|
 |
Michel Thomas | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6016 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 329 of 405 03 March 2011 at 11:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
It is, and I've said as much in the past. But it only works because it's an almost word-for-word translation of the German course, so it doesn't invalidate the claim that Hodder never fully understood what Thomas was doing.
I wasn't want to start an argument based on misinterpretation, and I want to be clear that one or two counterexamples don't invalidate my point. Anyway, Thomas often teaches points by comparison to archaic forms, for example using "to await something" as an explanation for how Romance languages handle "to wait", or referring to the King James Bible or Shakespeare to explain word order. I know a lot of people who can't handle the construction "I want you to do something" comfortably, and always say "*I want that you do something", which isn't genuine English, but is normally understood correctly. Some of the longer constructions towards the end of the course are quite complicated -- things like "if you had called me last night and you had told me that you were going to come, I would have prepared dinner". Even if all the elements of that sentence are OK, it's still very difficult to understand it automatically, which goes against how MT works: you're not mechanically translating, but by understanding the English you know what you're trying to say, so you say it.
Do you know why those courses are unfinished? It's because I didn't enjoy them. It's because they were slow and frustrating and confusing. Michel's courses, on the other hand, were exciting, stimulating, clarifying, and well paced. So no, of course I didn't finish them. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5135 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 330 of 405 03 March 2011 at 11:33pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Which brings up a point that everyone should keep in mind: Just because you don't like post MT-led MT courses, or Pimsleur, or Teach Yourself, or Assimil or any other for that matter, that doesn't mean it's not useful to someone else. We all learn in our own ways and at different paces. There's nothing wrong with that. What I dislike is reading over and over that a particular course or method is crap because it didn t work for you (general, not you personally). R. == 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| anothername Triglot Groupie Brazil Joined 5066 days ago 96 posts - 195 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Spanish, English | Message 331 of 405 04 March 2011 at 1:45am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
1 - Yes, archaic forms of English, and examples of King James' bible or Shakespeare are not usually studied by foreign English students. But most of us can understand such an example if we are interested in it. Also, archaic English is arguably not an ordinary academic "english grammar topic", but an earlier form of the language (be it old English, or middle English). 2 - Despite of my provocative post, my intention here is not to bash or start arguments again MT courses (even considering these are not bad thing 'per se'), but to get good answers from trustable people who honestly believe in those courses. If the strengthness of MT is about teaching how to build complex phrases in the target language, perhaps it can be an extra tool. Well, here is what I'm going to do: The Spanish, french and Italian courses don't interest me at all, since they are romance languages, and building phrases on these is far from a challenge to me. But I will take a look at the German course someday. It will take some months (maybe a year or a bit more), but I intend to post my impressions about some German courses in the future, and perhaps MT will be included among them. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6016 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 332 of 405 04 March 2011 at 6:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I don't believe this is true -- I believe we all learn in fundamentally the same way, but that some of us have better strategies than others for dealing with suboptimal input. There's no good evidence for learning styles, and it is extremely rare to find any pair of teaching methods where one isn't better for all "types" of students. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| kmart Senior Member Australia Joined 6129 days ago 194 posts - 400 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 333 of 405 04 March 2011 at 10:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
There's a lot of debate about the merits of Pimsleur, Michel Thomas, FSI, etc on this forum, but I've noticed that there are champions for all of these among the polyglots here. But other programs like Rosetta Stone, Learn in your car, seem to have support only from beginners or less experienced learners. So it appears that some programs have serious merit, and others are junk . Rosetta Stone may "work" for some people, but probably because they don't know any better. They start with no knowledge of their target language and end with a handful of phrases, therefore they are "successful". The same time devoted to a better method would have yielded significantly better results. I too, am a non-believer in the learning styles religion, but people do have different learning preferences, and that's where the differences of opinion about the various programs come in. Learning preferences are important, because most of us need to enjoy what we are doing in order to stick with it (in terms of hobbies, I mean, paid employment may be a different matter), but it's also important not to get stuck in the mindset that because you prefer to learn in a certain way, it's the best and only way for you. Sometimes persevering with a method that's not your favourite may produce exceptional results that will then help motivate you to continue with that method. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Adrean TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member France adrean83.wordpress.c Joined 6173 days ago 348 posts - 411 votes Speaks: FrenchC1 | Message 334 of 405 06 March 2011 at 3:13am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
|
I've done the all the MT courses for French, the foundation Spanish and all the German courses. I struggled along with the students along every step of the way. Does this make me stupid?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| RogerK Triglot Groupie Austria Joined 5080 days ago 92 posts - 181 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian Studies: Portuguese | Message 335 of 405 06 March 2011 at 9:53am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Does this make you stupid? No. I consider myself a slow learner but I learn better/faster now because I learn in a way that suits me. Perhaps you need to experiment with your learning methods. I have the MT Italian (Advanced) and both French courses. The Italian was, well not easier but not overly difficult because I had done previous Italian learning. Then I thought I'll see if I can learn some French just by listening to MT. I have listened to the CD's countless times and some of things I still get wrong. Now I am writing out the 'Review' or 5th CD of the Advanced Course. It is taking some time but because I need to write things down even if don't review them I remember better. I began Assimil French With Ease recently. I have used Assimil previously (German & Italian) and I had only followed Assimil's instructions and I needed to read and re-read over and over again before I could remember anything. I too thought I was very slow at learning languages (no one is dumb, we all have our strengths) but this time I am writing out the lessons, translating them backwards and forwards and my recall has jumped from 20% up to over 80%. Why? I am writing things down and this suits my brain. My point is to try other ways of learning. Experiment a little and see what happens. If somethings works keeping doing it, if something isn't so good leave it and try something else. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Whatever Newbie Croatia Joined 5016 days ago 4 posts - 6 votes | Message 336 of 405 07 March 2011 at 1:23am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
|
Hello. I started using MT 2 months ago and so far I'm very pleased with the results. I'm learning German and I like my progress, I can definitely say that MT works. However, I do have certain doubts. While it's great for a beginner and you feel that you improve at the speed of light, I do think I'm stagnating now. I have finished the entire course except for the vocabulary course which I plan to start with soon and when I try to read the German newspapers I don't understand 80 % of it. That's pretty bad. I guess you shouldn't expect to learn language fully in 2 months but I seriously did expect that given how fast I was progressing when I first started using it. So I guess it's great for beginners. Can't imagine anythng better for a beginner. But now that I look for more depth, I'm not sure MT can provide that, not sure it's comprehensive enough. Well only one way to find out I guess, finish that vocabulary course.
MT works. It really does. I don't think anyone can deny that but what I think is that maybe there are some other methods that work better...and teach more. So far I'm satisfied though, I'm glad I made any progress, it certainly has given me a lot of confidence. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
