On 2010-02-27 Michael JR Jose, the UK wrote: This is an effective way of learning standard polite French, and what is covered works well on twenty-first century shopworkers and taxi drivers of Brussels in my experience. Unfortunately the hotel staff will switch to their superior English as they will not want to take the time while you work your basic French sentences out, but even here a little French cannot hurt! The course consists of eight discs, with Michel Thomas training two students, one rather quick on the uptake and one very slow. Each disc is broken into ten or eleven tracks of about six minutes each, and it is quite easy to work with the students as a silent partner, stopping and starting the tracks before they give their answers. Michel Thomas then gives the correct answer after the student answer to enable you to check yours. There are also two excellent review discs with just Michel Thomas moving rapidly through all the questions and answers so you can revise quickly. The strength of this system is that it avoids most technical terms but concentrates on the basic high frequency grammar and verbs, with the myriad extra little modifiers, pronouns, and prepositions that abound in French. There are relatively few nouns, but essentials are quite well covered. To build vocabulary you will need a dictionary, and I would also recommend: ´French Key Words: The Basic 2,000 Word Vocabulary in a Hundred Units Arranged by Frequency, with Comprehensive French and English Indexes´, by Xavier-Yves Escande, pub. Oleander Press.
The stress is on gaining understanding listening and speaking with accuracy, even spellings are only given orally. The problem is with the students, who are very mismatched, and the fast student slows down his learning pace in sympathy to enable the slow one to keep up. This is pretty annoying by the fifth disc, but you have to bear with it. Michel Thomas also has a bizarre and forceful predilection for unhelpful and incidental mnemonics which do not actually reinforce the meaning of the word, eg, the word for ´to tell´ is such a ´dear´ word - spelled ´dire´. This is partly an endearing idiosyncrasy, and partly a distraction. As for pace of learning, I found that sometimes I could only grasp one track at time, and at others I flew through five. I also found that I could learn better early in the mornings, much to my surprise. Overall, if I pushed it, I could cover a disc a day, usually a disc in two days.
A few highlights from each disc may be in order, please excuse my clumsy transliterations. DISC ONE will enable you to say: ´I would like to go to France for the holiday´ - ´je voudrais aller en France pour les vacances´. DISC TWO: I must know where it is - je dois savoir ou c´est. DISC THREE: Are you going to be here? - allez-vous etre ici?. DISC FOUR: how is it going/how are you? - comment ca va?; and, Nobody knows where it is - personne sait ou c´est. DISC FIVE: When can you send it to him? - quand pouvez-vous le lui envoyer? DISC SIX: I don´t have the time/no problem/there is someone here/is there a message? - j´n´ai´pa´l temps/pas´n problem/il y a quel´qu´n ici/est-qu´il´yan message. DISC SEVEN: shall we go? - on va partir? - and the three forms of future tense. DISC EIGHT: simple past tense; and use of auxiliary verbs to avoid having to remember how to conjugate infinitive verbs: I can see/I must.../I want... - je peux voir/je dois.../je veux... . The distinction between ´tu´ and ´vous´ is not covered, and the conjugation ´they are x-ing´ is not much covered, or the familiar ´tu´ conjugation - eg, ´tu as´. . And summed up by saying MICHEL THOMAS FRENCH INTRODUCTORY COURSE. Currently French With Michel Thomas: The Fastest Way to Learn a Language (Deluxe Language Courses with Michel Thomas) has an overall rating of 8 over 10.
French With Michel Thomas: The Fastest Way to Learn a Language (Deluxe Language Courses with Michel Thomas) can also be found in the following searches:
McGraw-Hill claimed Anyone can learn a language with Michel Thomas--The World´s Greatest Language Teacher. No books. No writing. No drills. And nothing to memorize--ever! With his unique program, Michel Thomas has taught celebrities, corporate leaders, and schoolchildren--with immediate and amazing results. Now the Language Teacher to the Stars invites everyone to join his class! Using French with Michel Thomas, listeners learn in real time--fully understanding as they go along, turning words into short sentences, and then building them into longer, more complex sentences, until they are conversing in French. Michel will have listeners formulating their own thoughts and sentences from the very beginning, even if they have never succeeded in learning a language before. Michel has used this very method to teach celebrities such as Mel Gibson, Woody Allen, Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty, and Princess Grace of Monaco.
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