Lose Your Accent In 28 Days With CD-ROM And AudioCD.rarl
Quirino Rico
If you choose to purchase the book (option #1 on the drop-down menu above), you get an attractive perfect-bound paperback book with color covers, plus an accompanying audio CD. Page count: 28. Approximate running time: 30 minutes. Price: $29.95 plus shipping. Priority shipping in the U.S. is approximately $6, with delivery in 2-4 business days. For priority shipping outside the U.S., costs vary and shipping time is 6-12 business days. Express shipping is also available: 1-2 business days to most locations in the U.S. and 3-6 business days to other countries. PLEASE NOTE: We often use Amazon as a shipping partner, as it is the largest and most trusted online marketplace. Rest assured Paul Meier Dialect Services will fill your order and provide customer support, but your book/CD might ship directly from Amazon.
BEFORE buying - know these facts! Check this Review!Michel Thomas was one of the world's most famous language teachers when he died in 2005.
And for his private sessions he was one of the most expensive, with his website advertising his week long sessions (well five days actually) at the bargain basement price of a mere $30,000 for the training. He built a long list of well heeled celebrity clients and eventually released versions of his courses on audio CD. His star-studded cast included Princess Grace of Monaco! Wow!
The Michel Thomas audio CD's are available in numerous languages and give one some good practical methods to grab the basics of a language and to build confidence in speaking a new foreign language.
Overall however with their emphasis on being purely audio they are very much one dimensional and while useful for some aspects of language learning, they need to be supplemented with other forms of language tuition. Very easy to make from a manufacturer's viewpoint! No complex multimedia stuff, but great for learning a language in the car, or on your iPods.
I listened to the Michel Thomas French CD Audio Course 1, and rated it as worth having as a part of you language learning stable of tools and can say that it had some very good points.
However I should firstly issue a....Word of Caution about the Michel Thomas French Audio CD Language CourseListen to some native speakersFor the Michel Thomas French audio course I do also add a word of caution.
Despite Michel studying at the Sorbonne University in Paris, and his ability to speak French, his accent is not a native French accent. And for any French student to adopt as good an accent as possible, one needs to listen to native speakers. One can also watch French speakers (TV, films, videos, etc), and watch and mimic their mouthes, facial expressions and actions when they talk.
It is therefore important to add a component of your learning which includes extensive tracts from native speakers.
According to Wikipedia Mr Thomas was Polish and spent some of his youth in Germany, going to France in his twenties. This comes clearly through in his accent.
Michel Thomas speaks French with a Polish accent (with possibly some German into the mix - but I don't know). Like his strong personality the Polish accent emerges strongly with his French, and his English. So if you want to speak French with a Polish/German accent then mimic Michel Thomas's accent.
It would be like learning English with a Polish/English accent. Would you want this? If a friend of yours was learning English would you get him to practise his/her accent with a teacher with a heavy Polish accent? When most courses out there use native speakers!?
OK, so how do you get around this?
What is somewhat disconcerting is that nowhere on the Michel Thomas French CD, nowhere on the packaging, nowhere in the audio course do his publishers make this clear. Nowhere do the publishers state "The teacher speaks French but is not a native speaker. . ." or words to that effect. Furthermore, on the course I listened to there was no native speaker to back him up, or to put the students on the right track.
I cannot comment on the accent on the Michel Thomas Spanish course, Michel Thomas Italian, Michel Thomas Portuguese, Michel Thomas German course or the Michael Thomas anything else. [See Addendum below - ed]
I would be interested in any feedback!
But if you are considering one of these courses I would strongly recommend that you get a native speaker to have a listen to somebody else's copy of the course to give him a rating on his accent.
Use his teachings for practical conversation and learning some structure, and some handy hints about conversing in the language, but get a native speaker to teach you how to pronounce words. Do not use his French course as your only learning material.Addendum: Michel Thomas German courseI got some native German speakers to listen to Michel Thomas's German course and they rate him as a native German speaker. You can therefore use his German lessons in the full confidence of knowing that he has a native German accent.Michel Thomas Language Learning TechniquesThe Thomas technique concentrates heavily on cognates, that is using words that are similar in French and in English. This is great for giving students a level of confidence, and some useful tricks.
Overall - a good thing to have in the language learning stable... Just go in with your eyes open.And here is a reply from a ReaderThis reply is from Jared on 05 January 2008.
I read your review of Michel Thomas's French. The thick accent is indeed a pitfall, although the Russian, Arabic, and Mandarin courses all use native speakers.
I pretty much agree with everything you've written about Michel Thomas, but I think you failed to mention the strongest area of the program; and for this I will take an excerpt from a language learning forum:
The central underlying secret to Michel Thomas's technique existed in two parts -
2. secondly putting it together in a way the students could understand. - JaredSusan reckons his Italian accent is pretty close ...September 09, 2010
Regarding your comments on Michel Thomas' language learning techniques and accents. I have undertaken the Italian courses and have found Michel's accent to be very close to native Italian - and I can say that with confidence as my father is Italian and I practised what I learnt with him.
The course is aimed at people who want to SPEAK as opposed to read. That is why it does not use diagrams etc. But all the courses have accompanying booklets containing the course contents i.e. the dialogue. So if someone really wants to see how what they are saying is written, it is provided for them.
If you read who they say each course is intended for you will see that they never state it is a substitute for serious academic study. I cannot comment about any other of the languages on offer, but I am much more confident with my Italian and and am now at Year 4 GCSE level having been 'bumped up' from year 1 after doing the Michel Thomas method - and my Italian teacher is a native speaker also. - Susan
Kevin says: That is great to hear. I wonder how he could manage an Italian accent, but not lose the Polish brogue with his English and his French. Amazing given his 'world's greatest language teacher' label.
More on Michel Thomas's Italian accent...September 10, 2010
The reason is simple. Italian phonology is relatively easier than English or French phonology. It is a phonetic language.
I don't speak Italian, and my native language is very distant from European languages, but when I try to read Italian (without understanding of course) native speakers say that I sound like an immigrant who has lived in Italy for more than 40 years. On the other hand, my father is an English language professor, specializing in Phonetics and Phonology, and yet his accent is far from native.
English is very difficult phonetically and phonologically! - Sky Comet
Add your Comments on this Michel Thomas French Language Course Review and Language LearningShare your opinions on this!
If you understand what the World Wide Web is, you are not far from understanding the term blog, a contraction of the words web and log. As these words imply, a blog is created on the World Wide Web and represents someone's "log" of his or her thoughts and activities. A blog is nothing more than a web page. You read a blog with your web browser. Just like any other web page, a blog can be easily accessible or maddeningly inaccessible. Fortunately, for the reader who is blind, many (maybe even most) blogs are wordy and as delightful to read as a web page from the web's early days--before navigation bars (and other technologies) cluttered it up.
For example, if the document you happen to be scanning is a favorite book or newspaper article and there just is not enough time to read it right then, all you need to do is save the file and come back to it later. To save a file, you press the Menu key, and when "file" is spoken, you press the Right arrow to access the list of items in the File menu. Then, you press the Down arrow to scroll through the list of items, which includes New Document, Open Document, Open from CD, Close, Save, and Delete. When you hear "save," you press the Selector button. Since there is no keyboard to type in a file name, the SARA prompts you to use your own voice to speak the name you wish to give the file. To open the file and read it at a later time, you follow the same process to access the file menu and select the Open Document option this time. You are now in a list of files, and you hear your own voice read the names of the files as you scroll through the items with the down and up arrows. You then press Select when you hear the name of the file that you want to open.
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