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Unofficial Michel Thomas courses project | ||
Tags: Michel Thomas | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5781 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 89 of 97 21 October 2011 at 10:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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The official MT Greek course somehow didn't think it important to teach the perfective
and imperfective tenses of the verb!!!!!!!! I was just stunned. The main reason I did it was out of curiosity regarding how the Greek aspect system compared with the Romance one, so I was rather disappointed! Language Transfer, to their credit, have started to do that already at this early stage of their course. I think that's to be applauded. I am a bit confused about one thing though, I know there are two "th" sounds i English, but I thought that the "th" in "this" and the "th" in "that" were the same, am I wrong? Does he mean the difference between the "th" in "this" and the "th" in "think"? Edited by Random review on 21 October 2011 at 10:34pm 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 90 of 97 22 October 2011 at 2:33am | IP Logged | ||
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:-(
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| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5863 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 91 of 97 22 October 2011 at 9:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Neil: Why do you think that? Especially with such a promising project as the Language Transfer coming out (and with an actual product to boot).
@Random review: I was a bit thrown off by that, too, but listening to the recordings I believe they are indeed the two th sounds of, as you mention, this and think in English, or at least they sound very similar. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5416 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian | Message 92 of 97 23 October 2011 at 3:27pm | IP Logged | ||
One of the problems with the Michel Thomas courses is their one size fits all format. They have to have 8 CDs for the Foundation course and 4 for the Advanced course, even if it means they end up leaving out a lot of important details. For some languages though you will get a Vocabulary course which will teach some more structural aspects but of course the focus is on vocab and some languages don't get a vocab course. I think that some languages are a little more difficult to teach than others using the MT method, especially languages which are a little more distant from English than those originally taught by Thomas. Because of the fixed course sizes, with some languages you will either have to cover less content so that it will stick well enough and feel like the MT method is working, or you cover a lot of content too quickly which is kind of against the point of the teaching method. If they instead cared more about really getting a person a thorough grounding in the essential parts of grammar using MT's methodology, they should abandon this fixed format of 12 CDs for the core teaching and look into making longer courses where necessary. Or they could develop a kind of supplementary course which focuses on teaching more grammar after the Advanced course. Of course, they want to keep costs down and are a business, so profits come first, even if it means releasing courses which are less thorough than others. Edited by jazzboy.bebop on 23 October 2011 at 11:24pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6009 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 93 of 97 23 October 2011 at 8:36pm | IP Logged | ||
Agreed -- the length of the original courses was (as I understand it) simply a consequence of the length of teaching sessions he gave. There was no reason for making the new languages the same length, except ease of marketing. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lolligirl Newbie United States katiejurek.com/Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4775 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes | Message 94 of 97 27 October 2011 at 9:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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I wouldn't be able to commit to anything tootoo soon, but I would be happy to help with the Esperanto version. The thing about Esperanto, though, is no one country/place speaks it, so which things are good to know how to say would vary very widely. I'm all for any support for this project, though, and I'm sure we all could work something out for important phrases in Esperanto. :)
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| jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5416 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian | Message 95 of 97 28 October 2011 at 12:31am | IP Logged | ||
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An Esperanto course would be cool to make using the Michel Thomas methodology. It may well be possible to comfortably teach the entire grammar of the language and more over the course of 12 CDs. I'm not overly interested in learning Esperanto just now but if a course in this style were made I would definitely want it.
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| CarlKenner Newbie Australia Joined 5967 days ago 2 posts - 3 votes Speaks: English* | Message 96 of 97 30 March 2012 at 9:58am | IP Logged | ||
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"Also, you MUST be willing to complete the entire course. If you're someone who starts
things, but gives up and never completes them, then please don't get involved. We don't want people like those who started creating the Michel Thomas Japanese and Norwegian courses, who then gave up after a few lessons and left everybody disappointed." Sorry for leaving everyone disappointed. But I will finish it one day. I finished 4 hours out of 8, and there's a lot of content in there. I've also finished part of hour 5 and have parts of the other hours written or planned. I get distracted with other things, and I procrastinate, but it will get done eventually. Don't forget, it's a lot harder to do this in Japanese than in a European language, and it takes an unimaginable amount of time to plan everything and edit everything. Michel Thomas took 50 years to finish making his 12-hour courses. I think maybe I should make it into an App though, since flashcards are a pain. I've got some good ideas for turning it into an App. As for your idea, I don't think it's a good idea to have native speakers planning the lessons. I think native source and target language speakers working together would be the best. And asking for 8 hours is too much for most people. 4 hours is still pretty useful, I think. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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