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Michel Thomas

 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes Post Reply
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Arekkusu
Hexaglot
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Canada
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 Message 377 of 405
14 February 2012 at 8:48pm | IP Logged 
jeff_lindqvist wrote:
jazzboy.bebop wrote:
But anyway, Thomas' accent should not put people off from using his courses. If I learn German one day I'll certainly be using Thomas' courses as my starting point.


I agree. A non-native is OK as long as he/she can teach (=Michel Thomas), and aspects like accent and prosody can be learned from other sources, you just have to use your ears!

I don't think it's ok at all. I don't mind a non-native who learned the language to near-native level and isn't 100% perfect, but if I can tell from the first word, something's wrong and you shouldn't be teaching me your bad habit.
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jeff_lindqvist
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 Message 378 of 405
15 February 2012 at 4:37pm | IP Logged 
Bear in mind that a non-native speaker can be just as good at explaning things like grammar, sentence structure etc. (something that some natives aren't even aware of...), and it's mainly in that aspect that I find Michel Thomas to be good teacher.

You can spend a thousand hours on lessons with a native and still have bad pronunciation. You have to work on it yourself. The MT courses have so little L2 input anyway, so you more or less have to find other material.
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Jeffers
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 Message 379 of 405
15 February 2012 at 4:58pm | IP Logged 
I've recently finished the Total French course (the new version of the Foundation course) and I've noticed something he teaches which seems incorrect. He has a shortcut so you don't have to remember the gender of nouns. For the definite article, he says to just lightly touch the "l" so it doesn't matter if it's le or la. For example, you'd say l'maison instead of la maison. That works fine, and it sounds a lot like what I've heard of spoken French. However, he suggests the same thing for the indefinite article: touch lightly on the "n". However, you wouldn't normally even hear the "n" sound for masculine nouns, even in spoken French, would you?

An example is "je voudrais un cafe". He gets the students to stick the n sound at the end of voudrais, so it sounds like voudrain. However, one of the students was clearly confused, because at several points she said "je voudrain un ...", totally missing the idea.
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zorglub
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 Message 380 of 405
15 February 2012 at 5:37pm | IP Logged 
jeff_lindqvist wrote:
Bear in mind that a non-native speaker can be just as good at explaning things like grammar, sentence structure etc. (something that some natives aren't even aware of...), and it's mainly in that aspect that I find Michel Thomas to be good teacher.

You can spend a thousand hours on lessons with a native and still have bad pronunciation. You have to work on it yourself. The MT courses have so little L2 input anyway, so you more or less have to find other material.


L2 ? whay's that ?
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tarvos
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 Message 381 of 405
15 February 2012 at 6:14pm | IP Logged 
Second language, or target language in this case
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Random review
Diglot
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 Message 382 of 405
16 February 2012 at 11:31pm | IP Logged 
Durazno wrote:
This is my first post. I love this forum!

I started MT Spanish about 2 weeks ago and it has helped me a lot. It does feel a bit
weird having better pronunciation than him, but he is great at instilling an
understanding of the grammer, verb tenses and has clarified some things that I just
didn't "get." He has some pretty funny ways of getting you to remember things. For
example: Whenever you hear the feminine river at the end of the verb, "ria" then you
are in the woods (woulds). In addition, the simple past tense "Cha-cha" that he sang
for remembering the first two conjugations was pretty quirky: e and o and i and io, e
and o and i and io...Sometimes you just need to hear someone sing a silly song and
those conjugations then will be difficult to forget.

I want to become fluent in Spanish, and also I aspire to move towards a career in
translating. I know this will take a long time to acheive, but I am determined to make
it happen. I'm sure this was probably already mentioned in this long thread, but what
are some other things I can do to aid my learning process?

As of now, I have completed the Foundation and am half way through the Advanced
portion. Also, I listen to Spanish-speaking radio whenever I am in a car. Once I am
finished with the Language Builder and Vocabulary CDs should I purchase some books
written in Spanish that I have already read in English?

Any advice would help. Thanks!


Advice? Yes, save your money and don't buy the vocabulary course, it's rubbish. The
"Language Builder" course is OK for what it does, but at your level it'll not be any
use so save your money on that.

While I'm posting on this thread I just want to reiterate my opinion that I think any
beginner who decides against Michel Thomas purely because of his accent is making a big
mistake, the following is worth repeating: if you use the course properly you will not
pick up his accent.
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Jeffers
Senior Member
United Kingdom
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 Message 383 of 405
17 February 2012 at 1:16am | IP Logged 
The vocabulary course is now integral to the courses. The lower course is called Total, and has 2 disks of the vocab course. The upper course is called Perfect, and has the other 2.
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Durazno
Newbie
United States
Joined 4688 days ago
10 posts - 10 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 384 of 405
17 February 2012 at 3:56am | IP Logged 
Random review wrote:
Advice? Yes, save your money and don't buy the vocabulary course, it's rubbish. The "Language Builder" course is OK for what it does, but at your level it'll not be any use so save your money on that.

While I'm posting on this thread I just want to reiterate my opinion that I think any
beginner who decides against Michel Thomas purely because of his accent is making a big
mistake, the following is worth repeating: if you use the course properly you will not
pick up his accent.


I agree with you that you won't pick up his accent as a beginner.

Thanks for the advice. I am borrowing all the CDs from a friend so it wouldn't cost me anything to listen to the Vocab. and LB CDs. Are they not worth my time at all, even if they are free? Do you have any other suggestions for building up vocab?


Edited by Durazno on 17 February 2012 at 3:57am


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