Michel Thomas Method: French Vocabulary Course (Michel Thomas Series) [Audiobook] [Audio CD]

I'm a massive advocate of Michel Thomas's work. I'm constantly recommending his courses to my friends for their ease of use, simplicity and the positive feeling you get from learning via his method. The only problem is that the success of his method is totally dependent on Michel himself, particularly his own in-depth knowledge, his limitless enthusiasm for languages, and particularly his adaptability, empathy and personable nature, all of which are in evidence in his CDs. This is a problem because Michel Thomas did not make or present this course.

This French Vocabulary course is superficially similar to those that Michel Thomas made and presented. However, they lack all of the subtlety, ingenuity, instinct and personal connection that made his courses so enjoyable and effective.

On the positive side there are certain aspects of the method that still work. The building up of phrases around basic structures and the structured repetition of vocabulary remain the same and help you to learn without too much effort. And the 'tricks' taught to help transform English vocabulary to French are often very effective.

On the negative side, the whole thing comes across as fake, forced, and ultimately downright irritating. The woman presenting is truly awful, she couldn't possibly sound more insincere if she tried and her continual 'encouragement' comes across as trite, scripted and patronising. The choices of phrase have been noted in other reviews as being curiously dull and uninspiring and I entirely agree. Often the sentences chosen are expressions of displeasure or irritation (e.g. 'that noise is insufferable', or 'the dinner was tolerable'), while at other times they are obtuse or almost pointless. I am at a loss as to why they thought it was a good idea to have so many sentences that are either dull or have a negative slant, and I am 100% sure Michel Thomas wouldn't have endorsed it. Finally, they have chosen in this course to ditch the real students that were used in Michel Thomas's course in favour of recordings of native French speakers. This was presumably in order to aid pronunciation, or perhaps more likely to avoid the complexities of face-to-face teaching. Whatever the reasoning, the result is that the 'method' and the recording don't match, adding to the feeling of inauthenticity. It is ridiculous to hear native French speakers being congratulated in a sickly ingratiating voice for correctly pronouncing words in their own language. Additionally, the empathy that you feel with the students in Michel Thomas's courses, which also makes you feel like Michel Thomas is teaching you personally, is completely lost. In my eyes this was an important part of the method.

The consequence of all this is that when listening to this course you are inclined to do the one thing that Michel Thomas dedicated so much effort to stop you from doing - you turn the CD off and do something else instead. The whole point of the Michel Thomas method was to make learning fun, stress-free and rewarding so that people would enjoy language learning and devote more time and energy to it. By producing something that doesn't meet this simple criterion the makers of this CD have, in my view, completely betrayed the biggest single principle on which his method was based. I am not at all impressed, and the words 'cashing in' come strongly to mind.

Perhaps if you've never heard a genuine Michel Thomas course you won't be so disappointed by this, and if you don't find the woman annoying then you may well get more out of it. However, I would recommend anyone to stick to the recordings that Michel Thomas made himself - which are exceptional - and to find other methods for building up your vocabulary. After all, building a large vocabulary was never what his method was designed to do. His aim was to give you the fundamental building blocks of your target language, before passing you the responsibility to build on that structure yourself.

This is a poor attempt at cashing in on the memory and methods of Michel Thomas, who was quite unique. This is just not in the same league as his courses and it is a pity his name is connected to it.
The publishers could have done a lot better than this as a "follow up" and obviously one will now have to be very careful on future offerings from them.

Based on my rather positive experience in using other French courses of Michel Thomas (especially the `Language Builder'), I spontaneously expected a lot from this new course when I decided to get hold of it. I supposed that I would study steadily and make a considerable progress just as I did before. However, I gradually lost interest in studying with this course after using it a few times.

I am not sure what's wrong with this course, but it doesn't make sense to me that this course deems itself to be `Michel Thomas Method' simply by mimicking to assert that users can learn `without the pressure of writing or memorising'. Perhaps the vocabulary covered and organized in this course is the one to blame. Anyway, I still keep studying with other French courses of Michel Thomas, although I have tucked this course into the bottom layer of my bookshelf.