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The "Michel Thomas Method"-whatever it is

 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies (Topic Closed Topic Closed) Post Reply
Poll Question: Are you interested in it?
Poll Choice Votes Poll Statistics
4 [17.39%]
4 [17.39%]
13 [56.52%]
2 [8.70%]
This topic is closed, no new votes accepted

37 messages over 5 pages: 1 24 5  Next >>
Peregrinus
Senior Member
United States
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149 posts - 273 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 17 of 37
22 September 2012 at 10:56pm | IP Logged 
emk gives really good advice on coming up with a short synopsis of the proposed methodology. Going off the wikipedia article on the MT method you would get:

1) no notes/memorization/stress
2) use of interesting material
3) short words and phrases to be used as building blocks
4) patented MT method on #3 of teacher prompt/student1 response/student2 response/teacher reinforcement
5) review of material throughout the course to use principle of shaping student response
6) use of cognates if available
7) verb conjugation and modal verb construction
8) relatively small vocabulary introduced.


Now the problem is that MT courses are designed as introductory foundation courses, and many here use them prior to using Assimil, FSI or another longer more in depth program. But to extend the methods above to such a full-fledged course on its own is the challenge, and one I suspect cannot be done without significant admixture of methods used in Assimil and FSI and other methods popularized in this forum.

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Owen_Richardson
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Canada
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Speaks: English*

 
 Message 18 of 37
23 September 2012 at 12:47am | IP Logged 
Peregrinus wrote:

Which necessarily means this is a theory that cannot provide a method for self-learners to use to teach themselves, but rather only be useful to course designers. That likely significantly cuts down on the number of forum readers who will be interested.


Correct. Part of my intention here was to find out whether there would still be a significant number of readers left who WOULD be interested in it even if it's more immediately useful to course designers.

For instance, I'm messing around with Japanese as a test case myself right now. Maybe there are people here who kinda know ABOUT Japanese in an school sort of way (abstract declarative knowledge), but want to learn to actually SPEAK it, and might be interested in trying to start leaning it by collaborating on putting together a TOI-guided Japanese course.

But I don't know. I didn't intend to bring it up yet.

Peregrinus wrote:
How about instead of focusing on long-winded analysis and conclusions that may seem right and logical to you (and I'm not saying they are not actually), but may not to others based on differing premises or interpretations, coming up instead with a series of methods that can be used to design a course. Like the patented MT method of:

a) teacher prompt
b) dumb student response and teacher correction
c) bright student response and teacher praise
d) teacher reinforcement.


Yeah I've read the actual patents for the MT method, and that's the thing: They actual only cover a superficial feature of the recorded lessons that is actually *detracting* from their effectiveness and efficiency.

Teaching a student in live time would allow Thomas to calibrate his pacing. But once you've demonstrated a particular sequence definitely works in live lessons, the effectiveness of the recorded courses would be improved by *removing* the student responses from the recording entirely, in order to streamline the pacing, increasing the flow of the learner's response rate.

(Actually, if you really wanted to polish it up properly you would note all the spots where the students made a mistake, and edit them to fix the misteaching that *caused* the mistake in the first place.)

Those abcd points completely miss the point. You could easily follow them and still make a horrible course. And if you knew what you were doing, your real best efforts WOULDN'T follow them.

So....? Does that affect the point you wanted to make?

Besides which, WHAT "long-winded analysis and conclusions"? I certainly have done so in the past, and noticed for myself that, surprise surprise, it doesn't work very well.

But I started this thread just asking people what their pre-existing ideas and feelings about MT were, and get a feel of the distribution of interest.

So it just seems really unfair to slam me for "focusing on long-winded analysis and conclusions" when... I wasn't?

Edited by Owen_Richardson on 23 September 2012 at 2:42am

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Owen_Richardson
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Canada
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 Message 19 of 37
23 September 2012 at 2:08am | IP Logged 
emk wrote:

Can you explain, in a few paragraphs, what you think makes MT courses work?


...Maybe. Yes and no. It depends on whether you want a vague description that you could follow to the letter and still produce something that sucks, or an actual complete technical definition that forces you to succeed in making something awesome if you follow it.

The thing is that everything in the MT method that contributes to its unique efficiency is an approximation of the Theory of Instruction (capitalized cuz that's literally its rather unimaginative name).

It's been said that "Theory of Instruction: Principles and Applications” is to education what Newton's "Principia" was to physics.

And nobody gets excited when you just tell them Newton's three laws of motion. They *should*, but they don't.

I scanned the preface to the 1991 edition here. Check it out:

Page one

Page two

(Also I think someone scanned an old editon to a PDF once?)

But it IS a dense, difficult, academic read.

(Obviously, it should be a DI program itself --- meta-DI, if you will. It’s basically the working notes they’d need to start developing that program, but then they just hacked it into an academic thesis/textbook thing, because they were more focused on developing programs, supporting school sites, doing research, etc. They just wrote this book kinda in their spare time over a period of ten years, apparently largely for the personal satisfaction of proving a point. It’s unfortunate, but it makes sense once you understand the historical context of how the authors perceived their choices.)

It's a LOT easier to crack into if you've read the introductory open module at Athabasca University, though.

And I can list plenty more resources, but...

Well, the basic point is that back when *I* first used MT and got really excited about it, and wanted to know how it actually worked, I wish someone had directly pointed me towards DI and explained that is was The Thing.

That when I first started to study the theory, it would seem like a ridiculously rigorous and picky logical dissection of the most basic concepts, but that it would all connect and build up soon enough.

That I would start out like:
“Huh?”
“Okay, I get it now. But... so what?”

But then break through to:

“...Holy shit, the engineering possibilities!”
”This. Changes. EVERYTHING!”


So I'm basically wondering if I might be able to find some people here who are like my past self and help them out. Then they can read up, I can help by explaining tricky bits, and finally we can get to work making courses together. Cuz things are funner with collaborators.

But again I didn't intend to MAKE that pitch in this thread. All I asked about was what people's thoughts and feelings on MT are, and how much they generally care about the subject period.
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Owen_Richardson
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Canada
Joined 4324 days ago

14 posts - 19 votes
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 20 of 37
23 September 2012 at 2:21am | IP Logged 
Peregrinus wrote:
emk gives really good advice on coming up with a short synopsis of the proposed methodology. Going off the wikipedia article on the MT method you would get:

1) no notes/memorization/stress
2) use of interesting material
3) short words and phrases to be used as building blocks
4) patented MT method on #3 of teacher prompt/student1 response/student2 response/teacher reinforcement
5) review of material throughout the course to use principle of shaping student response
6) use of cognates if available
7) verb conjugation and modal verb construction
8) relatively small vocabulary introduced.


Now the problem is that MT courses are designed as introductory foundation courses, and many here use them prior to using Assimil, FSI or another longer more in depth program. But to extend the methods above to such a full-fledged course on its own is the challenge, and one I suspect cannot be done without significant admixture of methods used in Assimil and FSI and other methods popularized in this forum.



I am reminded of "Socrates" on reading mastery from Engelmann's personal site.

Socrates on reading mastery wrote:


Socrates: Perhaps a story will clarify the issue. A man has gone to
an undiscovered gold field with two other men. Here’s what he said about
the location of the field. “We left Tucson and drove for several hours in
the valley. Then we switched to dirt roads and made a sharp left turn.
The road kept winding up the hills until we came to a flat place by a small
stream. That’s where the gold was.” Here’s the question: If everything he
said is true, does that make his directions clear enough to cause
somebody to find the gold?

Rosenthal: In the first place, if he knew how to get there, why
would he provide such a cryptic and useless set of directions?

Socrates: He’s blind so he could not attend to some details that
are essential for someone being able to take the route he described. But
here’s the point: If we knew exactly how to get to that gold field, we
would see that the blind man’s directions correlated perfectly with the
more-detailed directions. We would see that we did drive several hours
from Tucson in the valley, switched to dirt roads and so forth. The only
difference between the blind man’s directions and those that articulate
which road we take first, which direction, how far, and so forth is that the
clear directions have the technical detail that is needed to cause
someone to find the gold field
.


Ie, those wikipedia-derived points are blind man's directions. They correlate pretty well with features of actual useful directions, and yet are pretty much useless. Because they lack technical detail.

Edited by Owen_Richardson on 23 September 2012 at 2:31am

1 person has voted this message useful



Owen_Richardson
Newbie
Canada
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14 posts - 19 votes
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 21 of 37
23 September 2012 at 2:32am | IP Logged 
And who chose "HELL. YES."?

I would like to talk to you. =D
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Peregrinus
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4252 days ago

149 posts - 273 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 22 of 37
23 September 2012 at 3:38am | IP Logged 
Owen_Richardson wrote:

Ie, those wikipedia-derived points are blind man's directions. They correlate pretty well with features of actual useful directions, and yet are pretty much useless. Because they lack technical detail.



Well, to my own surprise, you have actually managed to get some serious interested responses including my own. But I suspect that whether you continue to get such interaction depends in large measure on getting your points across succinctly. If you insist on bogging us down in long, long philosophical discussions and minute readings of reams of studies that you have read, then this or a similar thread will likely peter out.

So I suggest that to the degree absolutely necessary to include "technical detail", such detail be about implementation and not wordy reasoning and jargon. Why not start with the first level of an outline to which can be added further sub-levels, and keeping each point to a sentence or two and reserving sources for footnotes and saving longer reasoning for a companion essay (that probably not many will read or wish to discuss).
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iguanamon
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Virgin Islands
Speaks: Ladino
Joined 5022 days ago

2237 posts - 6731 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French)

 
 Message 23 of 37
23 September 2012 at 4:25am | IP Logged 
Michael Thomas, Assimil, Pimsleur, Rosetta Stone, Paul Noble, Madrigal, Benny Lewis, ling-Q, subliminal suggestion, hypnotism and all the other programs and courses out there available to learn languages, combined, are not as good as the simple, strong desire, the deep yearning and dogged determination- the hard work- needed to learn a language. No ONE program or course will get you to the promised land. People have been promised that for years- hence the frustration we see here on a daily basis from folks who can't understand why Assimil, Pimsleur, Michael Thomas, formal classes et al still haven't got them to language proficiency, fluency or whatever you want to call it.

There are no shortcuts, no silver bullets and no one course out there that will take you there. All these courses and programs are just tools to use. There's no substitute for blood, sweat and- yes Assimil fans- toil- and tears, engaging the language with native material and speakers in language learning. Combine these qualities and efforts with the tools that work for you and you'll get somewhere. You can sing Michael Thomas' praises til the cows come home and it's not going to get me to try it. I can't stand the "students" or the method. It may work well for some people. I'm not one of them. Snake oil salesmen never get very far here. To paraphrase Harry Truman: We're all from Missouri. You have to show us.



Edited by iguanamon on 23 September 2012 at 4:30am

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Peregrinus
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4252 days ago

149 posts - 273 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 24 of 37
23 September 2012 at 5:34am | IP Logged 
@iguanamon,

While of course most here would agree that no one course gets you to the "promised land", some methods of instruction/learning are obviously more effective for different types of learners. Also I think there are plenty of shortcuts, but which apply on a smaller scale to only parts of learning a language, rather than shortcutting the entire process globally.

As to MT's methods, verb/auxiliary verb buildups and transformations are to me valuable exercises though not unique to his courses. What is different is that they are done over a more limited scope of vocabulary, similar to Synergy Spanish, the point of which is to focus more on the verbs. Seeing verbs as a backbone gets a lot of the grammatical "hard stuff" over early excepting case systems and allow later concentration on vocabulary acquisition and learning usage.

Regarding MT's implementation in audio only, a similar and much more in depth book only alternative is Madrigal's Magic Key series. His use of cognates as a shortcut is also used in other works, and Seymour Resnick's Essential Spanish Grammar comes to mind with its appendix of around 2400 cognates which he states is one of the few shortcuts in language learning.

I don't think we disagree here and the more limited use of "shortcut" that I am using is probably a close equivalent of your use of "tool".




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