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Michel Thomas | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| JerryO Newbie Philippines Joined 5024 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Studies: Mandarin* | Message 313 of 405 23 February 2011 at 2:44am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I listened to the Michel Thomas Mandarin Chinese audio courses before taking up a short-term Mandarin course at a local university. I would say that the MT courses were very helpful in me passing the university course with flying colors. I'm now about to take up the advanced classes at the universty, and I look forward to them with much confidence. Edited by JerryO on 23 February 2011 at 2:45am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| anothername Triglot Groupie Brazil Joined 5062 days ago 96 posts - 195 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Spanish, English | Message 314 of 405 02 March 2011 at 3:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I know that this is an old and long thread and I'm arriving late, but, among all programs available, it's beyond me to understand how it could possibly be as useful as some people claim.
I didn't start any Michel Thomas program (and I will not until I find a strong reason to beileve it's a powerful tool) but here are some thought-provoking statements: 1 - he's not a native speaker, and has a strong polish accent (which perhaps may be good for his polish course, but has been criticizes in some other courses), so, with so many courses with great didactics and lots of native-speaking audio, why I should spare my time with him? 2 - what's wrong with reading? Of course a language course is supposed to have a lot of audio, but preferably with tons of native-speaking to give you an ear to the real language. So, if his emphasis is on showing the language's "basic structures", with extra-emphasis on cognates and modal verbs, wouldn't a good and thick grammar with enough drills do this work COMPLETELY, and even better? Also, wouldn't we need to read/write on the new language? And if not, wouldn't a Pimsleur-like approach work better on an early stage (in which one would prefer to avoid the written word, to "learn like children learn")? 3 - he attempts to recreate the environment of a traditional class, interacting with (bad) students, while what I find most interesting on self-study is getting rid of annoying peers, monotonous teacher's voices/explanations, and awful jokes, which I find to be only noise/distraction to the brain, who should be focusing on the language itself; 4 - all courses/books/teachers I ever seen, in any field, that are centred on a charismatic/smily person who are portraited as a miracle maker and market themselves as "the one who teached Hollywood stars so-and-so" and other very tricky and cheapy sales techniques are heavily suspicious and sound like Tony Robbins or worse. But, I'm STILL open-minded if this can give me some kind of learning I didn't realized yet (however, I will weight the pros and cons before I give it a try). I have to say, nonetheless, that reading this long thread still wasn't enough to convince me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6784 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 315 of 405 02 March 2011 at 3:18pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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If reading the whole thread did nothing to convince you then it's pointless for me to say anything, so I'll limit myself to one thing.
Q. What is it good for? A. Learning some basic things about the grammar of the language. Like sentence structure, verb tenses, verb conjugations, noun+adjective agreement and so forth. You can learn the same thing from tables in a textbook but I think the MT way is less dull. And doing speaking exercises somehow seems less tedious than writing out the same sentences on paper. There you are. If you already have a basic intuition for the grammar then it's probably pointless and people who say "I'll use MT to improve my level" while they are well into the language I think have false hope. Edited by numerodix on 02 March 2011 at 3:22pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| atboom Newbie United States Joined 5056 days ago 20 posts - 30 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Dutch | Message 316 of 405 02 March 2011 at 4:12pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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MT himself only did 4 languages: Spanish, German, French and Italian. All the other languages are done using his method but by different people. This means that every course outside of those can't be lumped in to the 4 he did when you look at things like his peanut-butter Polish accent (because it sounds like he has a jar full of peanut butter in his mouth). The Dutch course I am going through is really pretty good. I am not sure if the speaker is a native as she has an English accent, but she does say 'we' when referring to native Dutch speakers implying she is one and since English is compulsory in the Netherlands at least, she may well be a native Dutch speaker.
The Greek course I am pretty sure the instructor is not a native Greek, but she does have a very convincing pronunciation. Even then, I will still use the course. The only thing I expect from the course is an introduction to the language, and on that, I think it does deliver. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5566 days ago 938 posts - 1840 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 317 of 405 02 March 2011 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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The Dutch foundation course is taught by Cobie Adkins-de Jong who is from the Netherlands and the advanced course is by Els Van Geyte who is from Belgium - so both are native speakers - its just that the Dutch are not as poor at accents as most English speakers (although I have to say they both have pretty strong Dutch/Belgium accents to my ears).
The Greek course is taught by Hara Garoufalia-Middle who is a native speaker - she (or at least used to) teaches Greek at a London university. Edited by Elexi on 02 March 2011 at 5:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5131 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 318 of 405 02 March 2011 at 5:17pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Soon someone will show up here to tell you that all those other, non-MT-himself, courses are crap (again). Wait for it... R. == 2 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 319 of 405 02 March 2011 at 6:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I think this has already been addressed several time in this thread. A) The foundation, advanced and language builder courses together are only equivalent to 4 days' study. You're going to need to do a lot more study to really learn a language, so if the teaching's good, accent isn't that big a deal. B) Even if his accent is rubbish, he still teaches pronunciation. For example, in the French course, he points out that the sounds "ou" and "u" are different, and how to make roughly the right sound. I'd never been told that before, and a lot of my classmates (final year university French, so they've been learning for years) still pronounce the two identically. In the Spanish and Italian courses he exaggerates word stress unnaturally, but I think this works well -- many learners understress things to avoid appearing wrong, but then fail to learn.
The problem with reading is that letters are supposed to be mapped to sounds, and how can you map letters to sounds you don't know? Most absolute beginners suffer interference and read in the sounds of their native language. After learning a language or two, it becomes less of a problem, but if you've never learned a language, it is definitely a problem. One of the key differences between Pimsleur and MT is that Pimsleur teaches in a phrase-based way, whereas Thomas teaches the elements of grammar and recombines them in multiple ways. Pimsleur covers less grammatical ground, but takes a lot longer.
Most book authors ask themselves "what should a student be able to learn?" and build a course based on that. Because Michel's own courses were an unedited class recording (the courses released after his death were heavily edited), it is not about what people should be able to learn, but what students can learn.
All products are marketed by marketing people. Good stuff gets marketing, just like bad stuff. I was very wary of the marketing when I first saw it. In fact, I almost didn't buy it because of the outlandish claims. It was a review of what and how it taught that finally convinced me to give it a try.
Then you'll probably never be convinced, but that's OK as MT is for native English speakers and uses points of English grammar that most foreign learners have never learnt, so it's not really aimed at you. 2 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 320 of 405 02 March 2011 at 6:56pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Don't be a troll -- it isn't very becoming of you. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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