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I Hate Michel Thomas | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| markchapman Diglot Groupie Taiwan tesolzone.com/ Joined 5471 days ago 44 posts - 55 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Portuguese | Message 17 of 61 11 April 2010 at 11:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think the MT course in Portuguese is quite good. I would never just use one approach anyway. Remember that
different approaches work for different people. Personally I've found other courses better than the MT course for Portuguese - for example Hugo's Portuguese in 3 Months - but using the MT course has helped for some things. The price is better than some of the available courses. Having a choice of options is good as people like different approaches. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ajijic10 Diglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 6914 days ago 161 posts - 210 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 18 of 61 13 April 2010 at 4:01am | IP Logged | |||||
Nonsense. Delta910 said he didn't like the course, period. All it says about him is he doesn't like the MT method, nothing more. All it says about you is that you're pretty intolerant when it comes to language learning. His "preconceived notions" are shared by many on this board. Just because you think something is effective, doesn't make it effective for all people. You've already driven several people off of this board, and all I know is you've posted about 2,100 times and I've learned nothing from you. 11 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Johntm Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5421 days ago 616 posts - 725 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 19 of 61 13 April 2010 at 5:42am | IP Logged | |||||
I wish I could find an Assimil Spanish book in a store near me... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6010 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 20 of 61 13 April 2010 at 11:23am | IP Logged | |||||
The only detail he mentions about the method is its use of English. It's hardly an in-depth analysis and I'm sorry if it seems "intolerant" to you, but as far as I'm concerned, that's too superficial to be of any use. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5429 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 21 of 61 13 April 2010 at 9:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm going to first admit that I have not done a complete MT course because I don't see the need at my level of Spanish. But I was intrigued by the hype around the man and the method. Did he really teach Woody Allen to speak French in a few days? My cousin told me that she liked the method a lot. So, I decided to have a look at the advanced Spanish course.
The voice and the pronunciation irritated me continuously. The content is in my opinion nothing very advanced. So, I wasn't really very impressed. At the same time, I must admit that the format is actually interesting. The idea of having two students interacting with the teacher is original and quite effective. It seems that users can identify with the students and the mental processes that they illustrate in front of us. I felt as if I were are sitting in the class and really participating. It is certainly less boring that having a single voice lecturing to us. I've come to the conclusion that, although MT is not my cup of tea, I can see that for some people it can be useful as an all-audio product. Actually, my little experiment has made me think quite a bit about the challenges of designing a product with no written component. It goes very much against our traditional reliance on reading and writing as the foundation of learning languages. I'm thinking that maybe an all-audio approach that concentrates on ear training and pronunciation can actually be very effective for achieving fluency. A really advanced product focusing on conversational Spanish might actually interest me. To be continued. Edited by s_allard on 14 April 2010 at 4:33am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lollardy Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 6350 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: French, Latin Studies: German | Message 22 of 61 13 April 2010 at 10:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have completed the Michel Thomas French and found it to be an excellent tool in gaining a good (and practicle) knowledge of grammar painlessly.
I do, however, see how the method can come across as irritating, especially after more than a couple of listens, and a lack of extensive vocab limits the course compared to others out there. Overall i like the method though, and would recommend it to others 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Khublei Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Yugoslavia homestayperu.net Joined 5346 days ago 90 posts - 141 votes Speaks: English*, Irish*, Spanish Studies: Russian, Khasi, French, Albanian | Message 23 of 61 13 April 2010 at 11:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I was talking to a girl in a language book store about it. She says he's either Love Him
or Hate Him, and I'm afraid I'm leaning more towards the hate side. But I believe language learning is a very personal thing and that everyone learns differently. I have the Michel Thomas beginners Russian and the lady on that really irritates me. She does have some good ways of remembering words so I might give her another chance some day. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6010 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 24 of 61 13 April 2010 at 11:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
One thing that all-audio certainly does is undercut some of the willful ignorance displayed by some teachers and course designers. The most relevant example I can think of of this willful ignorance was in (IIRC) Colloquial Polish. There was the dialogue and usual gubbins, and then there was a list of additional vocabulary. After that came the exercises, with the exhortation to "try not to look back at the vocabulary list". The course writer was fooling nobody but himself. Having about a dozen words plonked in front of them, nobody will have learned the vocab by the time they get to the exercises. Everybody will therefore have to look it up. Watching students working through the book will show this immediately. But the author still says to try not to look things up, and congratulates himself on the success of his students... who are in reality doing the opposite of what he says. With all-audio, looking things up is much, much harder, so they can't take the same strategy, and they're forced to reduce the amount of material to the size of the human memory. Except they don't always succeed, and willful ignorance comes back in, with students expected to repeat lessons if they don't get it the first time. Often no effort is put in to ensure students don't need to (consider that the lessons in Pimsleur Vietnamese are pretty much identical to the start of Pimsleur Spanish, yet Vietnamese is far more difficult for an English speaker to learn). The live lesson format Thomas uses forces the course to follow the rate a normal person can learn at, not what he thinks a normal person can learn at. I would love to see more evidence of courses being developed with genuine classes rather than with theoretical principles in mind. Many probably are, but many more certainly aren't, and it's hard to tell the two apart. 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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