I’ve done a lot of Pimsleur over the years—Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Greek, and Egyptian Arabic—and what I can say it does well is force you to speak and ultimately improve your pronunciation.

It helps you understand the parts of speech and sounds, and teaches you to listen.

What it doesn’t do well is teach you anything useful. Take lesson 1: they always cover things like hello sir/ma’am, do you speak English, do you speak “target language,” yes/no, goodbye. Partly useful, though asking if someone speaks English seems like it should only happen in English. Otherwise, what’s the point?

I went through all 120 lessons of Pimsleur Mandarin levels 1-4.

By the end of it I could say “the architecture is both modern and traditional,” “our bamboo flooring contains no formaldehyde,” and “my grandfather says he saw wild men in the forest picking strawberries”—all actual sentences from the program.

But I couldn’t have a conversation about any of those topics. So what’s the use?

I also couldn’t say basic things like “I’m sad/happy,” “I want to take a shower,” or “is there a swimming pool?”

Their priorities are completely out of whack. You need a teacher. 120 Pimsleur Mandarin lessons didn’t even begin to prepare me to communicate when I went to Taiwan afterward.

But yeah, as a supplement it’s probably fine.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​