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French With Michel Thomas Complete Course CD (Audio CD)
by dammy8248 I'm fortunate enough to have spoken French since I was a child. But in recent years i've not really used it very much and needed a bit of a refresher. I also "learnt" Spanish with the Michel Thomas method a few years ago to compliment my a-level studies. I was impressed to say the least. Allow me to set the scene; ... you're in a classroom with Michel, there's two other students. He starts by teaching you a phrase, I think the phrase in the French one is "C'est posible" meaning it is possible, or this is possible. Then one of the students repeats, then you repeat, and finally Michem says the phrase correctly for reference. In this way one builds up sentences really quickly, such that within an hour of the CD's you're saying things like "would you like to come for dinner with me tonight" and "do you have a reservation for me tonight". This is all very useful. And the method is INCREDIBLE. I've never learnt so fast, and have since gone on to learn Italian and German using this method. There's no FORMAL grammar, or FORMAL vocabulary. But it just kind of builds up without you realising. Its surprising at how many sentences you can form from a combination of a few words. The introduction is VERY forceful that you should not try to learn... and just play along. He even goes as far as to say "no trying to remember outside of this tape" which is a bit odd I always found, but works none the less. I do however, have a few issues with the Michel Thomas method; Firstly, his accent is a bit.... off. I've noticed this with the Spanish tape also. He sounds authentic, but he doesn't really have the same register that a native has. With the French tapes especially, there were times when he spoke worse than a year 9 trying to say "bonjour". Being honest this isnt a HUGE issue since you'll be understood regardless. Secondly, and more importantly to me, the grammar is a bit off. In this 8-hour course. He uses the pronouns, I, he/she, we, they.... because in French he/she/they also doubles as you/you plural in formal settings. The problem with this is that he never alludes to this in the intro CD's. Only if you purchase the advanced course does he persue this. As a french speaker I found it difficult to listen to him teaching after I realised how he was doing it , since, in 90% of situations, nobody speaks in this formal way, it just sounds archaic and old. If you just want some basic French for holidays, then yeah, thats fine. But I do worry about the people trying to use Michel Thomas to study from, since this will leave severe gaps in their knowledge and imbed incorrect information which takes effort to unlearn Thirdly, and on a veeeeery minor note. The two other class members on the french tape are just... terrible. They have really distracting english accents. I don;t know why Michel didn't go out of his way to find students with nice, neutral accents. Overall, I do applaud Michel. I think its a great shame that he's no longer on this earth. His tapes im sure have led soooooo many people to give languge learning a try. Read the complete review |
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French With Michel Thomas Complete Course CD (Audio CD)
by sparkle1004 Michel Thomas is renowned for being one of the worlds greatest language teachers. His original and enjoyable way of teaching languages means that you never have to pick up a pen or do any tedious exercises that make you feel like your back at school. His teaching methods ensure that the language is absorbed rather than learnt, therefore ... acquiring your new language in much the same way as you picked up your mother tongue. Michel's past is as interesting and remarkable as his teaching skills and it is his life experiences which fuelled and developed his passion for teaching. During the Second World War, he was kept in a French concentration and slave labour camp for two horrific years and tortured, only narrowly avoiding being sent to Auschwitz by escaping. It was during this terrifying period that he managed to develop the ability to block out pain and discovered the potential of the human mind. His exceptional ability with languages meant that he was able to adopt many identities and mastered more than ten languages. He has taught celebrities new languages in only three days including Barbara Streisand and Bob Dylan. He sadly died in 2005 but remains an inspiration and mentor to learners everywhere. The French Complete Course is a set of CDs that is designed for complete beginners or those who need to refresh their memories. Even if you already have a grasp on the language, I'd advise that you go from the beginning with this course so that you get used to his methods as all of his teaching is linked together. Over eight hours, he gives you a comprehensive grasp of the structure of the language, enabling you to communicate with confidence. He makes learning even easier by comparing words that are similar in English and French, embedding them in your memory. He is successful because he gives you the sentence structure and vocabulary necessary for holding a conversation in French. Learning takes place in real time so there's no need to rewind or take notes. His voice is soothing and gentle and at times, you are not even consciously listening. You can listen to him speak while you are driving to work, so that you are making good use of your time. It really is that simple. He talks, you listen and before you know it, you can hold a conversation in French. It is better than learning from a book because he teaches you how to pronounce the words properly so that you will be understood when talking. It's interactive and you are involved throughout the process. When he asks you how to say something, you can pause the CD until you have thought of the answer. This method works with your brain and helps you to build up the language in enjoyable steps by thinking for yourself. There's no stress, no anxiety, no homework or grammar exercises. It is a fun and enjoyable way to learn a new language. You learn by listening and speaking and you pick up the language naturally and unforgettably. I have used these CDs to help me become fluent in both Italian and French and even after a few years, I can still remember it. The CDs are available from books stores such as WHSmiths and also online. They're expensive costing around £65 so you may want to try finding a second hand copy or learning from them in their individual sets one at a time, which cost around £20. The only thing that may annoy you about these CD's are the two learners involved. You listen as Michel teaches them the language from scratch and their mistakes can be irritating to listen to. But I think of it as a compliment to your learning if you know the answer while you wait for them to say it! On the negative side, you can sometimes find yourself copying the mistakes! I can't praise Michele Thomas and his techniques strongly enough. An enjoyable and fun way to learn a new language. Read the complete review |
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French With Michel Thomas Complete Course CD (Audio CD)
by dj981 "You are about to experience a new way of learning" Michel Thomas delivers the first words of his French Language course in a distinctly authoritative and sagacious manner. The techniques he has developed, he goes on to say, will involve merely listening and responding. No learning by rote. No writing. No memorising. ... The responsibility for learning rests solely with the teacher, he reassuringly states. As this introduction forms part of a teaser introductory course, originally sold separately from the full content, you'd be forgiven for dismissing this as Americanised sales hyperbole. Perhaps it is, yet it renders the course no less effective. Thomas fully deserves his status as an internationally esteemed linguist and teacher, as this eight-hour Foundation box set and its Advanced supplement left me with a better grasp of French grammar than did five years of schooling. By any standards, Thomas' life was a remarkable one. Polish born of wealthy descent, he studied in Bordeaux and Vienna, before the Second World War witnessed his metamorphosis into a resistance fighter. Even changing his name from Moniek Krosfkof to a more Gallic moniker couldn't spare him from capture, enslavement, and torture by the Nazis, although he would eventually exact his revenge: playing a pivotal role in the capture of thousands of war criminals after the German capitulation. It was only subsequent to this and his emigration to the U.S. that Thomas devised and perfected his teaching methods. At first only working with diplomats, royalty, and celebrities, he opened a series of language institutes in America, before an appearance on a TV documentary in the mid 90's led to the commissioning of his pre-recorded courses. Their reception was incredible. By the point of these recordings, Thomas was into his eighties, yet his abundant enthusiasm for teaching and charismatic persona will quickly invigorate anyone with memories of daydreaming through tedious French lessons as a child. His blueprint is quite simple; indoctrinate the spoken work first, and the written word will follow as a matter of course. When you consider how small children adopt language, it's amazing our school curriculum took so long to realise this. Thomas is emphatic in his insistence that students follow the phonetics of everyday French, passing on all the abbreviations and dropped vowels that render the spoken word so drastically different to its written counterpart. That isn't to say Thomas isn't a stickler for accuracy; grammar, pronunciation and intonation are enforced almost regimentally - hardly surprising for a man who once trained as a Commando. To facilitate a more organic learning experience, Thomas employs a live classroom environment. Two authentic students - one American, one British - form two thirds of a three-student classroom, with the intention that you constitute the final third. The prologue is encouraging; Thomas observes that thousands of words commonly used in modern English are a mere tonal adjustment away from becoming their usable French ancestors. When employing these in conversation, I'd advise checking you're not using one of the numerous false friends found in the Anglo-French translation, but it serves as an initial boost to confidence. The two students, especially the American woman, who I'm sure the publishers found staggering out of a nearby pub, are at the very basic end of French comprehension. Having retained some GCSE French from school, I found the pace quite slow at first, with Thomas battling to introduce simple concepts of differing verb conjugations depending on the subject. The American clearly had no French whatsoever and/or was apparently out of her mind on Gin at the time, and slows the whole process down to the point Thomas almost completely abandons her by the fifth disc. I was literally screaming the answers at her when stopped at some traffic lights one day on the way to work, which was quite embarrassing when I turned to see an adjacent motorist staring back at me with concern. Minor frustrations aside, I found Thomas' informal methods enjoyable. It's ostensibly a grammatical tuition, and vocabulary is never expressly taught in isolation, more as a by-product of the learning process. Thomas builds on the same or similar phrases in English for French translation throughout, with an accompanying correction once the students offer a response. His fussiness with regard to pronunciation can be irritating sometimes; he often repeatedly corrects the students when to my ear there is no difference, but by the conclusion of disc eight, and especially once you progress to his Advanced course, you'll begin to appreciate why. French is a grammatically finicky language in comparison to English, with the scope for beginners to alter the entire tense or meaning of a phrase with a simple error in conjugation or gender. Thomas goes to great lengths to explain the myriad ways to humiliate yourself, and dispenses some useful techniques to circumvent the problems, usually by clipping and merging words as native speakers do. His style won't suit everyone - he'll often meander into discourse on language evolution and the French influence on English - but if you subscribe to his mantra of 'guess vocabulary but never grammar', you'll appreciate that even these monologues are merely reinforcing your comprehension. The art in Thomas' technique lays in the almost complete absence of jargon; instead you'll be trained to process quite complex grammatical structures through abstractions such as diving boards and door handles, without the need to comprehend the meaning of the imperfect tense and suchlike. All this theory is wonderful, but the decisive test for any language course is in practice. Having just bought a house in France, I was looking forward to practicing on our new neighbour, Albert. Usually on a visit, even catching sight of a French person plunges me into a cold sweat, just in case they tried to converse and my complete Brit-abroad ignorance made itself apparent. Anyone with a basic command of a foreign language will know that, when talking to a native, you are one or two carefully rehearsed phrases away from making a prize dick of yourself, usually when they assume you're fluent and respond at their normal incomprehensible tempo. This is the point the conversation breaks down, and you realise that smugly asking them what they thought of the macro-economic policy of the present government was a terrible idea. I saw Albert lingering by the fence, and bravely offered him a 'Ca va?' This was usually the start and end of our conversations, followed by some pointing at the sun and puffing of cheeks, then dementedly smiling at each other in an awkward Mexican stand off of shared unilingual silence. I can't say it was an unerring success, but I at least managed to inform Albert that we were indeed learning French, that we were going home the following Friday, and that we would be demolishing an outbuilding once we had finished decorating the house. Admittedly, most of his replies sailed higher over my head than a passing Ryanair flight to Bordeaux, but I walked back to the house with at least some sense of satisfaction. I felt like I was actually learning conversational French, rather then the usual phrasebook rubbish that's only of practical use when you're looking for the train station or library. I wouldn't say Michel Thomas is going to 'teach you French' in the strictest interpretation of the phrase. I'd also caution that whilst he claims to have extinguished the need for rote learning, I'd argue that learning by definition is a process facilitated by repetition; it's an unavoidable demand of the human brain. I needed to revisit the entire set many times over before the more complicated concepts sunk in, and I'd also advise you to supplement this course with reading French papers or news websites, and scanning Long Wave on your radio for some distant French station. In fairness, Thomas advises you do this as well. Trust me, you'll be surprised at what you've learned, but also intimidated by how much remains. Learning a language properly is a commitment of many years, and this course is merely a baby step on a long and frustrating journey. That said, I couldn't imagine a more engaging and inspiring character to wave you "Au revoir". Read the complete review |
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1 review Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks / Audio Book / Published: May 2012 |
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9 reviews Author: Michel Thomas / Audio Book / Genre: Languages / Narrator: Michel Thomas - Michel Thomas's approach to language learning aims to provide in a few hours a functional working knowledge of a language without books, note-taking or conscious memorizing. This CD provides an eight-hour course in French... |
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Author: Susan Jeffers / Audio Book / Genre: Non-Fiction |
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Editor: Linguaphone / Audio Book / Genre: Languages - Self study language courses for individuals and businesses in more than 30 languages. |
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1 review Author: Geoff Hurst / Audio Book / Genre: Biography / Narrator: Geoff Hurst - The audio version of the Geoff Hurst's autobiography, read by Geoff himself. It covers beyond the "there's some people on the pitch, they think it's over" moment and reveals much about the man himself. |
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Author: Alan Bennett / Audio Book / Genre: Biography - "Untold Stories", Alan Bennett's first major collection of prose since his bestselling "Writing Home", brings together the finest and funniest of his writing over the last ten years. Two recordings feature selected material from "Untold Stories": P... |
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