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Michel Thomas | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Gray Newbie United States Joined 6037 days ago 32 posts - 48 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto | Message 169 of 185 22 October 2010 at 4:27am | IP Logged | ||
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Of course, a pretty key difference between Madrigal's books and the Thomas Method courses
is that Madrigal's is really only available for Spanish, and was only ever published for Spanish, French and German. Michel Thomas' courses are available in many additional languages. And yes, what he did wasn't exactly original... but that can be said for pretty much everything. It's not just a question of where he got the method, but also of whether he implemented it effectively in his own courses and schools. Of course, if I had my choice, I'd love to see Madrigal's Magic Key for many more languages, but it doesn't seem likely to happen. As far as speculating about the alleged nature of Thomas' war-time exploits... I honestly just don't see much point in denigrating a dead man. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| BartoG Diglot Senior Member United States confession Joined 5448 days ago 292 posts - 818 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Uzbek | Message 170 of 185 22 October 2010 at 7:20am | IP Logged | ||
I would be wary of putting that "only" in there. The original Michel Thomas courses don't just show some guy's conception of how people ought to learn languages. They show that guy actually teaching the languages to students who actually learn them, and with enough stumbles along the way that it is clear he is actually teaching them, they aren't just following a script. When I was at university, I ran across a book that taught French, Italian and Spanish together. It wasn't Bodmer and it wasn't Madrigal. And honestly, the similarities between the Romance languages are just sitting there waiting to be noticed. Figuring out how to teach them is another matter. In a lot of cases, the answer is to toss it out there and leave it up to the learner. But Michel Thomas didn't say that. He said that the responsibility for learning is up to the teacher. And the patented method - recording a teacher with two students - proves he took that responsibility seriously and made good on his promises. Anybody finishing an original Michel Thomas course knows that someone with an active mind can pick up a lot and even an idiot can pick up more than you'd expect. The proof is there. Recording yourself with two students isn't as easy as it sounds. It takes guts to do that. It takes confidence that the class you're teaching the two students is worth recording and won't just embarrass you. It takes structuring your course so that there are lots of opportunities to hit that pause button, which requires confidence that you can keep the live students you're teaching on track. When I noted in my post that the patent was for the way the course were recorded, I wasn't denigrating his achievement. Indeed, his signal achievement was to put a course on the market expressly focused on what the student can learn, not how much the teacher can teach. Whether the content derives from Madrigal, Bodmer or any of the other people who thought to exploit the similarities between languages, making that content teachable and proving it teachable while finding a means to let anybody who wants sit in on one of these exceptional classes as a participating student is not small potatoes. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| TerryW Senior Member United States Joined 6358 days ago 370 posts - 783 votes Speaks: English* | Message 171 of 185 22 October 2010 at 11:19am | IP Logged | ||
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The Beatles and the Stones were influenced by all of the Blues and R&B artists, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, etc., and look what level they took it to.
MT "borrowed" from others? I say so what. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 172 of 185 22 October 2010 at 6:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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Isaac Newton described all human achievement when he said "If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants."
If "all" Michel Thomas did was to synthesise the work of two people to produce something better, then he has achieved more than most people. But Thomas did not simply fuse the Magic Key and the Loom of Language. I do not own a copy of any of the Magic Key books, but Amazon's "look inside" lets me see the first lesson, and I can immediately tell that Thomas did two things that Madrigal's books don't: he started with structure and avoided too many concrete terms. He mixed things up (interleaving, as it is described in Solity's book). These are no small matter, as they go against the mainstream of language teaching even now, despite being clearly the most natural and efficient way to learn. If Madrigal's books are very different from the way she herself taught, fine, but I doubt that they'll be that different. Also, dots and lines are not unique to Madrigal and Thomas. Timelines are standard tools for the description of tenses to people not familiar with grammatical terminology. They have been proven an effective graphical aid to the teaching of tenses. Thomas barely scratches the surface of what many other teachers do with straight lines, dotted lines, jaggy lines and arrows. Let's see if I can demonstrate the pluperfect... I had done it before breakfast ~~~~~~~V | ------------------------------------> Dotted line represents the "perfect" (because it happened at an unspecified time during that period). V is an arrow marking breakfast time. The vertical line is now. It's basically the "origin" on the graph line that denotes all possible time below Get a crash course in language teaching and you'll be better qualified to identify the significance of similarities between methodologies. Edit: formatting of timeline. Edited by Cainntear on 22 October 2010 at 6:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 173 of 185 22 October 2010 at 6:19pm | IP Logged | ||
Michel Thomas's courses are available in Spanish, French, Italian and German. The others are MT in name only. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Milano1985 Triglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5163 days ago 9 posts - 10 votes Speaks: Sinhalese*, English, Italian Studies: French | Message 174 of 185 22 October 2010 at 7:36pm | IP Logged | ||
I can't agree with you more. MT took the method initially created by others to it's next level and he did a brilliant job. What is important is how many people are benifitting from his work and I am one of them. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Welltravelled Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5863 days ago 46 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 175 of 185 25 October 2010 at 11:07am | IP Logged | ||
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I have bought the Michel Thomas German course and am going to be studying hard with that over the next few weeks. Do you think then that Magic Key German and the loom of language would be useful supplements to use while studying the Michel Thomas course, since they may have some ideas in common? I'm also studying French and am thinking that the loom of language would be useful for that too.
What do you think? I'm looking at the loom of language on amazon at the moment and think I might have to just snap it up. The magic key German seems a little harder to find though. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 176 of 185 25 October 2010 at 1:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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And of course one Paul Noble is carrying on the tradition of making a new course leaning heavily on other people's courses, but in a slightly different combination.
It's how things have been done since the beginning of time. A master teaches an apprentice, an apprentice works to become a master, then takes an apprentice. It's only very recently that teaching as a profession has been formalised -- it used to be simply a stage in the career of all people of professions or arts. Universities are our oldest teaching institutions, but university staff are researchers -- teaching is only a secondary part of their job. In most school systems, a new teacher will do a formal course of study, but on top of that will do teaching practice alongside experienced teachers who are not specifically teacher trainers. A new teacher will combine elements of all the teachers he or she had as a school pupil, the teachers at the teacher training college and the teachers he or she did teaching practice under. Edited by Cainntear on 25 October 2010 at 1:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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