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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Felixelus Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6679 days ago 237 posts - 244 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 7 10 August 2008 at 5:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well I've been reading alot about the Michel Thomas method here recently and I've been thinking about using his German course but first I wanted to ask:
- Is his German accent THAT bad? I've heard bad things about his Italian and Spanish accents, his English accent is pretty bad but I heard he was a native speaker of German so I assumed there wouldnt be a problem. Am I mistaken? - Are the students THAT bad? Again, I've been reading that in other courses they are pretty annoying and that their bad pronunciation is going un-corrected. Is this a problem in the German course? I'd like some definite answers to these questions before I make the effort to obtain the course! Any other comments about the MT German are, of course, welcome. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Rollo the Cat Groupie United States Joined 5875 days ago 77 posts - 90 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Russian, Ancient Greek | Message 2 of 7 10 August 2008 at 6:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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Get it.
Forget his accent, whatever it is. You will probably be understood better after the MT course than you would after most others with native German teachers. The students are sort of bad, but it actually helps you in so many ways. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| alfajuj Diglot Senior Member Taiwan Joined 6052 days ago 121 posts - 126 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Taiwanese, French | Message 3 of 7 11 August 2008 at 4:55am | IP Logged | ||
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By the way, although his German accent is probably his best of any of the languages on any of his courses, he isn't a native speaker of German. He's a native speaker of Polish and Yiddish. I don't find his accent to be any problem at all. One must differentiate between an accent and mispronouncing words. He doesn't mispronounce anything.
I definitely recommend MT as your first introduction to the language. You can't go wrong with it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Makk1 Triglot Newbie NorwayRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5791 days ago 8 posts - 8 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, EnglishC1, Spanish Studies: French | Message 4 of 7 13 August 2008 at 6:40am | IP Logged | ||
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I have only had positive experiences regarding Michel Thomas´German course. In fact, I learned more in the 8hour foundation course than in the 2 years of German at High School!
Stronly recommended, and I think that his accent is good enough, since Michel´s point of the program isn´t so much the goal of native pronounciation as it is the achievement of the understandable one, while the main focus lies in the relaxed ingraining of the building blocks of the language. Edited by Makk1 on 13 August 2008 at 6:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| chelovek Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5928 days ago 413 posts - 461 votes 5 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Russian | Message 5 of 7 13 August 2008 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | ||
That's probably more of a reflection of poor learning habits than the quality of the program. You're crazy if you think there's more material in his 8-hour course than in 2 years (even 1 year) of high school German. It's a good program that gets you very comfortable with verbs and verb conjugation, but let's not overexaggerate. Edited by chelovek on 13 August 2008 at 4:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6750 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 7 13 August 2008 at 5:29pm | IP Logged | ||
Who knows? Except for a lot of vocabulary obviously not present in the MT course, it may very well bring up more grammatical concepts than a random text book. I know that we after a few months of French (in high school) got to pretty much the same level as those who had studied it for three years (grades 7 to 9), due to tempo - and method. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kugel Senior Member United States Joined 6379 days ago 497 posts - 555 votes Speaks: English* | Message 7 of 7 13 August 2008 at 6:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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It depends a lot on the textbook. Many high schools offer AP German/Spanish/French, so they obviously teach way more than the foundation/advance courses combined. College level texts designed for reading comprehension fill all of Michel Thomas's verb explanations into 1 or 2 chapters. The MT method is great, but it stops short on content, which is either from laziness/greed from the publisher, lack of vision, or simple incompetence on the author's part.
The German course, by the way, is not so great in comparison to the Spanish, French and Mandarin courses. And there is an error regarding Michel's lesson on 'zu' in regards to verbs. Zu in German deserves lots of explanations, yet Michel totally ignores its many uses for what seems to be a gimmicky pitch about learning a language in a few days. And therein lies the problem: gimmicky sales pitches substituted for academic rigor. There's nothing inherently wrong the MT's method; it just needs to be more complete and not skimp on the language's complexity; and in addition, get of its high horse on starting some learning 'revolution.' Edited by Kugel on 13 August 2008 at 6:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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