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There is no discussion of how to swap in new words, and there are major gaps in useful information. If you diligently follow the whole set of lessons, at the end you will have a pretty good command of about a dozen phrases.But you do not get the tools to move beyond those phrases. Further, some of the lessons are actively not useful - the amount of time spent practicing the sentence "I speak and understand Croatian very well" seems ill spent, whereas sentences like "where is the bathroom" and "My name is ____" are conspicuously absent.Overall, the course TEACHES the material extremely well; the SELECTION of the material, however, is somewhat disappointing. This course presents information slowly and in a repetitive fashion - bad for entertainment but absolutely fantastic for learning. Every lesson revisits all of the previous material and encourages you to use it in mix-and match situations to give you a great functional overview.
See ISNB-10: 0-7435-6204-6.All three levels start with the same lesson 1, so if you buy a Basic or Conversational Croatian course, and then a higher one, the lessons overlap.Amazon is accepting pre-release orders for these courses and is offering a 5% discount off their already discounted price. See ISBN-10: 0-7435-6205-4.3) Comprehensive Croatian which covers lessons 1-30 on 16 CDs. This level lists for $345.00. Effective October 2008, there will be three levels of the Pimsleur Croatian Language Program available.1) Basic Croatian which covers lessons 1-10 on 5 CDs. See ISBN-10: 0-7435-6206-2.2) Conversational Croatian which covers lessons 1-16 on 8 CDs. This level lists for $24.95. This level lists for $49.95.
The cost of providing this information would be minimal, but Pimsleur chooses not to provide it. We can learn the word and it's meaning or reinforce the word and meaning after hearing it with a visual follow up. And the word pronunciations were taught from the last syllable working forward rather than the other way around, which seemed a little odd. I am forced to look the words up in a Croatian-English Dictionary and write them down along with their meanings, in addition to listening to the tapes. My main criticism is that the words introduced in the lesson were not included in the booklet. I was disappointed by this product.
The lesson itself wasn't bad, although the sentences being created contained words that seemed to be pronounced differently when spoken "separately" versus being spoken in a sentence. Then, we can once again hear the word to get it's pronunciation attributes correct. It consists of language lesson CDs plus a small manual with some of the lessons including written croatian. Some of us are visual learners and like to "see" the words phonetically spelled, along with a definition. Ugh. I had trouble getting past Lesson 1.
(I speak four languages, have never learned in this fashion - maybe it's some kind of new technique).
Then, it will take you back to previous lessons to refresh your memory, while incorporating them into new lessons (essentially, none of the older lessons that are taught will be forgotten). The narrator occasionally includes a fact about sentence structure that is helpful.Despite the fact that this really should have included a guide so that we could learn the written part, it is definitely a great place to begin learning this very difficult language. I've just begun using this guide to learn Croatian. The instructors' pronunciation is very clear and easy to imitate, as they sound out the syllables of each word. I also hope the company will release additional volumes, since it is extremely hard to find Croatian language lessons out there. My family speaks a heavy Istrian dialect and the "pure" language sounds almost nothing like it, so I am starting from scratch. The lessons start off at a very basic level, and gradually build up by adding a new word or phrase.
I am looking forward to the next lesson. I am just getting started and already see how well this system works.
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