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| Michel Thomas Method: French Vocabulary Course (Michel Thomas Series) | 
 enlarge | Author: Michel Thomas
Publisher: Hodder Arnold
Category: Book
List Price: £30.00
Buy New: £18.32
You Save: £11.68 (39%)
New (13) from £14.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  23 reviews
Sales Rank: 3052
Format: Audiobook
Media: Audio CD
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.4 x 2
ISBN: 0340939826
EAN: 9780340939826
ASIN: 0340939826
Publication Date: May 25, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
 Sorry to give a negative review on the course of Michel Thomas... November 18, 2007
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Based on my rather positive experience in using other French courses of Michel Thomas (especially the `Language Builder'), I spontaneously expected a lot from this new course when I decided to get hold of it. I supposed that I would study steadily and make a considerable progress just as I did before. However, I gradually lost interest in studying with this course after using it a few times.
I am not sure what's wrong with this course, but it doesn't make sense to me that this course deems itself to be `Michel Thomas Method' simply by mimicking to assert that users can learn `without the pressure of writing or memorising'. Perhaps the vocabulary covered and organized in this course is the one to blame. Anyway, I still keep studying with other French courses of Michel Thomas, although I have tucked this course into the bottom layer of my bookshelf.
 There's no such thing as a bad student only a bad teacher! October 22, 2007
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
...was one of the things Michel Thomas said...and how true...
I agree, that if Michel were alive today he would be up in arms over hearing this, then again if he were here today we wouldn't have had a company trying to hang on to his shirt tails trying to make money.
This is just awful, it is a prime example of how to make learning French the most boring it could possible be. The whole 5 CD's are TOTALLY scripted even down to the patronising "I can here that 'T' being pronounced at the end! Well done!"...no you can't! you're just a CD and you don't have ears!!
The sentences you are asked to repeat are so meaningless it is a struggle to remember how to repeat them in English let alone French!
'Because of the Computer Revolution, the economic situation is not only sustainable but also insatiable' bla bla bla...whatever...
This should have a Government Health Label on the side:
'WARNING - DO NOT LEAVE IN THE REACH OF CHILDREN AS THEY WILL BE PUT OFF LEARNING FRENCH FOR LIFE'
PS Let them have a copy of ANYTHING Michel recorded while he was alive - there were brilliant!
Sophie's Uncle September 22, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is a poor attempt at cashing in on the memory and methods of Michel Thomas, who was quite unique. This is just not in the same league as his courses and it is a pity his name is connected to it.
The publishers could have done a lot better than this as a "follow up" and obviously one will now have to be very careful on future offerings from them.
Bad... very very bad... September 7, 2007
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
I'll admit it, without the reviews on Amazon.co.uk, I wouldn't have bought this (or known it existed).
I love the Michel Thomas method of learning, I have done the 8-CD German course, the vocab builder and the 4-CD advanced course.
However, this course fails miserably on two counts:
1. Like the MT courses, this course has two students, aswell as the teacher. However, whereas Michel Thomas had students who were learning German, and you would listen to them making exactly the same mistakes as I would make (so you would learn as you hear them being corrected), here, the two students are completely fluent in German.
Why ?! Why would you do this ?
This simply doesn't help at all.
In fact, you can tell this is a problem - after the students have replied to the "how would you say this..?" question from the teacher, the teacher has to REPEAT what they've just said, but slower, to clarify their answer.
Pointless, completely pointless.
2. The vocabulary. One major complaint of the Michel Thomas course was that there wasn't too much vocabulary. My German-speaking partner and I joked that all I could say was "it" sentences. "I want to buy it because I would like to have it and it pleases me."
Now, in this course, yes, they introduce a lot of vocabulary, but they do it in the same way as one of those awful "Learn German in my car" style CDs do.
They introduce a phrase, you use it, then they move on and you never hear the words again.
The result..? Whereas, with the Michel Thomas course, you would be reminded of previous vocab, and remember the new words, here... well.. it just goes in one ear and out the other.
And, frankly, some of the phrases they teach you, even on CD1, is just ridiculous.
This isn't a terrible course... but I'm only giving it 1-star as it sells itself under Michel Thomas' name, but ignores the most fundemental rules of the way he teaches.
As such, I simply wouldn't recommend it.
 Great addition to the Michel Thomas series August 24, 2007
21 out of 23 found this review helpful
I bought this course not knowing quite what to expect but hoping it might be an easy way to learn all the food/household/shop type vocabulary that I can never remember.Well it's not and at first I thought I'd be disappointed, but I was in for a surprise so read on..
The teacher is Rose Lee Hayden - an American. I found her voice and presentation very clear and the accent was no hindrance. There are no pupils for this course but two native speakers,one from Spain and one from South America, are used to provide the correct version of a phrase, and essentially pronunciation practice. This was very useful as it had been absent on previous Michel Thomas courses. Another reviewer mentioned that Rose Lee Hayden does talk to you as though you were there: " yes, I think you've got it". Well maybe you haven't! But I didn't find this irritating at all, so it must be down to personal choice and learning styles.
This course continues with the philosophy that you learn a language by understanding how it works. In other words you have to understand its form,its syntax, in order to generate new sentences and express what you want to say.I found that evening classes I attended preferred to teach great reams of vocabulary in the context of some set phrases, and grammar was taught very gradually. Again, maybe it's down to personal choice or mix and match, but personally I find the Michel Thomas method very effective. One problem with using the C.Ds in the car is that there's no pause button and I'm driving anyway so there isn't always enough time to answer before the correct version is given.
The first two C.Ds look at vocabulary which is very similar in English e.g -ible -able words,-tion to -cion words. There are hundreds of these words and they tend to be the more 'grown up vocabulary'.They are easy to remember and straight away Rose Lee gets you practising these words using all the tenses you've learned in the previous courses.I also found it enabled me to start having a guess at what a Spanish word might be(in the context of those similar to English words)and Rose Lee also did this- she would throw in a word to encourage you to have a go. She then moves on to verbs, covering old ground in terms of-ar,-er,-ir,gogos but covering more vocabulary,practising reflexive verbs, and spending time on irregular verbs through all the various tenses. There is a really good section on the subjunctive or command tense where she teaches which verbs and expressions trigger its use.
Segment 3 teaches everyday expressions, starting with verb-plus expressions such as 'cambiar de'-to change your mind.These are important to know because if you look at any Spanish dictionary with a grammar section, you find long lists of verbs followed by a preposition, that isn't always the one you might expect. Then there are expressions with 'hacer' and 'tener'-all quite common and worth knowing. Expressions using the dreaded por/para are taught, and also those with'lo',which I'd never understood before.Also expressions using 'ser' versus those with 'estar'are explored,followed by comparisons,opposites, prepositions and generally useful everday stuff like'sin embargo'-however.Spanish double negatives and using the passive are also useful to know how to use.
Now the proof of the pudding is in the eating; we went to Spain this summer and had meals with two Spanish families. Although my attempts at speaking were tortuous, this method did help because it gave me the tools to try and work out what I wanted to say. I didn't need to say that the shower doesn't work (evening class Spanish)but our friends were interested in discussing our opinions of Spain and cultural/social differences etc(Michel Thomas Spanish). When we went to our chalet accommodation I looked at the equipment list in Spanish and only understood about 5 words. I even had to look up the words for knife,fork and spoon!
So clearly I still have some way to go and would welcome a Michel Thomas course that includes vocabulary for kitchen equipment. My conclusion would be that this course helps you learn vocabulary in the context of practising use of words in a wide range of grammatical structures. I recommend it.
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