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| Michel Thomas Advanced Course: Spanish (Michel Thomas Series) | 
 enlarge | Author: Michel Thomas
Publisher: Hodder Arnold
Category: Book
List Price: £48.93
Buy New: £16.95
You Save: £31.98 (65%)
New (28) from £16.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 7667
Format: Audiobook
Media: Audio CD
Edition: 2
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.4 x 1.9
ISBN: 0340938994
EAN: 9780340938997
ASIN: 0340938994
Publication Date: September 29, 2006
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: BRAND NEW, IDEAL CHRISTMAS PRESENT, FULLY SEALED, FROM THE OFFICAL PUBLISHERS. DISPATCHED IMMEDIATELY VIA ROYAL MAIL
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| Customer Reviews:
 Much better than his foundation course May 12, 2007
17 out of 18 found this review helpful
As someone who has completed both his introductory and advanced courses, I feel well placed to comment on this. This course is superior to his introductory course in three ways: firstly, the students you "sit in" with are much better than in the introductory course, and therefore make less of the annoying pauses and mistakes of the introductory course. Secondly, he is much more focussed and covers a tremendous depth and breadth of the language as opposed to simply slightly re-working example sentences that is a feature of his foundation course. Finally, he introduces the student to a number of very useful, ingenious short cuts ("eh and oh, ee and yoh" being a short hand way to remember verb endings in one tense, and my personal favourite amongst the short cuts).
Another advantage of this course over the introductory course is it is cheaper, and thus gives you "more bang for your buck", which coupled with the detail and focussed topics, is a great investment for the serious learner.
MICHEL THOMAS ADVANCED SPANISH (& BUILDER) March 16, 2007
45 out of 47 found this review helpful
I'm a total devotee of this method. - All through the ears, no pen & paper, but solidly based upon grammar. The idea - with the earlier 8-CD beginner's course and the 4-CD advanced course covered here - is that Michel Thomas sits in a studio with two genuine students and asks them hundreds of questions on how to construct sentences. The accent is on everyday speech. e.g - "How would you say..er.. 'Will you please make it for me and tell me when it's ready because I'm going to need it very soon?'"
You 'sit in' on the lesson and, just before one of the students answers, press the pause button and answer yourself. Then you press play to see if you were right. Quite frequently the students get it wrong and that's helpful because they make much the same common mistakes that you do and, when Michel Thomas corrects them, it helps reinforce the grammatical point at issue.
Interestingly, on the intermediate 2-CD course - The Spanish Builder, which Amazon offer as a package here, the method changes and it is just Michel Thomas asking YOU the questions without the two students. He covers a lot in too little time and gabbles. I think this course was knocked out very quickly following on the succes of the beginners and it just doesn't work as well. Moreover the advanced course covers the ponts in Builder so I would get the beginner's course and the advanced and give Builder a miss.
A word of caution: don't think of "advanced" in terms of "Advanced GCSE" or fluency. - It's about 2/3 the way to O level GCSE. e.g. it covers order of pronouns, past and future tenses, the positive / negative imperative, the conditional and - just about - the subjunctive. HOWEVER, because there are lots of memorable hints, the course helps you to converse in well-constructed Spanish in a way that GCSE doesn't and helps you gather together a useful vocabulary.(e.g every English word ending in ION - caution / trepidation has the same stem and ends in ICION caucion / trepidacion in Spanish. - That little bit of info gives you several hundred words - just like that!) He comes across on the CD's as a warm-hearted enthusiast with an acute grasp of how languages are "wired up" and communicates this to his students.
We have a holiday home in Spain and it's helped me considerably - the only downside is that you come across with native speakers as having a better command of Spanish than you have in fact and they can shoot back rapid-fire responses!.
Finally I would say that, whilst it's easier and more fun than a text book, you need both these courses AND text books to make optimum progress.
 Incomparable to the first course July 16, 2006
19 out of 20 found this review helpful
As a homeschool family we learnt the basics of speaking Spanish with the first 8 hour course and looked forward to moving ahead with this advanced course only to be disappointed.
The new students he uses don't appear to have done the first course and so it's frustrating to listen to them struggling with the basics and holding us back. The new content doesn't come for some considerable time - perhaps a bit in cd3 but mostly cd4.
There is no practise at listening to spoken Spanish which we had hoped to get on an advanced course and the tenses work we also expected was somewhat lacking.
The sound quality is poor for some reason and my copies do not fully play all tracks but due to the passage of time since purchase before we reached the non playing tracks I doubt they can now be returned.
All in all I would say the initial 8 hours course he does is excellent and effective at teaching Spanish speaking but this is a diappointing poor follow up to that. Neither course teaches listening for which I am now seeking supplemental audio material - essential if in a non Spanish speaking area.
Yet another satisfied user. July 12, 2006
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
I didn't buy this at Amazon, but from a friend who did buy it here, but thought he could listen to the CDs once and know it all. Well, it's darned good but his expectations were way too high. Mine weren't and I'm glad.
Michel Thomas' teaching style is amazing. From the "go-gos" and the "ga-gas", to the "'e' and 'o' and 'i' and 'io'" cha-cha, to the "just drop the 'r' and put on the 'mos'", to the "'hago' and 'digo' friends". As silly as it may sound, he gives you something to hold on to so you can remember what he teaches. And when he started the whole thing off by saying that the burden for me learning Spanish is not with me as a student, but with him as a teacher, I just got relaxed.
Also, I didn't even know what a "subjunctive" was before buying this course. Because of Michel, my English is also better than before. I've even learned enough Spanish to correct a mistake I saw below. Not to be a show off, but to further brag on the effectiveness of these courses.
Another happy user said "No es necesario que espereme." in a very close effort to say "It's not necessary for you to wait for me" or more literally "It's not necessary that you await me." It should have been ""No es necesario que me espere." You don't put the "me" at the end of the verb in the conjuctive tense.
Why am I boring you with these details? Only to say that if a plain old North Carolina redneck like me can learn Spanish at that level so quickly, anyone can.
 great for the grammar, especially verbs March 10, 2006
17 out of 17 found this review helpful
I bought the Advanced course after a few months break from the first two courses. There is quite a lot of revision of the verb tenses previously taught, but I found this very helpful, because it is done at quite a pace and having two new students (who are good) adds interest. The revision also neatly leads into new topics e.g after a thorough grounding in the present tense,including the irregular verbs which Michel terms the 'gogos',there is a natural progression to the present subjunctive. The 4 C.D's have a logical feel to them and he moves back and forth through the tenses adding new information all the time so you have a continual sense of over-learning which is so essential to language learning. By the latter part of the 4th C.D he is encouraging his students to attempt wonderfully long and complex sounding sentences and I do get a buzz from being able to beat the students in translating these, as I drive along in my car ( sad, I know..)
The downsides are that I wish he could have used a bit more vocabulary. Every sentence seems to have 'lo' e.g 'si lo hubiera visto'. Not everyone will like Michel's voice, e.g my daughter can't stand his dry mouthed accented Spanish (Polish, I think)But it doesn't bother me.
Overall I think it's a very good language learning tool. I have a really duff memory, so his problem solving approach and the way he gives you'hooks'to help you remember and work things out is very useful.
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