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Michel Thomas foundation 8 hour course? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| marklewis1234 Newbie United States Joined 5306 days ago 32 posts - 39 votes Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 8 05 August 2010 at 7:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have now completed the Thomas' 8 hour basic Spanish course, which I am very happy with. Can anyone suggest a follow-up course for me please? I was thinking of one of the other Thomas Spanish courses, i.e language builder, vocabulary or advanced?
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| Paskwc Pentaglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5669 days ago 450 posts - 624 votes  Speaks: Hindi, Urdu*, Arabic (Levantine), French, English Studies: Persian, Spanish | Message 2 of 8 05 August 2010 at 8:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you liked the foundation, go for the rest of the set.
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| michaelmichael Senior Member Canada Joined 5249 days ago 167 posts - 202 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 3 of 8 05 August 2010 at 8:26pm | IP Logged | ||
I did advance french, and since they are both romance languages I would bet he has broken the 2 languages down in a similar way. I predict that the advance focuses mainly on verbs. If you liked the basic, you will of course like the advance. Hope this helps. bonne chance! Edited by michaelmichael on 05 August 2010 at 8:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6003 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 4 of 8 05 August 2010 at 8:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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You can do either the "Advanced" or "Language Builder" course now. The Vocabulary course is a follow-on to the Advanced course. (And it's nowhere near as good -- it's done by a woman with the most patronising way of speaking imaginable and a horrendously bad accent.)
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| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5775 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 5 of 8 06 August 2010 at 7:59am | IP Logged | ||
Vocabulary course was rubbish, her bad accent not so important though as most sentences were echoed by native speakers. The only thing she did OKish was teaching cognate patterns, but even that has been done way better elsewhere (e.g. Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish). You should definitely do the so-called Advanced Course, after that you don't say what your budget is. An ultra-cheap alternative would be to do the dialogue parts of FSI Basic Spanish I and II (available free online) to sort your accent out, Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish (great book, and very cheap, but one or two expressions are considered wrong in Spain), and William Tardy's Easy Spanish Reader (again very cheap), after finishing which start reading native magazine interviews as MT suggests, and articles if you wish. To follow up watch an AMERICAN or BRITISH series THAT YOU KNOW VERY WELL (mine was the Simpsons) in a Spanish or L.Am version online at Megavideo (just google name-of-series-in Spanish+megavideo), before finally moving on to native material via same place. Get some good AV software plus some anti-spyware first! If you're not short of money nothing beats Pimsleur for pronunciation, and while it's not as fun as MT, it's MUCH less mind-numbing than FSI, complements MT quite well in my opinion. I haven't used Assimil's Spanish With Ease, but I know from using their "Using Spanish" second stage course, and their "Portugue's sin esfuerzo" that they are head and shoulders above any other traditional type method (such as Teach Yourself, Colloquial, or Living Language). Both levels plus Pimsleur should keep you busy for 6-12 months, after which move on to Megavideo (see above) and native magazines etc. If you are looking at an intermediate budget do the above skipping Pimsleur. Oh, and I almost forgot, to find the Spanish name for U.S. or U.K. series type the English name into wikipedia.es Edited by Random review on 06 August 2010 at 8:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5557 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 6 of 8 06 August 2010 at 8:33am | IP Logged | ||
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I would recommend doing the MT advanced course next - the grammatical structures you get when you master that course will give you strong foundation that will make later learning so much easier.
After that I would recommend a dialogue based course - such as the two Living Languages Ultimate or the two Assimil books. Also check out the free Destinos videos. Edited by Elexi on 06 August 2010 at 8:34am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6003 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 7 of 8 06 August 2010 at 11:39am | IP Logged | ||
I was very sceptical about Assimil from the description alone, but I'm quite impressed with what I've seen so far. I'm still very sceptical about its usefulness for a true beginner, but when you have some previous knowledge of a language or of a related language it is definitely very good. (eg Random Review using it for Portuguese after Spanish, me using it for Catalan after learning Spanish, French and Italian.) The pacing in general is pretty good, with new language being introduced and reused -- maybe it's not reused enough to properly stick on its own, but I do still get a sense of logical progression, whereas with TY I tend to find they teach you one thing, tick the box, then move onto something else without properly integrating it with the stuff you've previously learned. Right now I can only recommend Assimil as a "companion" course, but I'm happy to recommend it as that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5775 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 8 of 8 07 August 2010 at 12:00pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes, I wouldn't have thought of putting it that way but you are spot on! Colloquial Spanish 1&2 was a bit better, but Assimil far better than either. I am currently using Assimil's "Portugue's sin esfuerzo", but did both levels of MT Portuguese (and all 3 levels of Pimsleur's Brazilian Portuguese, and FSI Spanish to Portuguese) first. I think I would struggle a little without having done the MT course, especially on the pronouns which are very different from Spanish. Have also downloaded the FSI Portuguese Programatic Course and plan to use it at some point. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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