Spanish With Michel Thomas

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Course, Difficult Delivery
Review: Michel Thomas has hit on a simple, building-block style that really works. This CD was an excellent resource for quickly getting up to speed on basic Spanish communication. The course is well designed and requires no notes (although I took a few against Michel's instruction) and no repetitive memorization. i must agree with some previous reviewers that Michel is sometimes difficult to understand. This course is best used in a quiet setting with a Spanish-English dictionary nearby to help you find words when Michel's pronunciation is a bit hard to understand. Luckily he spells words out when he introduces them which helps alot. If you want to learn in the car this is not the course for you simply because the noise associated with driving makes it a bit too challenging to understand Michel. Otherwise, get a cd player with a good pause function and you will be pleasantly suprised by how quickly you can begin to converse and understand basic Spanish.

Rating:
Summary: An ingenious system--you really can learn quickly!
Review: I've been listening to goofy Spanish tapes for years ("my uncle heard the television?" when will I ever say that?) This system really makes sense, and the classroom-type situation gives you plenty of time to practice. There's a smart girl and a really slow guy, so you'll always feel good about your own progress. Just like it says on the box, you'll be able to put your own thoughts together quickly. He starts on the similarities to English and builds from there. Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: This course is amazingly good!
Review: I purchased the course, 8 CDs, have been listening in the car. Michel Thomas really delivers on his promise: to teach you Spanish without memorization, without homework, without drills, and without workbooks. It really works! If he comes out with an advanced course, I will buy it instantly! I recommend this course to anyone who wants to speak Spanish.

Rating:
Summary: Spanish with Michel Thomas
Review: Fantastic course. I had done one to one courses before but this course made me more confident. I found it easy to remember what had been taught and now living in Spain using what I have learnt. BUY IT!

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Amazed with Michel Thomas
Review: I am so impressed with this program. In three days I finished the first two CDs. I was AMAZED at how easy it was to learn AND I can say that I experienced 100% retention. I think I will soon be getting the French with Michel Thomas so I can brush up on my French. I have recommended this prgram to all of my friends and family who are even remotely interested in learning another language because it is SO easy! It has been shown in studies that adults' ability to learn foreign language is very low but this program definitely disproves this theory. I know how foreign language is generally taught, and this is definitely more effective.

Rating:
Summary: A mixed review
Review: If you can get by the male student who has absolutely no talent for learning another language, you will love these CD's. The method really works. After going through them the first time, I repeated them and realized how much I have learned about the structure of the language and how I had learned enough of the verbs and pronouns to start thinking in Spanish. As I said, the method really works. The male student, however, is so hopeless, he really gets annoying.

Rating:
Summary: I highly recommend...
Review: The Michel Thomas method is very clear and effective. I strongly recommend the CD:s for anybody just starting to learn Spanish. Michel Thomas gives you a good grasp of the structure of the Spanish language. You need, however, to go on with more advanced material after finishing the Michel Thomas CD:s. Your vocabulary will be way too small to be able to carry a conversation in Spanish (likewise, your knowledge of Spanish verbs will be insufficient). In order to advance further, I recommend the Pimsleur Spanish series (1 to 3).

Rating:
Summary: useful but beware
Review: I have mixed feelings with regard to this course. In some ways it is absolutely excellent. Where it is particularly good is on underlining the importance of the right stresses in the language and also in the use of pronouns. If you don't know where to place 'lo' at the end of this course then you are a moron. The course really does give you a strong sense of self-confidence in your ability to construct your own phrases in the language. The value of this cannot be over-estimated. Whilst I certainly would recommend it I would say that before buying it you should bear in mind the following. Firstly this course will NOT make you fluent in the language and will give you only a very limited vocabulary. Michel seems almost allergic to nouns and adjectives so you will not learn many of those. Little attention is paid to genders which are an area of difficulty for many English people trying to learn foreign languages. Not looking at genders means no attention was paid to adjective agreements- something which doesn't come naturally to Anglophones. He also choses to ignore two tenses which are used widely in Spanish: the past historic and the subjunctive. For this reason I would recommend that you use this course in conjunction with another language cassette couse - I would recommend the excellent Routledge 'Colloquial Spanish' cassette course as the ideal supplement. This brings me to my second criticism of this course. Cutting corners is all very well but this shouldn't be at the expense of accuracy. Michel is very scepticle of verb tables but if he looked more closely at them he would realise that in his course the endings he gives for the 'tu' form of the imperative are actually incorrect. Native Spanish speakers also pronounce their 'r's much more strongly than Michel does which reminds you of the value of accompanying this course with one giving you access to native speakers. Finally he has a tendency to oversimplify. He gives us the very useful information that English words which end in '-tion' will be the same in Spanish except with an '-cion' at the end and he leads us to believe there are only two exceptions to this ('traducion'= 'translation' and 'explicacion' = 'explanation). A brief flick through a dictionary allowed me to notice that whilst most '-tion' words did indeed follow this pattern there were actually quite a few exceptions. He then gives us the information that nouns ending in '-cion' will always become verbs ending in '-ar'. Again this is true in most cases but what about 'distribuir' or traducir'? So Michel needs to be just a little bit more nuanced in his statements because the student's confidence may crumble once they realise that some of the simplifications he makes are actually over-simplifications. So if using this course make sure you check the accuracy of everything you have learnt at the end. This doesn't undermine the usefulness of Michel's approach, it just means you must be realistic in your expectations. If you are looking for a course because you want a few expressions to use on holiday this is probably not the right programme for you. You don't learn how to reserve a hotel room or how to ask for directions. However, if you want to actually understand the mechanics of the language then this course is very helpful. This is a course for students not tourists. One final word of warning: if you do not interact with the CD you will find his method extremely tedious. It is only if you pause the CD regularly to give your own answers that you will actually start to feel part of the lesson he is giving. Now two final comments. (1) The course claims that there is no such thing as a bad student, only bad teachers- the male student on here disproves that theory: if you are worse than him you have no hope. (2) The promotion around this course makes great play of the fact that Michel taught various celebrities to speak languages. Who cares??? I have never heard Woody Allen speak the langauges taught him by Michel. He is not famous for his ability to speak French or Spanish so why should it matter to us whether they were taught by Michel or not. Please change your ridiculous advertising.

Rating:
Summary: I have enjoyed this course!
Review: At 52 I started from scratch to learn Spanish. I listened to this course 30 minutes twice a day from March to October. I found learning difficult because it was so new to me so I went thru it a second time. I probably spent 180 hours on it. I do not believe that I can speak Spanish yet, but I know I got more than my money's worth. Even a simple Spanish course would cost 3 times what I paid and I would not have gotten the repetition I got at my own pace.
Two points made by others I would like to address. 1) While the male certainly could be "slow" I noticed that the first time through for me this guy was asking the questions that I would have and making the same mistakes. Also, I think he is a good example of the problems more "British" speaking people have translating their "A" sounds. These sounds are very important in Spanish.
2) I also have purchased a course described in other reviews here as being better (not available on AMAZON). However, without the hand holding of the THOMAS course I would be lost in the new course. My new course is an excellant vocabulary builder, but without the THOMAS course I could not understand what the performers are saying, and more importantly, why they say it. Maybe the suggesters had had some Spanish prior to that course - I had not.
The THOMAS course is perfect for commuting as I do. The only negative I could even think of is its packaging. The box does not allow for convenient storage in my opinion. I will buy a CD storage packet for it.

Rating:
Summary: Really good for the Reference Desk
Review: I am a student in library school working at a universities reference desk. After only a total of 2 hours with the first CD only I able to make myself understood when a Spanish speaking only woman came to the desk looking for help. As for the reviewer who said that the cd misrepresented it's self by saying that the student would only learn around 60-200 words, they fialed to notice when the instructor said that every word in english with a "ibly" or an "ably" ending is the same in spanish as it is in english so that adds a lot of words. So does all the words that ends in "ant" you just add an "e". I firmly believe that Michel Thomas are indespensible for Librarian's who work with the public. You only need to know the basics of a foreign language to be able to help them navigate the information highway.