Spanish with Michel Thomas

Michel Thomas's, the Pimsleur series, and the Barron's version of the Foreign Service Institute course are the three top-selling courses on Spanish, and I did extensive research on the various high end courses before buying his. I don't have the Pimsleur one but I did buy the U.S. Foreign Service Insitute course in addition to Thomas's, and so I thought I'd make a few comments by way of comparing them in case you find them useful in choosing the right course for you.I have to say Thomas is a gifted teacher and he has a very interesting approach requiring no notes or rote memorization. He also stresses the importance of a natural, stress-free learning environment. Thomas is a savvy guy here as this is probably one of the major stumbling blocks for the new language learner, and so he puts the student at ease right from the very beginning--a nice touch there and I give him points for that.The second cornerstone to Thomas's method is the simulated classroom environment where you work along with two other people in the class, a man and a woman. The third, and perhaps most important aspect of Thomas's course is his memorization and note-free system of learning. Thomas starts with very simple sentences and builds up from there so the student acquires the syntax almost intuitively as he goes along. Thomas also discusses differences in pronunciation as he goes, too.You build vocabulary as you go along also, with Thomas empasizing cognates or words that are almost identical in the two languages initially. Overall, Thomas has done a very nice job here and I can see why people like Woody Allen and others say that his course is the only one that's ever worked for them.The Foreign Service Institute course is more traditional but also very good, and I like it, too. The audio tapes present the sentences and conversations while you follow along with the manual/workbook, which provides the translations. The workbook is very extensive and also has a more detailed discussion of the grammar than you'll get with either the Thomas or Pimsleur courses. There is an advantage to this since, although I think Thomas's method is probably fine for teaching the basic verb conjugations, such as present, past, and future, you're really not going to get a good idea of how the several subjective moods work in Spanish without some systematic study of the grammar there. English has the subjunctive, but it's practical a vestigial construction, but Spanish has it in spades and is a very active part of the language.On a side note, it would be interesting to see how Thomas's approach would work for a language with much simpler grammar than Spanish or French, such as Turkish or Japanese. Turkish has the wonderful distinction of being one of the few languages with no irregular verbs, and Japanese only has two. So at least as far as the verbal systems are concerned, they are much less complex than your typical European language, and the Indo-European languages in general. There are a few o

The language learning system that Michel Thomas has put together is perhaps one of the easiest methods to learn a foreign language. Not quite as easy as one would be lead to believe from the cover, it is still one of the easiest methods I have ever had the pleasure of using. And pleasure is the operative word, just listening to the CDs is all that is required. No note taking, no study of vocabulary lists, nothing in the mode of traditional language learning. Instead of going straight through the complete system I listened to each CD twice before going on to the next one. The end result was that I could watch the Spanish channels and understand what is going on. After finishing six of the eight CDs I was at a local tourist attraction with a friend who had just completed a thirteen week course at a local college. A Latin woman approached us seeking help and he was totally useless while I was able to work through her conversation and provide her the answers that she needed. How long did it take? I just listened to it in my car instead of the stereo for two weeks. Will you be totally conversant after completing the course? No. But you will have a good strong background in basic conversational Spanish and be able to carry on basic conversations with others. The best way to learn conversational Spanish on the market today.

This is by no means a perfect course, but it is very effective. My wife, who speaks Spanish fluently, points out that it's a very good course if you want to speak Spanish like a Swiss, and there's truth to that. Mr. Thomas's pronunciation is quite stilted, even to the untutored ear. (And oh yes, that male student is a bummer!) But having said that, the course is amazingly effective. I've made many attempts to learn Spanish in the past, but this is the first one that kept me going and got me excited. My suggestion is to take this course first, then take one that has tapes recorded by Spaniards. Use Mr. Thomas for the learning technique, and use another course (like Linguaphone or The Learning Company) for the native pronunciation. But I still give this five stars.