Vietnamese [Audiobook] (Audio Cassette)

Buy this course if you are new to the Vietnamese language, and you are having a really difficult time with the phonetics.

As another reviewer pointed out, the amount of actual content on this course is small. However, the course does give the learner a comfort level with the difficult sounds of Vietnamese.

This is a good one to start with. I would then recommend purchasing Colloquial Vietnamese (Tuan Duc Vuong & John Moore) and Teach Yourself Vietnamese (Dana Healy).

So what do we get with this course? 5 cassettes with 10 lessons (1 on each side) featuring 5 hours of course material. There is a lot of repetition, which I guess is one of the strengths of the Pimsleur method, but on the other hand, it is also one of the biggest weaknesses: After 10 lessons you have almost learned nothing! The other strong point of the pimsleur method is the emphasis on pronounciation. Your vietnamese friends will probably understand you quite well.
So what can you say after 10 leasons?
------------
excuse me
may I ask you something?
Yes, no
I/you (don't) understand (English/Vietnamese)
I am American/Vietnamese
I (don't) know
How are you?
I am (not) fine
and, but, or, at, here, there, now, later, not yet, definitely not
ah (meaning: that's interesting)
when?
Where is .... street?
I want to eat (lunch)
I want to drink/shop/do what/something
What time is it?
It is 1/2/3/4/5/8/9 o'clock
never mind (this is only mentioned once)
hotel, restaurant, your/my place
wine, beer
---------
You can combine above into questions and other sentences, but that is about everything you learn from this course (I may have forgotten to mention some of the words you learn, but it is not much more than what I already mentioned).
I still can't count to 10, and I can hardly say anything interesting to any of my Vietnamese friends.
Also note the course teaches Hanoi dialect, while most Vietnamese outside Vietnam speak Saigon dialect.

Summarizing: you get 5 hours course material (which you probably only have to listen once), good pronounciation, fluency in the sentences you learn, the ability to combine the words you learn in different sentences, but very few words.
Personally I think the level of this course is far too low. There is lot of repetition and you can move on to the next cassette quickly so you get the feeling of progression, but at the end of the course you have learned very little. Other courses with comparable prices offer a lot more vocabulary. Yes you have to work harder and stick to a single cassette longer, but for the same money you learn a lot more.