Another vote for Pimsleur, at least for quickly acquiring a basic set of phrases and words for travel purposes. I've used 5 different Pimsleur courses (Turkish,

Another vote for Pimsleur, at least for quickly acquiring a basic set of phrases and words for travel purposes. I've used 5 different Pimsleur courses (Turkish, Italian, Greek, Russian, and Dutch) in preparation for various international trips. I've found going through just the first 8 or 10 lessons is enough to get the necessary survival phrases firmly embedded in my memory. Pimseur also offers lessons intermediate and advanced courses that can take you to greater fluency, but I've never pursued any courses that far. If I really wanted to work toward fluency in a language, I'd probably start out with a different method. As others have pointed out, Pimsleur is oriented strictly to the spoken language, so if you need to be able to read the language, it would make sense to supplement it with separate written course materials, especially if the orthography of the target language is particularly different than your own (e.g., Greek and Mandarin). On a side note, I also find doing a 30-minute Pimsleur course to be a great mental exercise. Recalling the phraes and responding to the prompts, I literally feel like rarely-used parts of my brain are getting a workout.