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I Hate Michel Thomas | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| zorglub Pentaglot Senior Member France Joined 6999 days ago 441 posts - 504 votes  1 sounds Speaks: French*, English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: German, Arabic (Written), Turkish, Mandarin | Message 57 of 61 05 May 2010 at 11:13am | IP Logged | ||
Yes but one should also tell the mission assigned is inappropriate. I assume the mission of MT and Pimsleur programs can be infered from what the programs actually achieve: - showing the learner that the language CAN be learnt, that this is achievable, - giving a basis to build upon - giving a competence for survival abroad or elementary communication. - in addition, Pimsleur seems to induce decent pronunciation in many learners. I suppose not all. 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 58 of 61 05 May 2010 at 4:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thomas actually puts a hell of a lot more work into pronunciation than a lot of people give him credit for, because people fixate on the idea of accent. Thomas has a foreign accent in pretty much any language he speaks, so he doesn't teach accent.
What he does teach is phonemics. Part of the reason Pimsleur doesn't give everyone a good accent is because it starts at the level of accent and doesn't explicitly deal with phonemics. Once you've got an accurate phonemic map, you can adjust your accent, but a seemingly good accent to start off with can stop you developing an accurate phoneme map if you allow certain sounds to "fall together" where they are similar to a single sound in your native language. If you consider the so-called MT Russian course (not a genuine MT course in my book), the students are confused by word stress. As a coping strategy, they reduce their stress so that the teacher doesn't hear when it's wrong, and they never learn the rules of stress. With (genuine) MT Spanish, the stress is amplified to a seemingly ridiculous level, and by doing this they make it utterly impossible to hide your errors and you are forced to learn it. What you are learning at the time doesn't sound natural, but it builds the structure needed to sound natural later on in the learning process. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kmart Senior Member Australia Joined 6123 days ago 194 posts - 400 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 59 of 61 06 May 2010 at 2:43pm | IP Logged | ||
I think Pimsleur is fantastic for teaching accent/pronunciation, but it wasn't until I listened to Michel Thomas's exaggerated pronunciations that I realised I had missed some subtle points (eg the difference between "potremo" and "potremmo"). I think his "over-stressing" is a very useful tool for beginners. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| irmar Bilingual Tetraglot Newbie Greece Joined 5353 days ago 5 posts - 7 votes Speaks: Italian*, Greek*, French, EnglishC2 Studies: Spanish | Message 60 of 61 08 May 2010 at 5:40pm | IP Logged | ||
I agree with this. This over-stressing wouldn't be so necessary if it was an audio + book course, where you have the book or booklet to follow (as in Assimil, my favourite). But in this case, the reading material being scarce, of course you need every precision possible to understand the subtle differences (think of the different sounds of "h" in arabic, for example!) Of course, you can have the best of two worlds (Assimil, in my opinion comes close to perfect in that respect): - an audio course to use in the car/gym etc, only or almost only with the native language, so as to bear extensive repetition as needed - a book with full transcript of the dialogues for checking when you go home, reading aloud etc... - nice asides and explanatory notes (on grammar and pronounciation) only in the book, to look at only when you need to - refresh them, not burdening the audio part and annoying you when you repeat again and again. - the audio being with native speakers with perfect accents, and different among themselves so that you can get used to those differences - these native speakers speaking a little bit exaggerately at the beginning, and progressing to a more natural rhythm and style as you go. As I said, I'm also happy with Linguaphoen AllTalk, as far as all audio-goes: it lacks a good booklet, only giving a list of words, verbal tenses but then that's what it says it is (all talk). I do write down on a notebook things I want to remember, because that's my style, and because I'm not a teenager with a perfect recall anymore, but other, younger or more auditory people, may remember everything just by listening. I do applaud the phonetics of M.T., it would be so great if he also included native speakers for the accent part - I don't think it's a secondary matter at all, as it's the hardest part to get for anyone over 12 years-old. Edited by irmar on 08 May 2010 at 5:45pm 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 61 of 61 09 May 2010 at 1:33pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm not sure that it wouldn't be even more necessary with printed material. A lot of language learning problems come from native-language interference in reading -- reading is a learned, unconscious link between written form and sound, so when we read, we "hear" the sounds inside our head. English has no phonemic gemination (although incidental gemination does occur for some consonants when a word starts with the same consonant as the previous word finishes with) so an English speaker reading a beginner's Italian book wouldn't hear any gemination when he reads "potremmo" -- they'll hear an English short M. However you learn, you need to put conscious effort into learning anything that is genuinely new information. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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