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Product Description
Review
"The nearest thing to painless learning"
"A unique and perfectly brilliant way of learning languages"
(Stephen Fry )
"The most extraordinary experience of my life"
"Thomas makes it simple"
"Works like a dream"
"Michel Thomas is a precious find indeed"
"Five minutes in and you already feel like you're winning"
Product Description
Speak Spanish - Instantly.
No books. No writing. No memorizing.
Learn 50 essential words at the heart of Spanish and how to put them together to make yourself understood. This 1-hour introduction to the Michel Thomas method will have you speaking real Spanish straight away. There are no books, no pens, and no memorizing - just listen, connect and speak.
- Guaranteed success. Speak and understand perfectly
- Incredible progress. Get what you want, fast
- Absolute confidence. Unleash your natural learning style without trying
How it Works:
Learn another language the way you learned your own
You learned your own language naturally and enjoyably: now you can learn Spanish in the same way. You'll stick with it because you'll love it. Use the unique method perfected over fifty years by the celebrated psychologist and linguist Michel Thomas. This method works with your brain, helping you to build up your Spanish in manageable, enjoyable steps by thinking out the answers for yourself. You learn through listening and speaking without the pressure of writing or memorizing. You pick up the language naturally and unforgettably. Join the millions of people worldwide who have learned a new language with the Michel Thomas Method.
Learn Anywhere
Don't be tied to chunky books or your computer, Michel Thomas Method audio courses let you learn whenever you want: at home, in your car, or on the move with your MP3 player.
What's in the Course?
The Perfect Introduction
Start Spanish with the Michel Thomas Method is an hour of essentials taken from Total Spanish with the Michel Thomas Method. (Total is the classic Michel Thomas Method course, now enhanced with extra vocabulary, on-screen learning, and exercises.) You will join Michel and two students in a live lesson and within the one hour you will be able to construct simple phrases. You will learn the language with the students,hearing both their successes and their mistakes to keep you motivated and involved throughout the course. By the end, you will have the confidence to understand and speak many essentials of Spanish.
Start Spanish with the Michel Thomas Method provides an hour's teaching on one CD.
The Michel Thomas Method Range:
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Michel Thomas was recommended to me by my Open University Spanish tutor as a useful audio course to accompany my OU Beginner's Spanish. The reviews here are so overwhelmingly positive that I was tempted to jump in feet first and purchase one of the big £60 courses, but I took the cautious route and purchased this smaller course first, and I was glad that I did! In brief, the method that Michel Thomas uses seems to be a useful and interesting way to learn Spanish, but the tutor is very annoying. In more detail, the good aspects of the course are:
1. He uses a modular approach to the language that enables you to construct fairly complex sentences quite quickly
2. In this first disc, he teaches you how to adapt the many latin-derived words that exist in English into their Spanish equivalents (eg revolution to revolución, important to importante)
3. His explanations are simple
4. There are plenty of examples to practice
The annoying aspects of the course (in order in which they annoyed me) are:
1. Michel Thomas instructs you to pronounce words in ways that are completely bizarre. For example, in the Spanish word "aceptable", the second "a" is emphasised. In, the emphasis is made by saying that second "a" a bit more loudly. However, Michel Thomas, instructs you to elongate the second "a" so that it sounds like "aceptaaaaaaaable." I've been to Spain a lot, and I have *never* heard this type of pronunciation. This would only be a minor annoyance, but MT places *huge* importance on this erroneous pronunciation. In fact I would say that he spends at least a third of the total time on this disc "correcting" his students' pronunciation so that "tengo" becomes "teeeeeeeengo", "revolución" becomes "revolucioooooooon", "verle" becomes "veeeeeeeeeeeeeerle" and so on. I have no doubt whatsoever that if I were to go to Madrid and follow MT's pronunciation instructions I would be laughed out of town. Thus, a minor annoyance becomes a very irritating waste of time.
2. MT teaches what he calls "Standard Spanish," by which he means Latin American Spanish. This is weird because the course seems targeted at the UK market, and both his students are British. In any event, as a UK resident, I foresee myself spending a lot more time in Spain than in Latin America, and I don't want to get into bad habits. The Latin American/Spanish difference is most evident in the pronunciation of "c" in words like "revolución" and the z in all words: in Spain, these are pronounced like the "th" in "think" wheras in Latin America they are pronounced like "s" in "situation." The thing is that Spanish people find it crude if you follow the Latin American pronunciation and will correct you for it, so I want to avoid it as much as possible.
3. MT seems to prefer very formal language. In this first disc he completely ignores the "familiar you" form "tú" and only uses the "familiar you" form "usted." Since this is more or less a taster disc, this can be forgiven, and I'm sure he addresses the "tú" form in his bigger courses. However, he also teaches sentence structures which are unnecessarily complex in their formality. For example, he teaches "Para qué restaurante tiene una preferencia?", litereally, "For which restaurant do you have a preference?"; whereas he could teach "qué restaurante prefieres?", literally "which restaurant do you prefer."
Overall, I am disappointed that the utility of Michel Thomas' method is (for me) nullified by these weak points. I actually got angry listening to him in the car, so I'll be looking for another Spanish audio course to play while I'm on the road.
1. He uses a modular approach to the language that enables you to construct fairly complex sentences quite quickly
2. In this first disc, he teaches you how to adapt the many latin-derived words that exist in English into their Spanish equivalents (eg revolution to revolución, important to importante)
3. His explanations are simple
4. There are plenty of examples to practice
The annoying aspects of the course (in order in which they annoyed me) are:
1. Michel Thomas instructs you to pronounce words in ways that are completely bizarre. For example, in the Spanish word "aceptable", the second "a" is emphasised. In, the emphasis is made by saying that second "a" a bit more loudly. However, Michel Thomas, instructs you to elongate the second "a" so that it sounds like "aceptaaaaaaaable." I've been to Spain a lot, and I have *never* heard this type of pronunciation. This would only be a minor annoyance, but MT places *huge* importance on this erroneous pronunciation. In fact I would say that he spends at least a third of the total time on this disc "correcting" his students' pronunciation so that "tengo" becomes "teeeeeeeengo", "revolución" becomes "revolucioooooooon", "verle" becomes "veeeeeeeeeeeeeerle" and so on. I have no doubt whatsoever that if I were to go to Madrid and follow MT's pronunciation instructions I would be laughed out of town. Thus, a minor annoyance becomes a very irritating waste of time.
2. MT teaches what he calls "Standard Spanish," by which he means Latin American Spanish. This is weird because the course seems targeted at the UK market, and both his students are British. In any event, as a UK resident, I foresee myself spending a lot more time in Spain than in Latin America, and I don't want to get into bad habits. The Latin American/Spanish difference is most evident in the pronunciation of "c" in words like "revolución" and the z in all words: in Spain, these are pronounced like the "th" in "think" wheras in Latin America they are pronounced like "s" in "situation." The thing is that Spanish people find it crude if you follow the Latin American pronunciation and will correct you for it, so I want to avoid it as much as possible.
3. MT seems to prefer very formal language. In this first disc he completely ignores the "familiar you" form "tú" and only uses the "familiar you" form "usted." Since this is more or less a taster disc, this can be forgiven, and I'm sure he addresses the "tú" form in his bigger courses. However, he also teaches sentence structures which are unnecessarily complex in their formality. For example, he teaches "Para qué restaurante tiene una preferencia?", litereally, "For which restaurant do you have a preference?"; whereas he could teach "qué restaurante prefieres?", literally "which restaurant do you prefer."
Overall, I am disappointed that the utility of Michel Thomas' method is (for me) nullified by these weak points. I actually got angry listening to him in the car, so I'll be looking for another Spanish audio course to play while I'm on the road.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
This is the third language I have been able to grasp quickly with the aid of the Michel Thomas Method. Previously learning French and Italian in a very short time I was not disappointed with the Spanish. I find that when I play it in my car I seem to absorb the language much quicker. I feel part of a class with Michel using students to partake in the course.
I am taking my mum to Spain next year and hopefully I will be able to impress her with my conversational Spanish!
Amazon prices are so low, the products excellent and delivery times second to none!
I am taking my mum to Spain next year and hopefully I will be able to impress her with my conversational Spanish!
Amazon prices are so low, the products excellent and delivery times second to none!
Format:Audio CD
Not a lot of it but a good start to learning the language.Quite good value but there others around just as good and cheaper (or free).
Listmania!
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