The great thing about Pimsleur is that the tones are easy to identify and the vocabulary is presented in a way which makes it easy to memorise, which is why I suggested it to OP. It'd be a stretch to call Volume 1 as even survival level, but it could be helpful for OP if they want something they can do with 1/2 hour everyday. If they ramped it up to 1 hour a day (which is not recommended by publisher) they could theoretically finish the whole level 1 course in 2 weeks which would give them about 150 words to play with. Then again, when I did Pimsleur Mandarin years ago it wasn't ab-initio so that could have made a difference.