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Michel Thomas | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5784 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 385 of 405 17 February 2012 at 4:50am | IP Logged | |||||
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It's up to you, but I wouldn't use Michel Thomas for vocab anyway. There are lots of good
suggestions on this forum about how to improve your vocabulary, Professor Argüelles even has a recent youtube video which is relevant and brilliant. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Durazno Newbie United States Joined 4691 days ago 10 posts - 10 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 386 of 405 17 February 2012 at 3:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks. I'll check it out.
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| zorglub Pentaglot Senior Member France Joined 7001 days ago 441 posts - 504 votes 1 sounds Speaks: French*, English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: German, Arabic (Written), Turkish, Mandarin | Message 387 of 405 18 February 2012 at 11:08am | IP Logged | |||||
SO whose accent do you pick up using Michel Thomas as first course ? The students'? I only have hypotheses and opinion on this topic. First , having the native accent or close is indeed very nice, but - it is dangerous when you have a very good pronunciation but are very far from fluency, and this happens to me with Pimsleur courses (even the 10 lessons one I use for mere survival): natives infer you're fluent or close and reply at supersonic speed and may not believe you do not understand :-) - the most important in the proinunciation is the intonation. You can have a thick French German Whateverian accent in English but perfect intonation. In that case you will be understood 100%. Michel Thomas is OK for intonations , he overstresses them in that purpose. Second, why not aim at a pronunciation with a good accent ? The first course (hypothesis here, no evidence) IMO should be purely audio with native voices, so as not to process words through our native tongue's "written word pronunciator". Pimsleur is a good primer. For those who can use French as a basis, Harraps's published remastered versions of some MT courses maybe with actors as students, where MT's voice is replaced by that of a native: They are available for: french to English English , Spanish from Spain, Italian. Spanish and Italian voices are very nice to hear according to samples. Then, and only thereafter go to a course like MT. It will enlighten your Pimsleur learnings. Both courses are too poor in vocabulary, than we need a denser course. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5561 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 388 of 405 18 February 2012 at 4:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If you look on Amazon, there are very mixed reviews for the vocabulary course. What annoys most people is that it really isn't much like a MT course, and could be regarded as a cheap marketing exercise. The fact that Michel Thpmas is named dropped up to three times on each 5 minute tape (literally), and the narrator claims to be Michel Thomas's favourite pupil (or something) just add to the irritation-
She also has an annoying high pitched voice, and condescendingly squeaks "well done" whenever you're supposed to have said something. (I don't understand how these things get published. Surely they do some sort of tests or trials on members of the public, and half of them would have run screaming from the room) But if those things don't irritate you, I think it actually has a pretty good range and amount of vocabulary on it, is excellent value for money (like all the MT courses) and is more useful than the typical vocab courses, which just say a phrase in native language followed by translation in target language. The thing I particularly like (and find quite Michel Thomas-ish) is the way long sentences are broken down into phrases and then put back together again, so that you end up holding the whole sentence quite easily in your head. Edited by schoenewaelder on 18 February 2012 at 4:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5784 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 389 of 405 19 February 2012 at 1:45am | IP Logged | |||||
On the whole I think this a useful post with many valid points, but you have missed an important point: you simply won't pick up anybody's accent...not Michel Thomas'accent and certainly not that of the students. If you use the course properly you're going to spend something like 13 to 20 (26 as an absolute maximum) hours with Michel Thomas (not including thinking time), with your attention focused firmly on the grammar and only half of which is in the target language anyway. You're exposure to the target language's pronunciation will be just 7.5 to 13 hours! If you are at all serious about learning the language this is going to be swamped by 100s (or if you're very serious 1000s) of hours of native models. In addition, your mind can easily tell that his Spanish, French and Italian are not native and makes allowances for that in not taking his pronunciation as something to particularly emulate (except as regards stress patterns and those phonemes explicitly taught because they don't exist in Standard English), admittedly his German accent was good enough to fool me for quite a while. Edited by Random review on 19 February 2012 at 1:51am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| megazver Triglot Newbie Lithuania Joined 5995 days ago 34 posts - 52 votes Speaks: Lithuanian, Russian*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Polish | Message 390 of 405 19 February 2012 at 10:38am | IP Logged | |||||
They get crapped upon because they're not as good as the main course and don't really use the same method, since it's simply not about vocabulary acquisition but if you view it in vacuum and in comparison to other courses there are worse things you could do. I did them for French and Spanish and I think I got enough use out of them. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| zorglub Pentaglot Senior Member France Joined 7001 days ago 441 posts - 504 votes 1 sounds Speaks: French*, English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: German, Arabic (Written), Turkish, Mandarin | Message 391 of 405 19 February 2012 at 3:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
On the whole I think this a useful post with many valid points, but you have missed an important point: you simply won't pick up anybody's accent...not Michel Thomas'accent and certainly not that of the students. If you use the course properly you're going to spend something like 13 to 20 (26 as an absolute maximum) hours with Michel Thomas (not including thinking time), with your attention focused firmly on the grammar and only half of which is in the target language anyway. You're exposure to the target language's pronunciation will be just 7.5 to 13 hours! If you are at all serious about learning the language this is going to be swamped by 100s (or if you're very serious 1000s) of hours of native models. In addition, your mind can easily tell that his Spanish, French and Italian are not native and makes allowances for that in not taking his pronunciation as something to particularly emulate (except as regards stress patterns and those phonemes explicitly taught because they don't exist in Standard English), admittedly his German accent was good enough to fool me for quite a while.[/QUOTE] ============== Maybe , but how can you tell ? Out of calculation or experience or experiment ? I haven't got any data nor personal observation, but even though this is about a few hours to repeat what is uttered with a non native accent, these may be extremely critical hours since they are the first ones with this new language you're after. I thus would intuitively favour a course with "ze native axent to staRt wiz" (see what I mean ?). But if I'm told that most can get as good a result starting with a non native and then polishing the pronunciation with native voices, I'm perfectly open to changing my mind. ANyone with observations ? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5561 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 392 of 405 19 February 2012 at 3:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, I learned a couple of languages at school, and I'd say none of us specifically picked up the teachers' accents, rather we self generated the typical accents of most English people, applying their own language rules to foreign words. (e.g. those who had funny regional accents ended up speaking French with a funny (English) regional accent, not the standard accent of the teacher) It seems to me possible, that if a teacher had had some techniques to simply explain and emphasise the correct rules of pronunciation, we might have self-generated slightly better accents. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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