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Michel Thomas | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 273 of 405 23 September 2009 at 3:20pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
There's no such thing as a "chapter" or "lesson" -- it's just one continuous course that you start and stop as you like. Frequent repeating of short sections of the course defeats the point of it: to be exposed to the same linguistic features in a variety of contexts, and to know how to construct a sentence.
The problem with this is that when you repeat, you start to memorise the lesson. Instead of constructing sentences to fit Thomas's prompt, you end up simply recalling the "answer" to the "question". IE, you are regurgitating a fixed phrase rather than putting a thought into words. So be careful about getting too smooth -- compare yourself to the two students on the CDs and just try to be a bit better than them.
I agree with this, though. Work through it slowly, then revisit it later. If you've had enough variation, you won't just be memorising and parroting. Now, going back to the Americano's question: I found that if I just restart from the point that I stopped at, I spend the first few minutes in a fog, trying to get back into the rhythm and remember all the words from a day or two before. What I found worked best was to "overlap" my sessions -- ie replay the last few minutes from the previous session before going on to new material. This meant that by the time I got to the new stuff, my memory was refreshed and I was back into the feel of the course. The longer I had gone between sessions, the longer the overlap. I never made any real attempt to measure the optimal length of the overlap -- timing was pretty much governed by track lengths. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Lingua Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5577 days ago 186 posts - 319 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 274 of 405 23 September 2009 at 6:20pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
A major fallacy about language and language learning - that you start with a thought and create a sentence based solely on individual words and grammar rules. A major part of language learning is "memorizing" how native speakers express what they want to say. A language consists of fixed and semi-fixed phrases and "ways of saying it" that are particular to the language. If you don't learn these, you will simply fall back on your "memorized" way of saying things in your native language and transfer them to the new language. 15 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6440 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 275 of 405 23 September 2009 at 7:37pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
This point is so very true, and so often overlooked. It took me years of language learning to even start to get it, and I wasted a lot of time and effort for rather poor results until then. Thank you. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 276 of 405 24 September 2009 at 9:53am | IP Logged | ||||||||
We've discussed lexico-grammar before, and we've argued over whether there is such a thing as a "rule" in idiom -- I would say that there is, which is where the "systemic" comes from in Systemic Functional Linguistics. Furthermore, fixed phrases are built from grammatical and lexical elements -- I do not recall anyone arguing that fixed phrases are atomic at the representational level, therefore it should follow that knowing the elements makes it easier to learn the phrase. But what you cannot argue with is that this is irrelevant to the Michel Thomas course. Why? Because he does not use fixed phrases. If to you that makes his courses worthless, fine, but for those who chose to use the course it would be a waste of time to study them in a "fixed phrase" state of mind. As for the term "fallacy", that's rather strong. Linguistics is 99% theory, 1% fact. Furthermore, linguistics falls into the same trap as language teaching: wholesale change in theory. The brain is a parallel device -- can't it be attempting two strategies at once? Edit: more to the point, there's still a big difference between meaningful learning of fixed phrase and the ability to parrot a conditioned response to a prompt, or even worse: a memorised "script" of a whole course. Regardless of the nature of the material taught in a course, there still has to be wide variation to force you to connect with the meaning. Edited by Cainntear on 24 September 2009 at 11:11am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| 2011 Newbie Great Britain Joined 5521 days ago 6 posts - 8 votes Speaks: English* | Message 277 of 405 30 November 2009 at 10:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Evening chaps and lasses. I'm sure the following question has been answered numerous
times before, but here goes: How far would the Michel Thomas Arabic/Mandarin/Russian Foundation/Advanced/Vocabulary courses take one terms of fluency? My presupposition is that it will not really take one too far, is this correct? Thanks you. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| volapuk49 Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 6268 days ago 73 posts - 86 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Yiddish, Modern Hebrew Studies: Esperanto | Message 278 of 405 30 November 2009 at 11:53pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I can only speak about the MT Mandarin course of which I am the author.
If faithfully followed from beginning to end ( ie. end of the vocabulary course) you will be able to converse with ease. The course will give you most of the basic patterns necessary to accomplish this. You will need to build upon the vocabulary provided ,which for the first two parts especially, is primarily meant to get the student speaking in Chinese. Also,once one begins speaking, the student will begin to discover new patterns not included in the course. I was given a finite amount of time to cover the material. I early on made the decision to help the student build a firm foundation upon which to build at the expense of adding a lot of vocabulary which might hinder this goal. As MT used to say, I will give you the building. You need to furnish it with your own furniture ( vocabulary). We are not aiming at fluency. Our aim is proficiency in speaking. In my mind, this means to be able to converse with relative ease; to express your thoughts in an accurate way and to understand and respond to the thoughts of others. Harold Goodman 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| 2011 Newbie Great Britain Joined 5521 days ago 6 posts - 8 votes Speaks: English* | Message 279 of 405 30 November 2009 at 11:58pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Wow, I didn't expect one of the actual authors to reply, thank you very much indeed chap. Thanks. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ficticius Pro Member United States Joined 6108 days ago 23 posts - 24 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German Personal Language Map | Message 280 of 405 01 December 2009 at 12:18am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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and with the German and French courses?
1 person has voted this message useful |
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