Pimsleur | Language Learning

78 of 100 · reviews
4.7of 5 · store
27,768ratings on the App Store
500reviews read

An editorial reading of the saved reviews

An audio course that teaches speaking and listening comprehension through active recall from the very first lesson. Spaced repetition is built into the audio: the app asks you to reproduce a phrase at increasing intervals. Users with five languages under their belt call Pimsleur the best method for reaching conversational fluency. Grammar is not explained explicitly but absorbed through context.

Screenshots

What people use it for

Those who want to speak and understand spoken language, learn on the go, and are comfortable with an audio-only format without visual support.

What reviews praise

You can learn hands-free with no screen: lessons run 30 minutes and only require earphones.
Several users report having real conversations with native speakers after finishing the first level, a concrete result rather than just a feeling of progress.

What reviews complain about

No written component and no grammar explanations.
For learners who study through reading and systematic analysis the method works poorly.
Difficulty cannot be adjusted: the app starts from zero regardless of your existing knowledge.

What users experience

3 excerpts from the breakdown. These are individual cases, not a verdict on all users.

Pimsleur is a method that gets you speaking and understanding faster. Because it is spoken practice combined with, listening, repetition and small incremental challenges to try to say something you haven't specifically learned yet but build on what you have learned.

IVE been using this app now for about 4-5 months and lemme tell u sumnthing. I speak English and Montenegrin (Serbo-Croatian) natively and learned Greek and Persian through this app. I just wish they had Latin cause I learned a real good of Greek in my car on my commute.

Japanese learner here. the app is really good for shadowing. repeating phrases over and over and learning this way. with some tweaking, this could be an amazing app. I think the Pimsleur people are a little stuck in their own ideology.