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Over the years, I've used different language-learning methods (remember  the opening lines of the ALM French textbook: "Ou est Sylvie? Au lycee. Ou est Philippe? A la piscine." I couldn't get past the fact that Sylvie was stuck at school while Philippe, louche lad, got to go to the pool...). I've been in classrooms, language labs and out in the midst of learning languages from native speakers. I've also used a number of different self-paced systems, including Berlitz, Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone.

So when McGraw-Hill sent along a sample kit from their Michel Thomas line, I thought I knew what to expect. I chose to sample  the two-CD German for Beginners, since we recently went on a vacation to Berlin.

Michel Thomas is a fascinating and polarizing person -- his Web site says that he was born in Poland but raised in Germany and France, that he fought for the Resistance and underwent capture and interrogation and torture by the Gestapo. (NB: A 2001 LA Times article by Roy Rivenburg called "Larger than Life" posted on Thomas's Web site states that Thomas has misrepresented both his wartime experiences and the efficacy of his language-training techniques; Thomas filed a defamation suit. A factual event of note, too: on May 25, 2004, Michel Thomas was given the Silver Star, the nation's third-highest medal for valor, at a ceremony at the WWII Memorial.)

             Michel Thomas in uniform during World War II, from his Web site

Over the years, he has taught everyone from Princess Grace to Woody Allen to Emma Thompson (whose blurb appears on his newly packaged CDs). Thomas believes that you should learn phrases and sentences from the beginning (hmmmm. ALM French wasn't so off-base, after all), and his system is designed so that there is no study or rote memorization -- only practice and correction.

The two-CD German for Beginners kit reflects Thomas's philosophy and personality, and I'll admit it's a bit funny at times. Thomas has a broad accent and a style so energetic we sometimes joked he was going to leap out of the car's CD player and shake his finger at one daughter's hapless pronunciation. The Michel Thomas Method isn't magic, nor is it necessarily new -- it's a sensible, pedantic approach -- here's a sentence; here's what is means; here's how it sounds, again; now you try it... and so on.

However, at the end of two weeks of listening (we used the CDs in bits and pieces), everyone in the family could at least say a few sentences in German -- and figure out the construction of others. If  we had given the eight-CD set a try, maybe I (the only one in the family who previously knew German) wouldn't have had to spend the first five to ten minutes of every meal translating the menu... 

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• #2 Comment from royriven 
  7/28/08 11:25 AM | Permalink

  You did not mention that Thomas lost his lawsuit against the Los Angeles Times, and that other newspapers have confirmed aspects of the Times article.
• #1 Comment from majbeck 
  8/12/06 12:10 PM | Permalink

  I have tried both Berlitz ( classroom) and Rosetta Stone ( computer.) I think that as in learning any skill, practice practice practice is the key. Michel Thomas has not reinvented the wheel here, but does make a point- the same point as other successful langiage programs- the only way to really learn a language is to speak it.