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Michel Thomas Japanese

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AndyMeg
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Speaks: Spanish*, English
Studies: Japanese, Korean

 
 Message 1 of 9
03 December 2011 at 12:53pm | IP Logged 
If you had to give advice to a friend and he asks you how far he can go by doing all the Foundation and Advanced Japanese Michel Thomas Course. What would you tell him?

I really like the Michel Thomas Method, but I find the title of the "Advanced course" a little misleading. What do you think?
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Volte
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 Message 2 of 9
03 December 2011 at 2:40pm | IP Logged 
I'd say it gets you to a low beginner level.
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Chris
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 Message 3 of 9
03 December 2011 at 3:17pm | IP Logged 
Agreed. It's all a question of perspective, and marketing.

A lot of language course producers are moving the goal-posts and re-representing their courses as more advanced than they are. For example, even Linguaphone have upgraded their 'Basic' courses to 'Bsaic to Intermediate' and their 'Intermediate' courses to ' Advanced' yet, while these courses are really good, the 'Advanced' courses only take you as far as the old UK 'A' level standard, which is nowehere near having a truly advanced knowledge of a language. Even with a degree, there is still a lot you don't know.

Levels of language learning are very subjective. I have known people who can say hello in a language write that thet are fluent on a CV, and I have known people who downplay (especially in Japan) their abiility are actually very good at English, which is their main 'foreign' language.

So yes, 'Advanced' is actually very basic in the MT context.
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leosmith
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 Message 4 of 9
04 December 2011 at 12:50pm | IP Logged 
I think it's well worth doing. It's well organized, and sticks really well. Unfortunately, it covers only about 50% of the
grammar you need to be able to adequately express yourself. And probably less than 25% of the grammar that you'll
need to be able to understand native material and speakers. Oh, and the usual complaints about the students apply.
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jazzboy.bebop
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norwegianthroughnove
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 Message 5 of 9
05 December 2011 at 4:58am | IP Logged 
leosmith wrote:
I think it's well worth doing. It's well organized, and sticks really well. Unfortunately, it covers only about 50% of the grammar you need to be able to adequately express yourself. And probably less than 25% of the grammar that you'll need to be able to understand native material and speakers. Oh, and the usual complaints about the students especially apply.


Fixed.

The woman student on that course made me yell all sorts of colourful expletives with her near constant mistakes. Her inability to use the particle を for so much of both courses really infuriated me at times, especially considering the amount of times she was clearly told how to use it and that it was taught pretty much from the start.

Apart from that, they are very decent at teaching what they teach though their scope is still fairly limited in terms of what you should know grammatically. A great start though. Would be nice if they made a vocabulary course which taught more patterns, I am surprised they haven't made one considering the language's popularity.
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Sandman
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 Message 6 of 9
05 December 2011 at 9:38am | IP Logged 
There isn't anything in there that isn't useful and efficiently presented. I've gone through both extensively, but there's just not enough time involved in the method to get past a very beginner level.

What are your friends goals? The MT courses are very good, and I would recommend them for sure, but I've found Japanese to be one of those languages that you'll be studying various grammar points, even major ones, for years.

Things like Spanish and French get a lot of attention from MT but Japanese would need about 3-4x the attention for equal payoff most likely. MT is good, but there's just way too much to learn.
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AndyMeg
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Speaks: Spanish*, English
Studies: Japanese, Korean

 
 Message 7 of 9
06 December 2011 at 6:10pm | IP Logged 
Thankyou for all your answers! ^_^!

So, all the japanese MT course (Foundation and Advanced) just take you to a very basic level, right?

Sandman wrote:
There isn't anything in there that isn't useful and efficiently presented. I've gone through both extensively, but there's just not enough time involved in the method to get past a very beginner level.

What are your friends goals? The MT courses are very good, and I would recommend them for sure


I really like the MT courses and it would be wonderful if they could extend the recorded time to more hours.

My friend wants to start but doesn`t know how. I though MT could be a good introduction, but I wasn`t sure about the level a total beginner could reach with this course.
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nway
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 Message 8 of 9
06 December 2011 at 7:01pm | IP Logged 
I don't know whether or not this will help, but this is a spreadsheet I made a while ago of some of the verbs and conjugations that were introduced in the MT Foundation course and the first hour or so of the Advanced course:



That is, eleven verbs across eleven conjugations. The table certainly isn't complete, but it should give you an idea of how the course goes about teaching verbs.


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