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Michel Thomas - where are they now? | ||
Tags: Audio-lingual | Michel Thomas | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| webjunk Newbie Mongolia Joined 5343 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 26 15 April 2010 at 5:08am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm almost finished the basic French course of MT's. Two questions occurred to me.
Did they record this in one single session? 8 hours of continuous French sounds crazy (I've started to keep track of the number of times he asks 'how do you say?') What ever happened to the two students on the recordings? Did it work? Did their brains explode and forget it all the next day? I'm finding it essential to go back over what I learnt the previous day. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Johntm Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5424 days ago 616 posts - 725 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 26 15 April 2010 at 5:24am | IP Logged | ||
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From what I've heard they do record the 8 hours continuously.
I don't know about the students, but I have wondered about the male student on Michel Thomas Spanish. I wonder if he continued with Spanish, because he was garbage at it, he didn't seem to even try. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| webjunk Newbie Mongolia Joined 5343 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 3 of 26 15 April 2010 at 6:28am | IP Logged | ||
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For the basic French CDs 1-5 were pretty much 50/50 between the students. By the time I got to CD7, he seemed to only be talking to the male student who sounded rather tired. I almost assumed the female student had left, until I heard her sneeze/cough.
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| Chris Heptaglot Senior Member Japan Joined 7123 days ago 287 posts - 452 votes Speaks: English*, Russian, Indonesian, French, Malay, Japanese, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Korean, Mongolian | Message 4 of 26 15 April 2010 at 7:32am | IP Logged | ||
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Believe it or not, I think they are actually scripted so one student sounds quite gifted, and the other not at all so. Psychology I suppose.
Edited by Chris on 15 April 2010 at 7:33am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ichiro Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6211 days ago 111 posts - 152 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, French Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Korean, Malay | Message 5 of 26 15 April 2010 at 11:37am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't think it's fully scripted, there's a hilarious bit on the Spanish basic course where Michel Thomas explodes in frustration after completely misunderstanding something the Spanish male student said. But I do agree it seems like they selected so one student is not so good and one a bit better.
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| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6013 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 6 of 26 15 April 2010 at 1:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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(The following information was gleaned from posts by the product line manager, Ginny Catmur, on the MT fan forum. Ginny later recorded the Portuguese course. These are not direct quotes, but my observations are italicised for clarity.)
The sessions Michel did were recorded over the course of the weekend, so the 8 hours were spread over two days with several rest breaks. Thomas taught off the cuff, without a script. There are short videos of the advanced courses on line where you can see this happening. On top of that, you can hear various fluffs, gaffs, slips and pauses on the recordings -- Thomas introducing a word as new that he's previously taught, using a word that he hasn't taught yet, forgetting the sentence he'd asked for and changing his mind halfway. There's also the point in the Italian course where the student mishears "won't" as "want". Thomas goes into great detail about how "won't" and "want" are different, oblivious to the fact that the problem was his English, not the students'! The disjoin between the Foundation and Advanced courses also show the lack of scripting. In the Spanish advanced course he spends a full CD revising content from the Foundation course, and it's clear his students hadn't mastered that material yet. In the French advanced course, Thomas does a lot less revision, and starts using stuff that he hasn't taught at all (mostly just vocabulary). If it was scripted, it was very badly done, if it was taught off the cuff (as claimed) that's fairly normal for a classroom. The students (or at least the majority) were trained performers. However, they weren't primed or pre-trained, it was just that Hodder needed people who would be comfortable in front of a microphone and who would speak clearly enough to be heard properly by the listener. Edited by Cainntear on 15 April 2010 at 1:30pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Johntm Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5424 days ago 616 posts - 725 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 26 16 April 2010 at 5:27am | IP Logged | ||
I don't think it's scripted because he does slip up sometimes. And I hope the students are scripted, because if not I worry about the male student on Michel Thomas Foundation Spanish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ichiro Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6211 days ago 111 posts - 152 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, French Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Korean, Malay | Message 8 of 26 16 April 2010 at 6:58am | IP Logged | ||
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Some other products offer fully scripted classroom-style exchanges, I think in imitation of Michel Thomas but attempting to control the process more. The results are really painful to listen to because so artificial, and difficult to learn from.
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