Re: Harrap's Michel Thomas Anglais Pdf Download
Ashlie Hagenson
Michel Thomas' focus on functional building blocks is great, but the course is in no way worthy of its household name in language education. The excessive use of English to 'explain' the target language and a complete lack of listening comprehension deprive learners of any substance.
I was recently sent a few copies of the Michel Thomas Total Arabic and Perfect Arabic courses from the good folks over at Hodder Education in exchange for an honest review.
Unfortunately, I wanted to include some Q&A with Hodder Education along with this review (I always like to fire off challenging questions to content creators and publishers to get some substantive answers) but Hodder never followed up on my request for additonal information.
Consensus on effective methods changes dramatically over time, and approaches that were extremely popular decades ago (like that of Michel Thomas) may have been rendered obsolete by contemporary research.
Mahmood plays a complimentary role and apart from a few cultural notes that he dictates, his primary purpose appears to be to demonstrate correct pronunciation. The British woman teaches the course and periodically refers to him to demonstrate.
As I always say, listening comprehension is the most difficult part of learning a new language and it takes the longest time to train. You can learn to speak a language very quickly in fact but being able to understand what people are saying when they reply back to you is a skill that takes a lot of time to hone.
I have done Michel Thomas Spanish, and as you did not in fact point out, you become so engrossed in the course that you fail to realize whet he is not teaching you, and that is as you say normal conversation. You do remember what you have learned, he is very good that way, but this and the fact that after doing the course and the advanced course, vocabulary builder, I hardly knew any vocabulary at all.In fact I was trying to think what vocabulary I did know and it was virtually nothing plus I could not understand a word when listening to conversation.
I thereupon turned to Duolingo to cover the above points. Great fun but that, like all these courses, will not make you fluent. You have to live there or have total immersion like with Berlitz.
There is a vocabulary builder there but it mainly shows you how many words are similar in Spanish. Nowhere near good enough.
Celebrity endorsement, seriously, that part annoys me the most are celebrities better because they have national or international coverage? The example you gave with Woody Allen proves how much you should not base a decision on because a celebrity is endorsing a product or service; most likely, that person was paid to endorse it. A celebrity does not have better skill than the average person, and guess what, they can ingest flowers, but their poop will still stink.
What really riled me with your review though, was that you spent the first 13 minutes of a 16 minute interview rambling on about how his wartime service was an irrelevance and how any celebrity who endorsed him was presumably being paid to do so. e.g. Woody Allen, having said he would never forget the French he learned from MT, then had an interpreter in a French language interview. Unless Woody Allen said he had become a fluent speaker, rather than implying he could now take a holiday in France and order dinner or ask for directions to the Metro station, I think your ridiculing him was completely disingenuous and pretty arrogant, which is a great shame if you have a following of people who value your opinion.
It is loved by many polyglots. Not just celebrities. Some examples of polyglots that like to use Michel Thomas with their language routine include Olly Richards, John Fotheringham, Richard Simcott, and many more that are not in any way associated with you.
I was interested to read the review of the MT method and share some of the concerns. I find that I need to write things down and see the written word, versus the spoken word to help to reinforce my learning. I supplement my MT lessons with Duolingo and various written material. Also I would like to be able to download my MT CDs onto an iPod so I am not constrained to having to use the CD player in the car. Can this be done?
I have a very average English speaking skills but MT introductory French CD course for English learners (which I learned a week before the descent to France) saved my life during three years surviving there because French people do not like speak English even when they can speak. But they agree to speak French slowly so listening skills came soon to me based on grammar basis of MT course.
I advise to consider MT courses as a great emergency first aid, life vest.
I mean original Michel Thomas recordings only, can say nothing about his successors.
Regards,
Serge.
Michel is a proven Holocaust survivor whose whole family were murdered, and he fought for the French resistance and US army. Forget the movie stars, he went into poor schools and helped impoverished kids learn languages, and, more importantly, feel good about the process of learning.
If you learn something because you love it, love the process and have enthusiasm, then you learn it much faster and easier, because you are learning with other parts of your self (your heart for example). This is why children learn much faster, that is why you found it easier to learn a language when a girl was involved. That is what Michel Thomas is picking up on - reducing dependency on the mind.
tried various language learning course in spanish while on the basic spanish
course i was fine but as soon as i went on to the intermediate level i got totally lost and gave up a friend gave me the michel thomas spanish cds and all i can say is amazing i cannot put the cds down and i will be going on to the advance level soon for some reason it works for me at school i was in a class for slow learners and was told i would not be learning a foreign language because i would have enough with english i can only speak as i have found personaly.
This year we relaunched the product - putting it in eco-friendly packaging, as well as putting it online, but also, being more specific about what the product does and does not do. We have removed the celebrity endorsements. Your review was helpful in giving me the ammunition to make this update. So thank you.
Because you start speaking immediately and thus USING a new language. You are figuring out a language and producing it by thinking through answers. By hearing your own progress, you are motivated to continue. And motivation is often the key ingredient in successful language learning that should not be overlooked.
Yes, there is a lot of English. This is for the benefit of the self-study learner, but also because the whole method is about revealing what you already know about a new language and relying on English as a base for cognates, mnemonics and also to reduce stress. Not everyone wants to walk into an immersion classroom on day 1!
As the publisher for Michel Thomas Method courses for the past eight years, I have had countless emails and phone calls from people telling me how it has worked for them, even changed their lives. And they all say how it helped them COMMUNICATE and SPEAK. To put words together and USE the language. We have run pilots in schools that quantitatively show a significant improvement in speaking and confidence in language learning when using Michel Thomas Method courses.
In May 2004, after investigation and recommendations from veterans with whom he fought, former members of the CIC, and Senator John McCain and New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, the US Army granted Thomas the Silver Star, the third highest medal for combat valour. He was awarded this at a ceremony at the new second world war memorial in Washington. Thomas was also recognised at the US Holocaust Memorial in a ceremony honouring the liberators of the camps.
I am not sure about the Michel Thomas Arab course - you might have a point there. However I used his method (together with Pimsleur) for learning Spanish and French and found it really useful. I did not learn the languages in a week but after a couple of weeks with focus it helped me a lot.
The issue with the teacher correcting the students and hurting their self-esteem is garbage. If you are worried about that I would suggest that everyone go and swallow some toughen up pills. Too much emphasis in these days on everyone being offended instead of getting on with things.
I found that when I was in Russia I was able to think in Russian. And I like the focus on getting things grammatically correct. If you know how to speak things in a correct grammatical sense then people will understand you once you tweak with the accent, etc.
Incidentally, actors spend a considerable amount of time learning lines and therefore are very self disciplined. Those who study the Stanislavski acting will attach an emotion and motivation behind the lines that make them more real and therefore much easier to recall as written (or near enough).
For me the question always is does it work. I play in a band and we go to Europe to play in Germany and France. One summer it was France so I got the first 8 hours of French. Eventually Found myself with a few of my band colleagues in a French Bar/Cafe surrounded by Frenchmen/women. I turned to a lady near to me who was eying up my trumpet. And asked in French would she like to play it for me because I am too tired after playing all afternoon.
A good two years later I played the CD of APU again and remebered my French experience form years earlier and thought i will give MT a go. I bought the 8 hour CD and was hooked. did the whole lot from Foundation to advanced and then the Rose Lee Hayden ones - )those last ones I did not like.
So how did it work out? Well after doing all the courses over a 5 month period - I started to read El Pais and El Confidencial.
Plus I started a East Lothian Council Beginners Spanish course and within two weeks teacher moved me to Post beginners and within two weeks that teacher told me I was too advance for her class and moved me to intermediate - commenting that my accent was really good. So I stayed there for a year and moved on to advanced.