 5 lessons chunks so that they can actually be finished.
Pimsleur Korean Level 1 Lessons 1-5 by Pimsleur
This Korean course was a nice length that can be completed in a library checkout. There are other Pimsleur courses that have 30 lessons. This is a problem if you are supposed to do one a day and can only check out for 21 days. It attempts to use a conversational style of learning. However, there is too much English. It becomes "duolingo phrases" with most of the effort being matching English phrases to Korean phrases. They recommend going to the next level once you can respond appropriately to 80% of the prompts. After repeating lessons a few times, I finally just decided to skip ahead. There is no magic here. Luckily it does build on phrase work in future lessons so things are gradually drilled in.
Pimsleur Russian Level 1 Lessons 1-30 by Pimsleur
This is available for a 21 day checkout via Libby. Audible has the similar lessons in 5 lesson chunks. You can also purchase a CD from Amazon with 16 lessons. It looks like Libby is the best deal. However, you are supposed to do a lesson a day, and 30 spans more than the 21 day checkout. I started the lessons after it was checked out for a while. I did about a week's worth of lessons, then the loan expired. When the renewed one came, I had lost interest. I really need to listen at 1x speed to grasp it, and it feels like things take much too long at 1x.
As for the course, it seemed reasonable. It starts out with the very practle. A lot of "do you speak Russian?" conversation starters. Each lessons reviews the previous lessons and then builds on it some. It is specifically meant to be audio only. I felt I was learning some. When I didn't focus well, I did not make much progress. It is hard to listen to something for 30 minutes in a way you can stay focussed and speak things out loud.
