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Spanish with Michel Thomas--Complete Course 8 CD Set [Audiobook] [Audio CD]

Michel Thomas
4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (179 customer reviews)

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Total Spanish with the Michel Thomas Method (Michel Thomas Series) Total Spanish with the Michel Thomas Method (Michel Thomas Series) 4.4 out of 5 stars (179)
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Book Description

1 Jan 1900 0340780673 978-0340780671
**There is a newer version of this product available with extra features**
The updated version is called Total Spanish with the Michel Thomas Method.



Michel Thomas has taken the language-learning world by storm.


With no books, no memorising and no homework, Michel teaches the basic grammar of the language painlessly. Using the method he has perfected over the last 50 years, he now shares his secret with the world - and 'makes it simple' (Sunday Times).


In only a matter of hours, he gives you a comprehensive grasp of the structure of the language, enabling you to communicate with confidence. The present, future, conditional and past tenses are covered, and you are taught to think about the ideas that you are trying to communicate, rather than to translate words slavishly.


He points out the similarities of the vocabulary in English and Spanish and gives you the tools to guess the words you do not know, or think you do not know.


Join two students as they learn in real time. Become the third member of the class and experience the excitement of learning a language as if by magic!

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  • Save up to 80% on more than 60,000 downloadable audiobooks at Audible.co.uk. Listen on your iPod or MP3 player for FREE.




Product details

  • Audio CD
  • Publisher: Hodder Education (1 Jan 1900)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0340780673
  • ISBN-13: 978-0340780671
  • Product Dimensions: 5 x 16.5 x 23 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (179 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 24,114 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

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Product Description

Review

"Ideal for any business traveller who needs to be able to get around confidently." (Sunday Business )

"Five minutes into the first CD, you already feel like you're winning." (Time Out )

"Michel Thomas is a precious find indeed." (The Guardian )

"Thomas makes it simple" (Sunday Times )

"Hugely inspiring" (Red )

"Michel's methods will teach you effectively and easily" (Daily Star )

"His logical, structured approach engages with your intellect." (The Telegraph Weekend 20041211)

About the Author

Michel Thomas is a world-famous language teacher with an incredible skill to teach in days what usually takes years to learn. A psychology graduate, Michel survived starvation in French concentration and slave-labour camps, endured torture at the hands of Klaus Barbie and, after the war, hunted Nazis as an officer with US Counter Intelligence. \n \nThese unique, challenging and varied experiences helped him to forge his revolutionary learning system that is in demand from heads of industry and movie stars alike.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
68 of 68 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Far from perfect, but still excellent 15 July 2004
Format:Audio CD
Michel Thomas is almost as good a language teacher as he is a boaster, and that is saying a lot! Don't be put off by the boasting - this course really has a lot to offer, despite some serious flaws. I'll list the main strengths and drawbacks, as they seemed to me.

Strengths

1 Thomas concentrates on structures, especially the verbs in their various tenses. We really do learn very quickly how the language works.

2 He teaches these structures quite systematically, despite his apparently rambling style.

3. He explains things simply and clearly.

4. He involves us all the time - there is no passive listening.

5. And we really do (OK, I really do) remember what he has taught us.

Drawbacks

1. His Spanish accent is not good - especially the way he stretches out stressed vowels. Every native Spanish speaker I've heard makes them short and sharp. This course needs to be supplemented for pronunciation by recordings of native speakers. But this is not as big a problem as it might seem. Spanish pronunciation is not difficult - above all, the relationship between pronunciation and spelling is incomparably more simple and consistent than in English.

2. His teaching method consists entirely of getting us to translate sentences, which he provides, from English to Spanish. There is no practice in listening to Spanish, no conversation in Spanish, and indeed no opportunity to produce Spanish speech of one's own. But I find it much easier to go on to practice and engage in conversation and speech production now that I have Thomas's basic structures firmly in my mind.

3. The vocabulary we learn is very limited. Again, this needs to be supplemented from other sources - such as phrasebooks. But the phrasebooks are much more useful in the context of the structures we have learnt from Thomas.

4. Thomas teaches Latin American Spanish. This is not in itself a flaw, and he does mention some of the differences between this variety and that of most of Spain - eg in the pronunciation of the soft 'c'. But he omits to point out that in Spain (unlike Latin America), verbs have a second-person intimate form in the plural(with vosotros), parallel to the second-person intimate form in the singular (with tu). Thomas uses the 'ustedes' form for all situations in the plural, intimate as well as polite, without mentioning, let alone teaching, the 'vosotros' form.

5. He doesn't cover all the tenses and moods in this course - particularly the subjunctive, which is left for the 'Advanced' course that builds on this one, and is even better. (Avoid his 'Language Builder' course, though, which is difficult to use and adds little or nothing to this one.)

6. Finally, many people have been irritated or worse by the male student on the recordings, who is described by several reviewers in rather derogatory terms. In fact, he seems to me to be every bit as quick a learner of structures as the female student, though he unquestionably has problems with his pronunciation. (My guess is that he visualises the written word from Thomas's pronunciation, then tries to 'read' that written word in his mind, rather than directly copying the sounds that he has heard.) But this really need not and should not be allowed get in one's way.

All in all, then, this course is only a beginning to one's study of Spanish. However, I think it is an excellent beginning.
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128 of 132 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Michel Thomas - Spanish 10 Jun 2003
By Mark
Format:Audio CD
I picked up the first CD of the set for free at a Spanish homes exhibition in London a few months ago. I also purchased some other Spanish Audio language guides, and amongst all of them this is the one that way outclassed them all.

The mainstream approach of many of these beginner audio guides is to play repeatedly recorded situations of spanish speakers in various situations; catching a train, ordering food, finding your way around emergency situations, etc. However the great downfall of this approach is that, even if you do manage to memorise all of the sentences used during these situations, you are not left with a means to understand those speaking in reply to you, or adapting that language to express what you want in any foreseeable situation.

Michel's approach from the start seeks to try and make you construct your own sentences, instead of impassively listening to pre-recorded conversations. This 'fleshes out' the language in such a way that your understanding of sentence construction - and this is what the course concentrates on - is much more comprehensive, and the more you go over the material, the more you discover for yourself the inner mechanics of the language. This gives you the means to adapt your spanish speaking to the varying situations you will be exposed to if you go on holiday to spain (or any other spanish speaking country).

Highly recommended for its efficient, effective, and comprehensive approach to spanish learning.

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125 of 129 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars muy bien! 9 Aug 2001
By A Customer
Format:Audio CD
By the end of the first CD I had completely thrown of my cynicism! I have tried a number of spanish courses, and books etc. but whilst retaining a few cod phrases and a limited ability to communicate in an emergency situation, I never before managed to get a grip or an understanding of the language and it's formations.... until I discovered this course. It's easy to look at the reviews on the back and think "no course could be that good" but unbelievably the method that Michel Thomas uses works! Thousands of spanish teachers in GCSE classes must be fearing for their jobs... learning a language shouldn't be this easy, and if it can be then why did I go through such torture at school?

Admittedly the 8 CDs can not teach you everything, and you will only become fluent in spanish through years of practice and immersion, but the confidence and understanding, combined with the ability to construct sentences and deconstruct what you hear is a better start than you will get anywhere else. I have since bought some spanish audio books and a couple of novels in spanish and, though the going is quite slow, the progression is SO satisfying!

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Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars repeat buy
the tapes wore out no more tapes so bought cd version because we think it was so good we can keep listening
to him he is very good original and best
Published 24 days ago by david r page
3.0 out of 5 stars Birthday present
I bought this present for my Mother's birthday, she really wants to learn Spanish. She still unfortunately doesn't speak Spanish.
Published 1 month ago by Michael
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent
I highly recommend this product. It is such an intelligent, common sense way to learn a new language. I loved it!
Published 5 months ago by Ms C Egan
5.0 out of 5 stars Spanish the easy way
I bought this to help me with my spanish language. Find it amazingly easy to understand and it helps with the everyday language required.
Published 13 months ago by spanish doll
4.0 out of 5 stars Gives confidence and fluency
I will just add my brief opinions to the detailed reviews already on the site. I I learned quickly and easily with Michel Thomas whose lessons are classroom-style with two... Read more
Published 14 months ago by Doc Barbara
5.0 out of 5 stars Great easy & enjoyable method.
I studied Spanish for five years, thirty years ago for my Leaving Certificate. It is my understanding that they are the equivalent to the UK, A Levels? Read more
Published 19 months ago by HiFiMan
5.0 out of 5 stars Better and more beneficial than my 1 year university course
After a year of learning Spanish at university, I went to Spain and lived with a family for a few weeks and just could not communicate at all. Read more
Published 19 months ago by crafedog
5.0 out of 5 stars Great introduction to learning Spanish
Michel Thomas foundation course: Spanish is a great way to start studying a language.

Michel Thomas' method is not your typical listening tape method of "The word for... Read more
Published 20 months ago by JP
5.0 out of 5 stars Great
This is a great product for anyone who wants to learn Spanish-for business, pleasure or other-but just does not know where to start. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Mink Trapper
5.0 out of 5 stars Michel Thomas Review
A genuinely great way to make a quick start to learning a language. I found that it gave me confidence within the first hour and it's a fun and easy way to learn.
Published 22 months ago by Richmonk
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