Michel Thomas Advanced Course: German (Michel Thomas Series)

click here for more details, find new or used items	Michel Thomas Our price £29.99 (£50.00) New from £16.85 Used from £68.00 Pages: (Audio CD) ISBN: 0340939133 Pub: Hodder Arnold Pub date: 2006-09-29 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 35372

Reader Reviews:

Moving to more complex conversation (1/1 people found this helpful)

The advanced course is a direct extension of the Foundation course using exactly the same question-and-answer format which focuses on grammatical building blocks and even uses the same two learners. Hard to say how it would work as stand-alone package. I've studied German off and on for years, and most of the grammar-based teaching was dreadful. This is to me a more natural way of dealing with more complex areas. The first of the four CDs is relatively undemanding and revises some of the first course. Midway through CD2, though the complexity goes up a notch with mind-bending phrases of the variety "You could have come with us". This is the sort of construction you do have to learn in natural conversation, but I suspect it will take quite a few listens before it clicks. After this challenge the course settles down and a whole range of helpful grammar snippets are covered, including quite a bit of sneaked in subjunctive. I'm not sure about Michael's bold claim that you know all the major structures of the language by the end - gender, adjectives, cases, prepositions and so on are not really covered. I believe MT works best as a supplement to traditional courses and doubt it fits with modern 'theory' but it is undoubtedly effective in what it tries to do.

How NOT to teach German (1/18 people found this helpful)

I would like to write something positive about this curious recording.
Based on old sociolinguistics circa: 1960ties theories of teaching language, long forgotten as ineffective, M.Thomas perseveries.

THE pronunciation of "students" is appalling, and not improved at all;
from CD1 to CD 4 ( for example: the course's favorite word: zurueck, pronounced with Z instead of correct pronunciation: ts) is just an example. Many mistakes are uncorrected by M.Thomas. The bizarre terms he uses "handle" "divingboard" do nothing-at all- to explain simple grammar points (auxiliary verbs, and past participle respectively).
Avoid, (or buy for your German friends have a good laugh).

The grass is greener on the other side. (15/16 people found this helpful)

What immediately struck me about this course following on from the Foundation Course was the sound quality. It's not that it's bad in any way, but my initial reaction was that Michel Thomas and his two guests were sitting some distance back from the mike.
The format of the course remains the same: Michel Thomas provides a series of explanations and an example sentence, followed by prompts when he expects the two learners to ideally answer correctly - if not he'll provide further elaboration. He makes no secret that grammar is the fundamental essence of the audio tracks, and he hints at this again on the fourth (of the five) discs, when he states that "all the open doors into the language...and into reading" have now been opened for learners.
Although shorter than the Foundation Course, the Advanced version manages to cover more ground - primarily because his two present guests are considerably more knowledgeable than his earlier learners. However it's obvious that this is a grammar course when you realize that there are some things which haven't been mentioned before in either Foundation or Advanced courses - especially vocabulary and some verbs. Clearly you'll need access to a dictionary, at the very least for spelling.
Unlike the previous course Michel Thomas is a lot less indulgent with variable usage on the part of his two guests. For example there he tolerated the placement of the word 'bald' (rendered as 'soon' in English); now he's a lot more insistent that such "time elements" usually come earlier within a sentence. For me this got rid of most of my earlier frustration, which was also exacerbated by the distracting sighs of his male student.
Although using non-native speakers definitely makes this course accessible, listening to other courses such as those produced by Pimsler makes it evident that things are quite different in real time. However if you've also had a negative cultural experience with high-school German in this country - in my case in south London - you'll not be bothered, especially if you're seeking rapid acquisition of some basics of the spoken language and more confidence with the written form.

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