Dr. Robert Blair Ingles

What customers say about Pimsleur INGLES audios:

Quick & Simple
Great Product, The lessons a seemed really easy to learn, because of the way they were layed out. -- Albert D. Cardona

 Excellent crash course
First a word of caution: because the Pimsleur method is 100% audio, you won't learn any spelling of words. If your goal is to learn to WRITE Spanish, this program won't be very much help to you on its own. Similarly, you won't learn (or have to memorize) any rules of grammar or verb conjugation tables. With the Pimsleur method, you learn simply by listening and speaking. You don't really learn WHY you say things this way in this case and that way in that case. You will learn the grammar more by osmosis than by memorizing rules. Memorizing rules really hampers your fluency because you're constantly thinking about the rule, how it applies to the sentence or phrase at hand, and performing a translation in your head. When you're listening to someone talking at a normal rate, you'll never be able to keep up and you'll need to ask the person to talk slowly and one sentence at a time.
One of the main points of the Pimsleur method is that this step in the learning process (memorizing rules) is unnecessary. It is not how you learned your native language and, when you become orally fluent in any language, you no longer think about these rules you may or may not have learned along the way.
Obviously, it is a great choice for travelers and commuters who want to put that wasted time in traffic or sitting in your hotel to good use. Listening to the audio in the car (especially in heavy stop & go traffic) is not quite the best environment because you should be giving your full attention to the recordings, but it still works even in that situation and this is how I used it. However, I did find myself rewinding to parts I missed because I was concentrating on not getting in an accident and I occasionally missed my highway exits while I was engrossed in the tapes.
The Travelers Edition is a great crash course to take before going on a trip to a Spanish-speaking country, but you should ideally be visiting a major city where there is at least SOME English spoken, if you only buy the first few 30 minutes lessons. Don't expect to go waltzing through small towns where no one speaks a lick of English. If you complete all three levels, however, you should be able to accomplish that goal and be virtually fluent (orally) and free to travel to remote villages and get around rather well. From that point, you'll mainly want to work on building up your vocabulary as much as possible and, if it's important to you, study the written side of the language (spelling, etc.) that you don't really learn from the Pimsleur method.  -- James Tetazoo, Ohio, USA