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Michel Thomas | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| zorglub Pentaglot Senior Member France Joined 6998 days ago 441 posts - 504 votes  1 sounds Speaks: French*, English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: German, Arabic (Written), Turkish, Mandarin | Message 393 of 405 19 February 2012 at 5:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
Come on ! We're talking about learning kanguages here ! Wrong forum ! ;p) Just kidding. T'is rue, that is how it ends with school learnt laguages. I suspect it could be different in Sweden for instance, where I was amazed at the number of people speaking with quite a British accent. Even though their ear is acquainted to mostly American, not British movies and TV productions with subtitles. But School teaching as I know it uses a lot of writing and reading from the beginning, which is a nice way of teaching the wrong accent. Did anyone survive MT plus something else with a nice accent ? I do admire MT courses by the way. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5781 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 394 of 405 19 February 2012 at 7:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
Experience. I made a lot of mistakes with Spanish and German, so my accent isn't that great in either, mainly because I mistakenly thought it of little or no importance at the time I started out, but let's take two languages I don't speak: Italian and Portuguese. My knowledge of Italian consists entirely of Michel Thomas followed by Pimsleur. I clearly don't speak it, but I have a good idea of how the grammar works and a survival vocabulary. In spite of starting with Michel Thomas, Pimsleur did its usual job of giving me a good accent. It's not perfect but it's already much, much better than Thomas'. This was quite some years ago, but I believe that when I have shadowed Assimil and done some L-R (I don't have time to learn Italian properly yet) I'll have a really good accent. Portuguese I started with Pimsleur and then did the "Michel Thomas Method Course", Hugo's Portuguese in 3 months, and some lessons of "El nuevo Portugués sin esfuerzo". The results for my accent of STARTING with Pimsleur were frankly amazing (but developing a good accent is precisely where Pimsleur beats all comers hands down IMHO), I admit that you make some good points here; but note that even in Italian where I started with Thomas I had already developed a much better accent than he had and I do believe I could go on to develop a really really good one. So, from experience, you will not develop Michel Thomas' accent if you use the course as designed. Edit: on rereading this post I appear to imply that I speak German, my German is still pretty bad. Edited by Random review on 20 February 2012 at 1:21am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Durazno Newbie United States Joined 4688 days ago 10 posts - 10 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 395 of 405 21 February 2012 at 5:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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What should one do after the Michel Thomas course?
Do people supplement that with another program, or is the next step to move onwards towards native material? I will definitely do a review of the course to make sure that all of the lessons have been ingrained. I do watch some Spanish language television and listen to Spanish radio, but I'd love to hear from some people who are fluent about what would be the next appropriate step. Thanks. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4907 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 396 of 405 21 February 2012 at 6:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think MT is great, but it's more of a supplement itself, than a complete course. It is a great way to work on particular things: how to use verbs, sentence structure, etc. However, it leaves a lot out as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Durazno Newbie United States Joined 4688 days ago 10 posts - 10 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 397 of 405 21 February 2012 at 7:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
Good point...I guess from here it is a matter of which other program I find personally effective. I'll have to go to the library soon and check out a few different ones. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4620 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 398 of 405 06 May 2012 at 2:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It's easy to take potshots at Michel Thomas: he doesn't teach enough vocabulary, his accent is dodgy, he doesn't cover all the tenses, he calls modal verbs "handles", the students are annoying etc, etc.
But no audio course is perfect, including Michel's. The blurb on the cover makes it all look effortless and easy but these are the publisher's claims. Every course brags a bit about it's effectiveness, otherwise people will be less inclined to buy it. Michel does stress in the actual recordings that you should repeat the lessons many times and supplement the course with lots of reading. Michel Thomas was a hunge influence on my progress with the German language. After two years of being married into a German family (but living in the UK), I was making strides with the language but still tripping up over tenses and word order. I had soaked up a lot of vocabulary by listening but often struggled to express my thoughts in coherent fashion. I knew a lot of verbs but my speech was often broken; some pieces of the jigsaw were missing. I saw the Michel Thomas CD-courses on sale for £25, half the normal price at the time I think. I plumped for the advanced course because I clearly wasn't a beginner. I decided to give it a try, in the end I would gladly have forked out £100....I played the first CD and got straight into it. I loved Michel's no-nonsense style and the way he drilled you repeatedly, "how do you say....", he would start with a small idea and add bits on, then throw in something you had perviously learned. Suddenly things like double-infinitives and conditional tenses made perfect sense. He really does give you a solid framework, mainly couched in layman's terms. After a few days of repeated listening I was coming out with things like "If I had known you were coming, I would have waited for you"....which was previously way beyond my ken. He clearly explained things that are difficult for English speakers to grasp, like the difference between könnten and konnten. He also made light work of hätten and wären, again not easy concepts to learn if you don't have previous experience in foreign languages. Michel then hammers them home with a 20-pound mash with his relentless questioning (apparently he would drill his real-life students for 10 hours straight, even when he was well into his 80s). Above all, Michel instilled confidenced in my latent abilities. I can understand why grammar buffs may not agree with his approach. He does take some remarkable short-cuts with the language and has his own terms like "handles", "diving towers" and "vile situations". But Thomas does know his stuff and gives us a few glimpses into the historical connections between English and the other Germanic languages. Yes, it's true that you could probably do all these exercises with a grammar book and pencil but isn't that approach precisely what puts many people off learning another language. Michael makes everything accessible to the novice, or to the person who has dabbled and hit a brick wall. He persuades you to have a go at speaking. The vast majority of online reviews are positive. Tellingly, several schooteachers praise his style. But was it just a fluke of timing for me? Did I happen to be at a level that fortunately dovetailed with the course content. Did it seem easy to me because I already had a lot of background knowledge? Would his method really work for a total beginner. Well, recently I decided to put his method to the test and try the Russian course. I knew nothing about this language apart from the fact they had a funny writing system. Michel himself didn't record the Russian course but I found a free online sample and the style sounded instantly familiar. I invested in Russian foundation and I am already making some headway with the language after the first disk. It starts off with "it is" and builds from there. The trouble with many audio courses is that they focus to narrowly on "typical" conversations in the train station or in the cafe. But that approach leads to learning set phrases parrot fashion whereas Michel forces you to think out the sentence in your own mind and piece it together yourself. Actually, on the same day that I purchased MT German, I bought the Hugo advanced German course. The first Hugo lesson was listening to a weather report and answering questions about it. Whereas Michel took the bull by the horns and launched straight into speaking exercises. I stuck with him from that point on. Edited by beano on 06 May 2012 at 2:44pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| zorglub Pentaglot Senior Member France Joined 6998 days ago 441 posts - 504 votes 1 sounds Speaks: French*, English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: German, Arabic (Written), Turkish, Mandarin | Message 399 of 405 06 May 2012 at 3:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
I've long been wondering too. I'm posting a thread on this essential issue: ze mystuhRee of ze Briteesh accent of ze sweedes. http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=32286&PN=1&TPN=1 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| shmjay Newbie United States Joined 5360 days ago 12 posts - 19 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, German, Spanish | Message 400 of 405 06 May 2012 at 11:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
Do the Pimsleur courses in that language, starting from Lesson 1 of Comprehensive I. And vice-versa: if you've finished all the Pimsleur courses, then do the Michel Thomas courses. That way you get to use the strengths of both (and hopefully they offset the other’s weaknesses.) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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