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Review of Michel Thomas Mandarin | ||
Tags: Michel Thomas | Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6555 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 1 of 10 13 March 2011 at 11:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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Wrote this recently, thought I'd share it here.
...it's a friendly, simple, quick program for learning some of the basics of this challenging language. There aren't a lot of good complete beginner programs out there, and this one can definitely be helpful, depending on one's language learning plan. Having said the positive, what follows is a detailed explanation of several things that I didn't like about it. '' Although my level in Mandarin was intermediate when I did this program, I was about to drive across the US, and wanted a nice, not too challenging program to put in my CD changer. My only previous experience with MT was French. Unlike this course, French was an MT original. What I most liked about the French course was that it taught the majority of common French grammar in a short amount of time. And reading the ads for Mandarin, the same thing was promised. So I was greatly disappointed when I found out Mandarin teaches a much smaller percentage of grammar. I'm no expert, but I would guess where French teaches 90%, Mandarin only teaches 25%. So you might wonder, what do they do with all that extra time? The answer is, they teach tones. '' Was choosing to teach tones instead of grammar the right decision? I can't say it's the wrong thing to do; you have to learn tones in the very beginning of your studies, so if this is the first thing you do it might make sense for you. And I can't say their method for teaching tones is bad, with their color and hand signal association, and constant correction throughout the course. But I had already learned tones and pinyin before taking the course, so I was hoping to find a course that was more grammar focused like the French course. As I mentioned, I can't say their method is bad, because I didn't use it. But it is without a doubt inadequate for someone attempting to use it as their sole source of tones. One will need to do further studies on tones - there is just not enough information offered here to make someone good at tones. For example, very little was mentioned about sandi. For example, it was not even explained what happens when two 3rd tones come together. Also, I actually can't remember if they explained about length and pitch of tones because these things weren't policed. It was somewhat painful listening to the male student say ni (you). Especially when he said nihao. He was told to use a third tone for ni, but listening to a native speaker use a 2nd tone, due to sandhi, so no wonder he was confused, and no wonder his voice was unsteady. '' Another way in which the program is inadequate is general pronunciation. I don't remember any attempt to explain the difference between q and ch, or x and sh, for example. If there was an attempt, it certainly wasn't enforced. Of course, this concept is easier to grasp if the student has had an introduction to pinyin. But the distinction should have been made, and it should have been enforced. '' Now you are getting an idea of my philosophy of how one should start Mandarin. I believe a firm grasp on pronunciation and pinyin are the most logical choice. This should include tones and tone sandhi. At that point, programs such as this one are much more useful. That doesn't make this program useless, but it does require one to know it's limitations, and it's proper place in one's entire language learning plan. '' Regarding mnemonics, or memory aids. I use them often, especially when studying languages that have scripts which are quite different from English. So I have nothing against them. But I only use them for words that I have trouble remembering. The fact that this course provides mnemonics for every new word was somewhat annoying to me, but I can understand that words that are easy to remember for one person might be hard for another. What I don't understand is the low quality of the mnemonics. Most of the mnemonics were word-link type. For example, the mnemonic for shuo1 (speak): George Bernard Shaw was a great speaker. This is what I consider a good, fully closed mnemonic. I think of speak, which leads to the great speaker, George Bernard Shaw. Shaw sounds like shou1, so it is a fully closed loop. But there were many poorly thought out, wide open mnemonics. For example, the mnemonic for zhou1zi (table): You walk into a room in New York, and there's a jaw lying on the table. Although jaw, with the New York accent, comes close enough to zhou1zi to be an effective aid for me, there is no association between table and jaw, so the mnemonic is open. I'm not saying a mnemonic of this type won't work, I'm just saying that closed word-link mnemonics are much more effective than open, and ideally all of them should have been this type. Now let's talk a little more about grammar. This was a huge disappointment to me. I expect Pimsleur to give me pronunciation, Learn in Your Car to give me vocabulary and sentence reinforcement, and Michel Thomas to give me grammar. When a program forgets it's purpose, as perceived by it's loyal following, people are going to be upset. So shame on you, any creator of Michel Thomas courses who doesn't try to cover the majority of grammar in the Basic + Advanced courses. You are using the good name of Michel Thomas to sell a very different product. Obviously Mandarin and French aren't the same, and require many study methods that are quite different. But that is no excuse for changing the main goal of the course - grammar. The grammar that was covered here was covered quite well. But one thing in particular that really annoyed me was all the bragging about the way they teach particle "le". I agree that le is one of the most, if not the most, difficult piece of the common grammar puzzle for foreigners to learn. And I agree that what they teach works well. But they don't teach you all the major usages. In fact they only teach 2 of the 7 major usages. And of course, the worst thing about it is that we had to endure something like 5 minutes of victory dancing by the English speaking teacher. To bad they didn't use that time towards teaching more usages. Measure words are also a shortcoming. Why they felt it was appropriate not to explain that different nouns may require different measure words is a mystery. And although it may be alright on some grammatical level to use ge4 for book, I have never heard a native speaker say this. In fact, if I don't say ben3, they tell me I'm wrong. In addition to ge4, they actually used bei4 for tea, etc. So they had more than one measure word, but failed to explain the relatively simple grammar point. Another very annoying schpeel was about the word for hotel. Hotel is an interesting word in Mandarin, as several words have been used over the years, and it's not obvious to the western learner that the meanings of the characters add up to "hotel". So I wouldn't mind them using a long schpeel to explain this interesting phenomenon. However, I do mind that he declares the wrong word to be "hotel". He says it's fan4dian4, which literally means food store. In the past, this word was sometimes used for hotel, but is now used almost exclusively for restaurant. He says it's used for Hotel in Beijing. I checked with several close friends from Beijing, one of them my girlfriend, and they confirm that it is used for restaurant. What my friends, teachers, and personal experience tell me is Hotel = jiu3dian4 or bin1guan3 Restaurant = fan4dian4 or can1ting1 These are the most common usages. You can use fan4dian4 for hotel, and often be understood by context, but it's not the most common usage, and they should not have spent 5 minutes claiming something false. I also failed to understand/enjoy the occasional reference to Yiddish and Hebrew. I would guess that very few native speakers of English learners understand either of these two languages, so I fail to see the logic of including these references. If you're trying to lighten things up a bit by comparing with other languages, why not use some that are understood by a higher percentage of English speakers? Like Spanish, French or German for example. In summary, I gave the course 2 stars because I did find some use for it, and I can imagine many language plans in which it could fit into nicely. However, I couldn't give it a higher score because it covered a relatively low percentage of common grammar. I also found the explanation of tones and pronunciation incomplete and the mnemonics poorly created. I was really annoyed regarding the bragging about the teaching of le, over usage of ge4, lack of explanations regarding measure words and the incorrect pronunciation of the word for hotel. Finally, I didn't appreciate the usage of languages that aren't understood by a high percentage of English speakers as a tool. Edited by leosmith on 15 March 2011 at 2:18am 12 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5964 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 2 of 10 14 March 2011 at 1:39am | IP Logged | ||
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I haven't used MT so cannot comment on that.
Had to chuckle as I use different words for hotel and restuarant. Usage is always interesting. Hotel 旅馆 lǚguǎn...is the word I generally use. It's an older term but there's no confusion about what it means. 酒店 jiu3dian4 is a place that serves wine, eg a pub or restuarant though that may also be a hotel. Restaurant 餐厅 can1ting1...is the term I generally use. This may be more common in Taiwan. Again there's no doubt what the term means. 餐馆 can1guan3...It's too close to the Cantonese so I personally avoid using this term. 饭馆 fan4guan3...same as above, close to the Cantonese. 饭店 fan4dian4 can be a restuarant or a hotel so I don't use that term. I have native speaker friends who use this term for hotel, or for the restuarants in hotels. Edited by Snowflake on 14 March 2011 at 1:41am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| aru-aru Triglot Senior Member Latvia Joined 6462 days ago 244 posts - 331 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, Russian | Message 3 of 10 14 March 2011 at 3:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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It would have made sense to make a MT Chinese Pronunciation Course too, to be used before the Basic Course. Not explaining x-sh q-ch j-zh is a crime! :)
I have looked through MT Arabic course, and there, I think, the % of grammar taught might be even less than what you mention for Chinese. Luckily (for those of you who want to get these courses) audible.co.uk sells the course AND offers the booklet for download, and you can easily download it before buying anything. So, before going for MT non-European languages, check out the booklet, and see how "advanced" the advanced courses are. MT method is a grammar based teaching method, that works well for European languages because of the large amount of cognates, which makes it easy and quick for MT to gather up a big enough block of vocab to operate with, while going through the sentence making methods. When you try to do something similar for Chinese, it fails, despite the fact that Chinese (for talking very basic stuff) needs very very little actual grammar. Also, even though it's simple, Chinese grammar can often be counter-intuitive for a first time non-Indoeuropean language learner. Also, the new courses are a bit soulless. The original ones were unscripted, and more entertaining, more alive. (Did get a bit annoying after frequent repeated listening though) When it comes to Chinese, most popular brand name textbooks/methods will not work half so well as books that come from China itself (Taiwan also makes nice books, and a few American publishers have done good job too). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6016 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 4 of 10 14 March 2011 at 8:08pm | IP Logged | ||
Don't be misled by the presence of cognates in MT. Cognates are not as important to MT as people seem to think (including Hodder & Stoughton). In the German course, he teaches only core vocabulary, much of which is cognate with English, so the vast majority of the vocabulary is cognates. In the courses in the Romance languages, he covers almost all of that core vocabulary, but the majority of the core vocabulary in the Romance languages is not cognate with English. Thomas throws in Romance cognates as bonus material, a free extra just because it's there. In fact, the cognates in German are often far enough removed that the fact that they're cognates doesn't make them much easier to remember: ich weiss (I know) is cognate with English "wise"; ich will (I want) is cognate with "will" as a noun or as in "willing it"). The bonus of the cognates in MT German is not in making the words in the course easier to remember, but in giving the student a feel for how cognates between the languages work. I found his vague talk of "strings" of consonant changes between the two languages surprisingly effective in enabling me to draw the meaning out of some unknown German words. So cognates really aren't necessary. Yes, Chinese is always going to take a bit longer for an English speaker to learn than German or French, but you could produce something a lot more like MT without much bother at all. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6555 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 5 of 10 15 March 2011 at 1:18am | IP Logged | ||
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I respect aru-aru's opinion, but must agree with Cainntear that a good MT Mandarin course is quite possible. Using
the same cast and vocabulary, and just fixing all the things on my long list would do it. However, it would be much better from a native Mandarin speaker fluent in English. Oh, and I really like the idea of a separate pronunciation course - that would solve several problems. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6555 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 6 of 10 15 March 2011 at 2:19am | IP Logged | ||
Thanks - definitely a mistake on my part. On the others, we'll just have to agree to disagree. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6384 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 10 15 March 2011 at 3:32am | IP Logged | ||
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I've used all three MT Mandarin courses (Basic, Advanced, and the Vocabulary course). I agree with almost all of leosmith's points. Not teaching the tone sandhi was annoying. So was using ge in place of other measure words. And the mnemonics were just terrible, though I think the mnemonics were not for the user but more like a way to prompt the students when they forgot a word without having to say repeatedly, "the word is this."
The best thing about the course is that it is one of the few courses that a real beginner can be comfortable using, unlike say Pimsleur which is quite difficult from the get go. It's a nice, gentle introduction, particularly for tones. When I started using the Basic course, I was feeling overwhelmed with Mandarin, and I think the MT courses were a good way to overcome that feeling. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| aru-aru Triglot Senior Member Latvia Joined 6462 days ago 244 posts - 331 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, Russian | Message 8 of 10 15 March 2011 at 7:00am | IP Logged | ||
A good MT-like course is something doable, I agree, but my main point is, there are many reasons why it still will give you much less skills than a similar course for European languages (don't know about the Finno-Uiguric ones, though) Even when the words similarities are very far off, they are quite often still there. In the cases, when the word has no similar word in English, for me it is still easier to remember a European-sounding word, than a Chinese one. The sounds, for a beginner, will still be alien - tones (an extra layer of stuff to remember), all the j q x sounds, weird vowels, etc. Thus, on the same number of CDs you'll get less vocab no matter what. Grammar, well it's something that needs to be handled very differently. While MT worked mainly on verbs, the new courses shift towards phrasebookishness. Sad part is, since they've produced a MT Chinese course, they're unlikely to come up with a new, better one any time soon. All the hopes are now for Mr. Paul Noble :) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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