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Michel Thomas, Assimil or Pimsleur?

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37 messages over 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 
Cainntear
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Scotland
linguafrankly.blogsp
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Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh

 
 Message 33 of 37
02 August 2010 at 1:55pm | IP Logged 
zorglub wrote:
I'll trigger Caintears throwing lightnings at me , but I find PImsleur might be a better start that will optimise your pronunciation.
After Pimsleur , MT is probably very useful giving you more insight into the structure and inderstanding of the grammar.

As I always say, there's two elements to pronunciation: phonemics and accent.

My problem with Pimsleur is that it focuses purely on accent, so while you can get very impressive results early on, you can get caught in a trap by building this accent on a faulty phonemic map.

Thomas starts with phonemics and then leaves it up to the student to learn the accent on top of that. (He could hardly focus on accent, what with the fact he's no good at them!) To me, that's the right way round. It's like painting: painting lots of detailed areas well is great, but stitching them together rarely works. But draw a few scrappy lines in the right proportions and it's a recognisable picture, and you can progressively refine your technique until you can put the detail on top of the framework.

Edit: with the exception of the French course, where he fails to properly teach the distinction between certain phonemes (en/on/un springs to mind, and of course le/la -- what was he on when he decided that you could pronounce those two identically??!??!??).

Edited by Cainntear on 02 August 2010 at 1:58pm
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zorglub
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France
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 Message 34 of 37
02 August 2010 at 3:01pm | IP Logged 
;p), this is a wet lightning. I was sheltering against worse.

I know this argument of yours. It makes sense.
Well I don't have this problem. I know some don't .
What i'm not certain about is about the ability of those who hear a word , repeat it and fail to stress it at all or on the right place or have wrong phoneme pronunciation: I'm not certain they will do better on MT than on Pimsleur

===================
Cainntear wrote:
zorglub wrote:
I'll trigger Caintears throwing lightnings at me , but I find PImsleur might be a better start that will optimise your pronunciation.
After Pimsleur , MT is probably very useful giving you more insight into the structure and inderstanding of the grammar.

As I always say, there's two elements to pronunciation: phonemics and accent.

My problem with Pimsleur is that it focuses purely on accent, so while you can get very impressive results early on, you can get caught in a trap by building this accent on a faulty phonemic map.

Thomas starts with phonemics and then leaves it up to the student to learn the accent on top of that. (He could hardly focus on accent, what with the fact he's no good at them!) To me, that's the right way round. It's like painting: painting lots of detailed areas well is great, but stitching them together rarely works. But draw a few scrappy lines in the right proportions and it's a recognisable picture, and you can progressively refine your technique until you can put the detail on top of the framework.

Edit: with the exception of the French course, where he fails to properly teach the distinction between certain phonemes (en/on/un springs to mind, and of course le/la -- what was he on when he decided that you could pronounce those two identically??!??!??).

1 person has voted this message useful



michaelmichael
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5068 days ago
167 posts - 202 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: French

 
 Message 35 of 37
02 August 2010 at 5:23pm | IP Logged 
Cainntear wrote:
zorglub wrote:
I'll trigger Caintears throwing lightnings at me , but I find PImsleur might be a better start that will optimise your pronunciation.
After Pimsleur , MT is probably very useful giving you more insight into the structure and inderstanding of the grammar.

As I always say, there's two elements to pronunciation: phonemics and accent.

My problem with Pimsleur is that it focuses purely on accent, so while you can get very impressive results early on, you can get caught in a trap by building this accent on a faulty phonemic map.

Thomas starts with phonemics and then leaves it up to the student to learn the accent on top of that. (He could hardly focus on accent, what with the fact he's no good at them!) To me, that's the right way round. It's like painting: painting lots of detailed areas well is great, but stitching them together rarely works. But draw a few scrappy lines in the right proportions and it's a recognisable picture, and you can progressively refine your technique until you can put the detail on top of the framework.

Edit: with the exception of the French course, where he fails to properly teach the distinction between certain phonemes (en/on/un springs to mind, and of course le/la -- what was he on when he decided that you could pronounce those two identically??!??!??).


In regard to pronunciation, he would pull the little words into the subject pronoun, or into the pas. i wasn't crazy about this all the time, but i do it for je ne. he would even pull in the un/une and put it on the ending of the verbs. I'm glad to at least know about it.

I felt pimsleur reinforced MT because i was always deconstructing and reconstructing the sentence. I think I'm getting more out of it than just phrases. I've read that some people feel pimsleur is a glorified phrase book, but for every non-idiomatic expression that you hear, you are constantly getting input/examples to test your MT knowledge. With positive evidence and negative evidence, you can also make additional inferences and connections (aha moments). I would agree with you if you just used pimsleur, or used pimsleur first, but with some preparation, it is more than a glorified phrase book.
1 person has voted this message useful



Cainntear
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Scotland
linguafrankly.blogsp
Joined 5822 days ago
4399 posts - 7687 votes 
Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh

 
 Message 36 of 37
02 August 2010 at 6:08pm | IP Logged 
zorglub wrote:
What i'm not certain about is about the ability of those who hear a word , repeat it and fail to stress it at all or on the right place or have wrong phoneme pronunciation: I'm not certain they will do better on MT than on Pimsleur


The reason people have this problem is that their brains expect to hear something that fits the pattern of their native language, so mangle the input to match it. Thomas's overexaggeration makes the stress so obvious that the brain shouldn't be able to filter it out... yet the students on the recording still manage to do it and need to be corrected, and that correction brings it to the listener's attention. Pimsleur leaves the stress at a normal level, so you're free to ignore it. I kept saying "resumiem" instead of "rosumiem" in the Pimsleur Polish because my brain was "hearing" the familiar word "resume" (albeit in the American pronunciation) even though that wasn't what was being said.
1 person has voted this message useful



zorglub
Pentaglot
Senior Member
France
Joined 6811 days ago
441 posts - 504 votes 
1 sounds
Speaks: French*, English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: German, Arabic (Written), Turkish, Mandarin

 
 Message 37 of 37
02 August 2010 at 11:30pm | IP Logged 
This sounds appealing and logical.

Did you actually notice that in users of both courses ?

Note that I have a high esteem for both courses, it 's just that I did not know about MT when I tasted and loved Pimsleur.

MT works well as I saw with My wife and son, although those were not courses with ze Master in person. They were remasterised versions with a native speaker and I suppose, actors for the students, using a script of the Master's course: English and Spanish for French speakers. I did not notice they put a great emphasis when stressing the words. I liked MT ARabic and Chinese which I know you dislike. There is quite a bit if rubbish in them at times but they helped me a lot in Arabic and showed me I can learn some Mandarin when I have some more time. I don't think MT Mandarin gives a quarter of what MT Spanish provides, but this is another famlily of languages.




Cainntear wrote:
zorglub wrote:
What i'm not certain about is about the ability of those who hear a word , repeat it and fail to stress it at all or on the right place or have wrong phoneme pronunciation: I'm not certain they will do better on MT than on Pimsleur


The reason people have this problem is that their brains expect to hear something that fits the pattern of their native language, so mangle the input to match it. Thomas's overexaggeration makes the stress so obvious that the brain shouldn't be able to filter it out... yet the students on the recording still manage to do it and need to be corrected, and that correction brings it to the listener's attention. Pimsleur leaves the stress at a normal level, so you're free to ignore it. I kept saying "resumiem" instead of "rosumiem" in the Pimsleur Polish because my brain was "hearing" the familiar word "resume" (albeit in the American pronunciation) even though that wasn't what was being said.



1 person has voted this message useful



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