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Michel Thomas Documentary Now Online | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 25 of 47 16 May 2011 at 10:31am | IP Logged | |||||
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Speed only comes with practice, so it's natural that you're slow to begin with.
I think, however, that this is one of the things that frightens people about the MT approach -- most courses teach a very limited subset of the language and get you to say them quickly. So while the kids no doubt learned "Comment t'appelles-tu?" or "Comment tu t'appelles?" (and probably both) from Thomas, they would be saying it a lot slower than an average beginner, because they would actually be producing it as a piece of language from first principles, whereas a most classes teach it so early that it is learned as little more than a single long and complicated word. It would appear that one of Thomas's students know the phrase worse than other learners, but in fact they now it better, because they know what it means on several levels, but slower. Edit: orthographical error in French -- thanks to Simonov for pointing this out. Edited by Cainntear on 16 May 2011 at 3:19pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 26 of 47 16 May 2011 at 10:38am | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, by all accounts that was Thomas's goal. The line near the start about learning not being hard work, but being stimulation is completely right. The brain loves stimulation, and nothing is as stimulating as learning. If you're bored in a class, it's because you're not learning. Towards the end of the program, you can hear the form teacher talking about how normally teachers (including herself) try to make classes interesting by talking about various topics to try to get the students' interest, but was considering that maybe she'd been wrong. Well I'd agree with that. "Interesting" topics and "fun" games... not only are they often neither "interesting" or "fun" in and of themselves, but whether they are or not, they take time away from the core learning, slowing the learning and making it less stimulating. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6582 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 27 of 47 16 May 2011 at 12:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
I don't agree. The subject matter is more or less independent of the learning. You can do much the same process of learning talking about almost anything. If people focus on the subject matter as a remedy for fixing boring classes, it's not going to work. But good learning with fun and interesting subject matter will complement each other to engage the student even more. However, in a classroom setting, this is pretty hard to achieve, as what's fun and interesting to some won't be fun and interesting to others. It might well be that a "neutral" subject matter will be the most effective, as the negative effects of boring subject matter might outweigh the positive effects of engaging subject matter. In individual learning, however, it works better. I loved learning Mandarin by talking about Godzilla, ninja assassinations and zombies, but another person using the same podcast solution as myself might not find that very amusing. That's ok, as they can download other lessons focusing on things that engage them. I mean, let's say we want to use the listen-read method. Surely an interesting book is to prefer over an uninteresting one? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 28 of 47 16 May 2011 at 3:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It is said in the video that when students don't understand something, Michel Thomas goes back to earlier principles and starts over until the students get it on their own. That's not exactly true because we can see him give the answers many times and even tell the students a big "NO" beforehand. However, a few people here have expressed that the students still seemed to be struggling after the week's lessons; while I don't know exactly how much we should expect from a single week's worth of classes, it is possible that the students were indeed particularly slow and that he continually needed to go back and repeat himself.
Another thing I found very interesting is that it appears that when he asked a student how to say something, other students were actively looking for the answer on their own, mouthing it and acting it out. I don't know if they all did that instinctively, but that makes the whole process so much more effective because asking the question to one person is like asking it to all. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 29 of 47 16 May 2011 at 4:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
The problem with this is that every topic relies on topic-specific vocabulary, and suddenly you've got loads of words to learn before you can do or say anything. By avoiding topics, MT keeps the vocabulary to a minimum. The core of MT's classes is genuinely high-frequency vocabulary (he, she, it, goes, is etc) and where he teaches more subject specific or lower-frequency vocabulary, it's because he's teaching a productive rule (eg -tion words in English to their Romance equivalents). You cannot teach grammar as quickly as Thomas did if you use topics in class -- the words get in the way of the grammar. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 30 of 47 16 May 2011 at 4:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thomas even says somewhere (or I read it?) that he teaches you the basics and that the rest is up to you. I first thought that was an easy way out, but I suppose that's his specialty.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6582 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 31 of 47 17 May 2011 at 7:27am | IP Logged | |||||
The ninja dialogue I learned from ChinesePod goes something like this (quoting from memory): A (thinking): That Peter. I need to teach him a lesson. (Making a phone call) Hello? There's this Canadian. I don't want to see him anymore. Understand? B: Understood. Don't worry, us ninjas will take care of it. A: Then I'll wait for your good news. C (Answering the telephone): Hello? A: Hi, Peter! C: Ah, Manager Lee! Have you sent the goods? A: I'll send them next week. C: Could you please hurry? A: I could hurry, it's just that ... You won't see them. C: Huh? What do you mean? A: Peter, how come you still don't understand? You don't get the rules. C: What are you talking about? A: And you'll regret it. C: I'm not afraid of you! Huh? Aaargh! A: HAHAHAHAHAHA! That was an intermediate lesson about ninjas. What topical vocabulary do we find? The word "ninja". The rest is high-frequency (except maybe "goods", but this is in a lesson series about business, and for many learners this will be very high frequency). The reason I can still quote this dialogue from memory two years after I learned it? Because it's awesome. Because I listened to it again and again. And the other topical lessons are the same (the zombie one is all "I'm afraid", "Don't worry, I'm here", "What was that sound?"). You don't need a lot of special vocabulary to do topical lessons. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 32 of 47 17 May 2011 at 6:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
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OK, I have to admit that's a pretty clever example.
However, it's working towards the point I was trying to get at: real language isn't topic specific, and trying to interest children by having them talking about prefering dogs, cats, hamsters or parrots is just plain stupid, because it stops you learning the non-specific stuff that all real conversation is built out of. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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