Michel Thomas Foundation Course: Spanish (Michel Thomas Series)

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Customer Reviews:

• 
  2007-08-26
  By Philip Mayo,
  Having decided, a little over two years ago, and fairly late in life, to try to learn Spanish, I started buying self tuition courses, text books, dictionaries, phrase books - the works basically. Luckily my blind trawl of instructional material also brought in, totally by chance, the Michel Thomas 8 CD course.
  
  Initially it was very difficult for a total novice to rate specific methods of instruction or individual courses, but as time went by some things became clear to me. Such as:
  
  1> To the average person (to me for certain) learning another language is NOT EASY!!
  
  2> Too many of the teaching products available, perhaps all, (even Michel Thomas) come with promises of early / instant / painless success. Such claims are obviously designed to encourage us to buy the product. Such is the way of marketing. Such claims are used to sell everything from special golf clubs which will bring you into single figures within a month to aftershave guaranteed to, well ..... .We know this stuff is all NONSENSE (don't we?).
  
  3> These ridiculously optimistic claims attaching to most language instructional products have the effect of building up in us unreasonable expectations of early proficiency. The truth is that, for the vast majority of us, the forecasted early proficiency IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.
  
  4> Because of these unachievable expectations, what is likely to happen is that in the absence of the anticipated progress we will become hugely disappointed in ourselves. We will lose confidence. We will feel that we are incapable. The book, tape, CD, DVD promised us success in three months. And after perhaps 6 months of fairly diligent work we are not very far advanced at all. We are very likely to feel things like "I can't do this. I must be a fool. I must be unable to learn a new language. There is no point in continuing. I'm giving up".
  
  My advice is to BEWARE OF THAT REACTION, because ...
  
  5> You certainly ARE ABLE to learn a new language - but it's NOT EASY. Think in terms of "years" instead of "months" and think "hobby" instead of "study"; think "enjoyment" instead of "work" and think of the new friends you will make along the way, including Spanish guys and gals who are finding English equally as difficult to become halfway fluent in as we are finding Spanish.
  
  So, DO NOT GIVE UP. It will happen. But not as fast as they have all told you.
  
  6> If, in my early Spanish days, I had not happened on the Michel Thomas course I think that it is very likely that I would have given up in despair. It is true that almost any tuition course or book, CD, or DVD which aims to teach Spanish is bound to contribute something to one's knowledge. But I can report that some of these products are INCREDIBLY poor, and in varying degrees are inaccessible, dull, illogical, unnecessarily difficult, misleading and self-contradictory. Some are better than others and I acknowledge that I have not tried all the products on the market. There may indeed be some very good ones available. But, in my opinion, the general standard is not high.
  
  7> Michel Thomas' teaching method is, in my opinion, LIGHT YEARS ahead of any other that I have encountered. Its superiority is to be found not just in the excellent and enjoyable method that he uses (you become the third student in a virtual class) but even more importantly in the course content. This content opens the door to your use of the language. As Michel Thomas describes it, it gives us the tools with which we can build the language. It is no idle claim. Trust me. If you want to learn Spanish this is where you should start. If you have already started and are finding things tough you should still go here, or to one of his other two more advanced courses mentioned below.
  
  
  8> But remember this. For almost everybody, it is NOT easy to learn a new language. So when progress comes slowly don't get discouraged. Listen to one Michel Thomas disc every day for 6 months. And do the basics besides - learn the Spanish alphabet and how to pronounce each letter; learn the days of the week; the months; learn how to count to a thousand, how to tell the time and other basic stuff that will occur to you along the way, none of which is covered by Michel Thomas (and that's not a criticism - he is about different things).
  
  When you can get through this course without pressing the pause button very often, and with few mistakes, then you should buy the Michel Thomas Language Builder. And when you have mastered that - surprisingly quickly you will find, in perhaps 1 or 2 months - move on to the Michel Thomas Advanced Spanish, in my opinion another wonderful tuitional course.
  
  Highly recommended. Buy and enjoy. And..... Que tengas suerte.
  
  
  
• 
  2007-09-12
  By C. Dawson, UK
  I have tried for some time to learn Spanish but have found it hard combining it with home life and a busy job. I even took lessons from a spanish teacher living in England and, although I got on well, I never managed to get as far towards fluency as I would have liked.
  
  I bought this package last week and have listened to in the car. The man is quite simply a GENIUS! I have learnt more in a week than I would ever have thought possible and am already composing simple sentences to email to my spanish friends.
  
  This is without a doubt the best product for learning spanish that I have seen and I will definitely be purchasing the advanced course when I feel comfortable with the foundation materials
  
  
• 
  2007-10-07
  By Wordsworth, Edinburgh, UK
  Just a quick note to cover a point that I think has not been /stressed/ (!) enough in the earlier reviews.
  
  This CD will really help you get your pronunciation correct, which is absolutely vital. With other courses, you may not tell if you are putting the stresses in the right places and pronouncing the verb endings correctly and with enough clarity (e.g. "o" as in "tot" not as in "low" and differentiating clearly between "e" and "a" endings). With other courses you could think you can speak the language and then try it on a Spanish person and just get a "Qué?" in response.
  
  With Michel Thomas, you can hear the other students make the mistakes you are making and Michel corrects them. Repeatedly. Repeatedly. Until. They. Get. It. and hence until you get it.
  
  When I pronounced a word correctly and the rubbish student was still getting it wrong, I actually felt quite pleased with myself.
  
  You may not learn that quickly with MT, but you make sure that the foundations are right.
  
  
  
  
• 
  2008-06-06
  By Aitch, Edinburgh, UK
  
  Absolutely terrific, the send of achievement gained after doing this is tremendous, I can now hold sensible conversations with a family member who studied at university in spain. I was thrilled to do this course, and am now doing the advanced one.
  
  
• 
  2008-06-21
  By Ms. J. Kelly, Oxfordshire England
  I've just completed both this and the advanced course and I think that they are both excellent and achieve very well what they set out to do.
  
  I think that a lot of the criticism of the courses come from people who do not know before they buy them what Michel's methods are about.
  
  These courses will -
  - give you a solid grounding in the structure of the Spanish language
  - teach American Spanish rather than Spanish Spanish if you get what I mean, though as far as I can tell the differences are mainly ones of pronunciation
  - give you a great big boost of confidence after only a very short time; you will feel like you're learning really quickly.
  
  The courses will not -
  - give you Spanish that you can use for holidays. There are almost no nouns taught on this course and a limited number of verbs and other words. What it enables you to do is take the knowledge you gain from the course and apply it to new vocabulary. This means that you can then take your learning onto the specific things that you are interested in, rather than learning by rote numerous phrases that you will never use.
  - give you the chance to hear native Spanish speakers talk. Having listened to American Spanish on tv programmes since doing the course, it isn't such a big deal, though I can't say the same for Spanish Spanish.
  
  So if you're serious about learning the language and not just looking for a few phrases or the ability to read a menu then this could well be for you. But bear in mind before you buy them that you will need other reference material to take your studies further after you finish, whether it be lists of verbs or vocab or whether, as Michel suggests, you spend 10 minutes a day reading about subjects that interest you (in Spanish of course) and picking up the relevent vocab as you go along. But I'm sure that with any language course, you'd need to do this afterwards anyway.
  
  As for those that can't get past the mouth sounds made by Michel sometimes when he speaks - you're letting a tiny thing make you miss out on a lot.