[rawoke083600]

I went down this road with their Japanese.. in summary, their focussing on "words" vs "phrasing/talking" from day one like Pimsleur was, wat killed it for me.

On that note Pimsleur was/is EXCELLENT for me: 1. Focusing on phrases vs words 2. Talking from Day 1 3. Lesson oriented.

[GoatOfAplomb]

Pimsleur is the best thing I've found for my first ~30 hours of learning a language (Courses 1 and 2, basically). It gets to the (IMO) most important words/phrases/interactions first, and the spaced repetition works well for me. It almost feels like magic is happening in my brain. In find going past 1 and 2 is still worth my time, but I usually start to sense diminishing returns, and at that point I start to look around for other options to supplement it.

Pimsleur's implicit way of teaching grammar works well for me for the most basic stuff, but as it gets into more nuanced grammar, it gets a bit less helpful for me. It also feels less magical to me once it gets past the first couple hundred words.