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Michel Thomas | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Rivenburg55 Newbie United States Joined 5151 days ago 2 posts - 10 votes | Message 177 of 185 25 October 2010 at 7:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thank you for your responses. I read them with great interest and agree with much of
what has been said here. Hobbitofny and BartoG pointed out that Michel Thomas was a teacher who knew how to “read the student and make needed adjustments for that student. He had clear reasons for calling on the student he did and when” and that “making [the] 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”. I certainly do not disagree with any of this. Clearly, Thomas did not lack skill as a teacher. I was also interested by what Terry W, Cainntear, Gray and Milano 85 wrote: “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”; “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”; “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”; “… 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.” I can certainly see the sense in what is being argued here: that the courses are effective and that if the courses did borrow elements from elsewhere, this does not impinge on the effectiveness of the courses. This is true and, paraphrasing my original post, I will agree that the origin of Thomas’s work “does not mean that [his] courses are not useful or effective.” It is also very true, as Cainntear says that “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”. I agree that this is an extremely natural and normal thing for a teacher to do. I would like to thank you for these responses, as well as for the many other well reasoned comments people here have made. I would also like to reiterate the core of what I said in my original post. The point of what I originally wrote related to what several people here were already discussing: the Michel Thomas Method. As I have said, I think it important to realize that Michel Thomas’s key, original contribution to the content of his courses was the idea of using two live students on a recording. The rest of the content, along with the actual method of teaching, was lifted from the works of Margarita Madrigal and Frederick Bodmer. Cainntear suggests 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.” This is actually not correct; Madrigal’s books do both, in fact this is their essence very well defined. Someone here has mentioned the idea of using Madrigal’s Magic Key to German alongside a Michel Thomas course. I say go ahead. Definitely. I would also recommend the same to anyone here who is interested in what I’ve been discussing, as in doing so you will quickly see that the way the language is broken down into “linguistic building blocks” is exactly the same as you will have experienced with any Michel Thomas course. You will note also that the choice of vocabulary used to make up these linguistic building blocks also happens to be the same. The same choice of words, structures, even the same explanations following them. And, having broken the language down and put it back together, the content being taught by Madrigal is then recycled, interleaved, mixed back together in various permutations throughout the book. This is precisely the method of teaching utilized by Michel Thomas. You won’t find sunlight between the two. Returning to what I said in my original post: Michel Thomas’s courses were not original works - not at all, in fact. This can be seen very clearly if you read Bodmer’s Loom of Language alongside Margarita Madrigal’s course books. In doing so, you effectively find that you have Michel Thomas’s courses. Not only are there aspects similar between the two but vast swathes of Thomas’s courses are more or less lifted directly from these two sources. The teaching method, plus the course content, it’s all there. Of course, this does not mean that Michel Thomas brought nothing to the show. Neither does it mean that his courses are ineffective. Clearly, they have helped a great many people learn languages. But it does mean that when we are talking about the Michel Thomas Method and what he actually created, we are not for one thing talking about the building block teaching method – he did not create this - and we are also not talking about the choice of content. Even the explanations have been borrowed in large part. Perhaps Thomas’s wholly original contributions to the content can best be summed up as consisting of his decision to use live students on the recordings, his skill at judging pace and at reading the students, and his ability to fuse Bodmer’s overview, philosophy and content with Madrigal’s method of teaching and selection of sentence structures. 2 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 178 of 185 25 October 2010 at 8:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Rivenberg55,
Fine, I'm not going to show you why you're wrong. If this is part of your revised "Doubting Thomas" story, I'd at best be doing your job for you but more likely wasting my time because what I see as one of the core elements of Thomas's teaching simply wouldn't fit into the story you're trying to write. I recognise that Thomas was a bolshy, self-agrandising type, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to stand him if I'd known him in person, but that's entirely aside from his teaching. However, you seem like you have an axe to grind, and you're just looking for ammunition. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Milano1985 Triglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5163 days ago 9 posts - 10 votes Speaks: Sinhalese*, English, Italian Studies: French | Message 179 of 185 25 October 2010 at 9:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The way I think is this, MT foundation course is the first step of the ladder and then go ahead with Advance course by this time you have learned the structure of the language. Now you are clever enough to understand and enrich your vocabulary and so on. This is exactly what I did and I got over 15 different courses with me now including Plmsleur.
MT shows how easy it is, to learn a language and make yourself get interested in all the languages. I can say this because I learned my Italian exactly like that when I was in Milan and I didn't follow any course or went to any school. I wrote down things I heared and started reading magazines and newspapers. So when I first heard about MT method it hit the nail on the head (deja vu).I must say that Italian is easy to write down because you can write down exactly as you hear it. What matters is what you get out of MT's language courses. WHO CARES WHERE HE GOT IT FROM? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6440 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 180 of 185 26 October 2010 at 8:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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No one would reasonably claim that Michael Thomas invented the concept of sound shifts, or of recognizing cognates between languages, or of introducing grammar one piece at a time. He did not invent linguistics or language teaching from scratch.
Does his work have similarities to that of his contemporaries? Yes. Is it a simple copy or merger of the work of his contemporaries? No. As regular readers of this forum would know, I'm no fan of the Michael Thomas courses - but there is more than enough to critique them on without slandering the poor fellow. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Welltravelled Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5863 days ago 46 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 181 of 185 09 December 2010 at 12:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I thought I would add something to this thread as I have been studying for the past few weeks with both Michel Thomas German (which is excellent!!) and also with Margarita Madrigal's Magic Key to German (which is also excellent!!!) and I have not felt so excited about language learning for ages.
Indeed I would recommend to any person using Michel Thomas's German course to also try and get a copy of this course by Margarita Madrigal, they work really well together. Although the Madrigal course was not at all cheap, ouch, because it is (insanely – in my opinion) out of print. Regardless Madrigal's course does let you, as it says on the first page, 'start forming sentences from the very first lesson'. Regarding the discussion in this thread about the relationship between Thomas and Madrigal's courses I can confirm that the courses are very similar. In my opinion the way in which the language is taught (the method / teaching approach etc) is clearly the same and the sentences that you are taught to build are often similar or the same. It would seem, at least to me, that Michel Thomas 'borrowed' or 'adapted' what he did as a teacher from Madrigal. But I can in no way see how this is a bad or wrong thing for him to have done. If he had not, I believe this wonderful method of teaching may have been lost to the world and that would have been a real tragedy. I only wish that Margarita Madrigal was still alive herself because I would love to attend one of her courses. I am also very interested in finding out more about her, which someone else on this thread has also said. There is some information about her in the Magic Key to German book which I will share for anyone else who is interested. It says: 'Margarita Madrigal, born in Costa Rica and residing now in New York, is the most widely read language-book author in the world. Miss Madrigal writes in a penthouse studio which she has furnished like a Mexican patio. She says: “My tools are a Blackwing pencil, a yellow legal pad, and, when I am lucky, a flood of thoughts.” Among her other activities Miss Madrigal gives private Spanish lessons in New York City.' I really love this book and its way of talking about German and language learning in general. I will quote a couple of other bits to give you some of the flavour of this: 'The German language grew out of the same sources as our own English. You already know thousands of German words – and you can learn to read, write and speak German within a few short weeks!' 'From this moment on, you can forget everything you've always believed about how difficult it is to learn a foreign language. For with the unique Madrigal Method of language study you can say goodbye to dreary memorization of long vocabulary lists and complex rules of grammar.' And the book really delivers on what it promises. I would just love to find out more about Madrigal herself and also how she came up with her ideas and how she developed her teaching method. I have tried searching on Google but there seems to be so little known about her even though she seems to have been a bestseller at one time. However whatever is or isn't still known about her she was undoubtedly a wonderful teacher. Edited by Welltravelled on 09 December 2010 at 1:21pm 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 182 of 185 09 December 2010 at 9:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
I read (and loved) Bodmer's 'Loom of Language', I also used Madrigal's 'Magic Key to Spanish', I thought it was excellent. It is evident to me that Thomas took some good ideas from these sources (nobody EVER invents everything themselves out of whole cloth!). It is simply not true that he lifted "vast swathes" of his Spanish course from these two sources, the teaching method is totally different from Bodmer's and only shares with Madrigal's the principle of working things out for yourself instead of memorising (no small thing, to be sure), and that of instilling enthusiasm (which should be MANDATORY for all teachers, in my view). Besides, have you ever TRIED to "lift vast swathes" of somebody else's method, without having any ideas of your own? It's bloody difficult! A number of well-respected teachers tried to copy Thomas in order to continue his legacy, the results varied from good but not perfect (Dutch) through mediocre (Portuguese, Mandarin) to awful (Rose Lee Hayden). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Welltravelled Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5863 days ago 46 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 183 of 185 10 December 2010 at 10:52am | IP Logged | |||||
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Random review
First I want to say that I love what you are writing about the case system and I am planning to use it for studying later on. Second I was wondering if your magic key to Spanish has any extra information about Madrigal. I am really interested in knowing more about her. Does the Spanish version have any extra information about her as a person / teacher or does it just say the same as it says in my German one? 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 184 of 185 10 December 2010 at 8:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks man, I really appreciate that, but it still needs a lot of work (for instance Cainntear just pointed out quite a lot of places I need to improve on), hopefully when it is finished we'll have something truly worthy of the thread's title, which (ehem) gives me excitement (sorry for the in-joke)!
Sorry, dude, but from what I remember it had slightly less. I didn't even know she was a "tica"! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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