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Originally posted by GrantR:
I bought Michel Thomas' CDs for learning French, it's finding the time though to actually sit down and go through them.
His method of learning though is not forcing yourself to remember, no writing etc, just letting you learn the words and let it all come together naturally. Will see how that goes.
I thought it was ok. It really does help you "think" in French so it does come naturally, but it does feel quite limited. Doing his advanced course may help that though.
www.learnfrenchbypodcast.com - ive just started listening to them on the way to and from work and they are pretty good, ive got french lessons through work starting on Monday. To do with opening our office in Switzerland I guess.
I'm currently learning Spanish although due to my uni committments, I've stagnated on my self-study and have joined an evening class.
I started with the Michel Thomas CD's which are a very good and painless introduction into a language without the need for writing stuff down straight away. I hear that there will be new courses released for Mandarin/Russian quite soon using his method. The only trouble is that with the recordings where Michel is still alive and doing the teahcing, his accent (so i've been told) is abysmal, especially the Spanish and Italian courses.
Following 1 completion of MT (i'll go back later) I downloaded the free Spanish Programmatic Course from http://fsi-language-courses.com/. There is a multitude of free material here and, according to the good folks at http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/ reckon that if you have the patience to plough through with theri method, you'll have a fantastic base to build from by further reading etc.
I've heard Pimsleur and Assimil are also decent courses.
I didn't know Michel Thomas was dead. Mind you he was knocking on a bit I think. I do have the Italian course which I didn't finish before going onto Pimsleur.
Pimsleur is very similar in concept to Michel Thomas' publications, but without the irritating students. You are actively discouraged from making notes. You don't use grammatical tables, and you don't learn verb conjugations parrot fashion. You learn how verbs are used by using them in context.
Originally posted by Herman Bloom:
I've got the Rosetta one for Brazilian. I have a complete inability to learn a language though. Combination of lack of patience and gross stupidity.
There is no such thing as a language called "Brazilian" though.
We speak Portuguese, our variety of Portuguese is called "Brazilian Portuguese", just like there are several varieties of English like "Australian English", "American English" and so on.
Originally posted by PMLF:
<BLOCKQUOTE>Originally posted by Herman Bloom:
I've got the Rosetta one for Brazilian. I have a complete inability to learn a language though. Combination of lack of patience and gross stupidity.
There is no such thing as a language called "Brazilian" though.
We speak Portuguese, our variety of Portuguese is called "Brazilian Portuguese", just like there are several varieties of English like "Australian English", "American English" and so on. </BLOCKQUOTE>