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Unofficial Michel Thomas courses project | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 25 of 97 03 September 2011 at 10:33am | IP Logged | |||||
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The idea by itself sounds nice but there are a few points needed to consider.
-Firstly, I remembered the "htlal assimil project" which died out. It would be surely worth continuing if we could gather a new wave of enthusiasm and excitement about it. But we need to look at why it died out. I believe people just didn't have time as everyone needs to handle shedule with job/studies, family and friends, their own language studies, some other hobbies such as sport. Most of this are things noone will give up for creating the course. The more when knowing the amount of work needed is going to be monstrous. -Secondly, you seem to expect one person to create one course. That means, one language lover, with various language, job and skill experience, would need to 1.translate the content invented by you and heavily modify it for their language 2.know well the MT method since you do not expect a whatever course 3.make the audio (for which they need some SW and HW equipment and learn to use it) with him and several people participating 4.be willing to put in this tons of time in both actual "making the course" and additional studies of MT courses style, linguistics and pedagogy as well because, as many of us have experienced, a native of the language may not be able to teach well. -Thirdly, I would not give things like the Red Cross or Medecins sans Frontier as an example of free activity. I'd say for exemple librivox is much closer to what OP means. It's based on many volunteers who read a few chapters each, or more if they find out they have the needed time and mood. Therefore I dare to say creating the environment of teams working on the project, and noone feeling to be alone with the mass of what is needed to do, with many people helping and one coordinating the course, would have much better chance to succeed. -Fourthly (is it right in English?):If you want people to help with your project for free, you need to give them reasons to. One of such reasons is a place to use their creativity. That means making as few rules and restrictions as possible. You said from the beginnings you want an MT course. Why not make a HTLAL course instead if you wish to? You may use there whichever good experience with MT or any other course. So, I have another question. If there is the will to create something together, piece by piece, could we rather continue with the old project? Not by following exactly the structure of any existing course (even though Assimil is a nice inspiration and the dialogs already created look really good) but by creating something we don't see on the market or not in the way we would find the best? I believe there would be enough work for everyone interested (not just speakers of less popular languages) but everyone would create just bits of what they are interested in. Perhaps Neil, if he wanted, might help with creating the structure and English templates for lessons, and other people would just need to translate. And as someone who can stay with projects from the beginning to the end, as he says, he might be really helpful for this great idea and beginning. Just an idea. 3 persons have 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 26 of 97 03 September 2011 at 12:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
Absolutely spot on, but it is not only possible but essential to be creative even within the MT framework. I think the wiki idea mentioned earlier is a great one for creating a template for a given language, the teaching would have to be done by one person who had a high enough level in the language (C2 or native) to respond with flexibility to the responses of the students. I also think it might be better if the template were trialed with a couple of students and then revised one last time before recording the course, but somehow I think that might be unrealistic. Can I suggest you try this project with one language first (that language to be chosen based on the number and quality of the volunteers that come forward)? I think it would be easier to get people to believe in the rest of the project if you completed one. Edited by Random review on 03 September 2011 at 12:43pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6380 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 27 of 97 03 September 2011 at 1:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Someone asked about copyright issues...here is what Harold Goodman (Volapuk49) wrote in another
thread: "His patent ( cf. USPatent and Trademark Office search for Michel Thomas and you will see all the stuff he claims) basically says that teaching live students and having the third student ( the one who is listening) use a recorded medium with which to interact with the group and teacher and thus create a feedback loop is his unique claim." 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6660 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 28 of 97 03 September 2011 at 1:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
Oh, those student’s with that everyone using MT usually finds annoying, haha. They’re not really going to be a loss, imo. 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 29 of 97 03 September 2011 at 1:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The students are absolutely essential! As soon as you take away the students and/or start
editing out some of the more repetitive mistakes (as Hodder did with most of its post-MT courses) the method loses much of its power! A number of people on this forum find them annoying because they make simple mistakes that we would not; but the courses were specifically intended to be useful to people with no experience of learning languages, as well as the kind of people on this forum, the easier mistakes the students made are the same mistakes these people will be making at home! 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| misslanguages Diglot Senior Member France fluent-language.blog Joined 4847 days ago 190 posts - 217 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: German | Message 30 of 97 03 September 2011 at 2:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think that you should allow language courses to be group projects. You'll get courses finished sooner that way. It's a good idea, but I have to side with the majority of the people who posted on this thread here: 12 hours is a LONG time. Finding a few people who want to collaborate on the same language would be much easier.
3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| pigsonfire Newbie United States Joined 5076 days ago 26 posts - 37 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Cantonese | Message 31 of 97 05 September 2011 at 4:39am | IP Logged | |||||
Absolutely. Things could be added little by little and edited ala Wikipedia. I would set this up first to see 1. if there IS interest 2. To see how successful the contributions are! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kugel Senior Member United States Joined 6539 days ago 497 posts - 555 votes Speaks: English* | Message 32 of 97 09 September 2011 at 10:16am | IP Logged | |||||
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If someone had the proper background in advanced Logic, and by this I mean something beyond propositional and predicate logic(and 8th grader can do this sort of logic), then sure, making a systematic course in any language would be fairly straightforward. It certainly wouldn't take years to reproduce something original. A trained linguist with formal training in logic might take...I'm guessing a few hours to translate 12-13 hours in transcripts of a MT foundation and advanced course into symbolic logic. Really, each CD doesn't have a lot of content. From there just get creative and see what works and what doesn't. Knowledge of your target language is necessary, naturally.
So what's holding you back from doing a few upper division level classes in stuff like temporal and modal logic? Edited by Kugel on 09 September 2011 at 10:22am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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