Portuguese michel thomas pdf

He also said, " If you are not making mistakes, you are not learning. Having used all the app options as well as Rosetta Stone to learn languages Michel Thomas turned out to be one of the limited options to learn European Portuguese as opposed to Brazilian. When I read how the course worked I approached it with a lot of scepticism about how effective they would be.

But I have to say that I have never experienced a language learning experience before that so effectively locked in so much of the content.

I would definitely recommend the process to anyone trying to learn a language. I have to add that Michel Thomas' personal history and endorsements from celebrities completely are irrelevant to how effective the learning process is. What I feel is important when one picks up MTM is to have clear expectations and I do agree that the marketing blows those expectations out of proportion, as you said yourself - I picked it up on a friend's recommendation, so I had a much clearer idea of what to expect.

The course will definitely not help with listening comprehension. It does not really give you a whole lot of vocabulary to work with I later supplemented MTM with the entire Duolingo course just to learn more vocab in a convenient way.

It will not make you a fluent or even decent speaker. It will give you basic understanding of sentence structure and how to build sentences in a variety of tences, as well as how to make use of some common structures and expressions. I found that even after all these years, I remember the grammar I learned with MTM much better than a lot of things from other languages learned through other methods.

A month ago, I had a chance to put my memory to test during my five-day stay in Spain where I spoke almost exclusively Spanish I have to emphasize that I did not learn Spanish in any other way than MTM and Duolingo, for lack of time and need. Surprisingly, I was able to succeed with day-to-day interactions without much difficulty, and I attribute at least part of that ease to MTM. I think the review was fairly meaningless in the end - from the point of view of someone wanting to choose a language course like me, for instance.

Instead of debating his opinions about how language should be taught and what claims should be made and what today's fashions are he needs to point to studies and comparative results. And very probably, looking at the comments again, this matching process would need to be repeated for each different language. And I'd say after considering all this that no one can tell us until after we've discovered something for ourselves. But remember what seems apparent about things needing to be reassessed with each new language.

And another: requirement. Just what do you want? Complete fluency undetectable from a native? Or just enough to get by on a quick visit? If there were a scientifically presented and analysed database of language methods, teachers, students and results then maybe we could say something but prior to that we simply, as students, first time students, need to jump in anywhere whim dictates and see what happens. It's all up to us. I was in China for instance and I discovered what I needed from a language was first of all the simple ability to get things, buy things, find things.

So I needed to be able to say 'how much? Never forgot that. Main things: names of foods, 'how much? I've said so much here I might as well go the whole hog and say one more. Doing MT Russian I repeatedly notice they go on about how this or that English phrase is said this or that way in Russian: and it frequently takes fewer words. Like big deal, a plus, Russian is great because it takes fewer words. I don't mind. But it seems to me they get it wrong. They say Russian for something like maybe 'where can i buy cigarettes' is whatever it is.

And point out there's no little particles of speech. So it comes out like like: where possible buy cigarette? So that's how Russians speak. They just say 'want food' or something like that, you know? They don't say : I am interested to know where can I buy food' they just say 'interyesna buy food'. I'm not explaining myself very well. They give us the translation as though the Russian HAS said it. But Russian just doesn't talk like that. Same as the English don't say 'he table like she ship' but the French do, with their 'le' and 'la'.

See what I mean? Like if you look at Pidgin, New Guinea Pidgin, there's no pretense there that they're saying the same thing. It is not 'This thing is exactly the same as that thing' it is something like 'Dispella allsame datpella' and that's the end of it. I think this feature should be much considered in teaching languages: that they just don't say the same things. I'd agree. I tried MT method French, and it was just a guy with a French accent shouting the English and then the French, without any real flow or structure.

It was like he'd been told to say all the phrases he knew in both languages, as he thought of them. I don't rate this method at all, plus I can't easily go and find relevant phrases or vocab, as I can in virtually every other course. This was just random. I concur that there is virtually no comprehension, but I find the explanations a great assist in understanding any of the 'natural' learning styles e.

Pimsleur, which is always my starting point. If there's a serious shortcoming with that combination, it's one that is shared by most resources I find - they top out at a very basic conversational level. MT works great in many languages, and what you are writing is complete misleading political bullshit! And for the sake of argument, what do you recommend? Have you tried a lot of courses out there? How great did Rosetta Stone help you? Everybody is different in learning and by posting this bullshit article with your personal shortcomings you are spreading the wrong news about the fantastic method that helped millions.

I can't believe someone would attack MT method--this is insane As an educator, you should know that. There are really only four Michel Thomas courses.

French, Italian, Spanish, and German. The rest were made up after he died. I have to say I found the French course extraordinary. I made more progress in a couple of days than I did studying Spanish in school for five years. MT just makes the grammar so effortless. I did his Total German course and loved it.

I felt so much more confident in speaking. I was working as a tour guide at the time and met Germans daily and this course really helped. I will say though that this course was not my grounding in German, I did duolingo German up to the genitive case stage and stopped for some reason I can't remember. Michel Thomas is definitely not wonderful for learning a massive vocabulary but he teaches you how to learn.

I would say his course alone is not enough, he does not even get into der, die, das, den, dem, des, etc, but if you buy a dictionary and a grammar book to the side and get a penpal, then he is great.

I started his begin French course and had similar results until I had my radio taken away My name is Hasan and I live in Iraq and I notice that you're learning Arabic, so if you want any help I will be more than happy to help you.

Thanks for your review! I actually like the MT courses I used Italian, Spanish and French and even a bit of German, even though that's my mother tongue , but I never considered them real language courses, for the same reasons you give. I used them alongside real courses at my university, because I liked how they only required you to listen and pay attention I used to take long walks with them without using other material and I was very pleased by how they managed to get through most of the important aspects of a languages grammar, even giving some historical context and connecting concepts of those languages to English.

I see them as a useful tool to very quickly understand the workings of the languages grammar, allowing you to use it correctly without much effort, but without learning the language in some other, more profound way, the MT courses are pointless.

First of all, I have a diplom as teacher in french language for foreigners, and comparing the methods was part of what I learned, so I can see wich are the good and week points of a method. But french teaching of foreign languages is wordly famous for being awful, leading people to think that french people themselves are awful at languages ; - I needed to learn a bit of nederlands to spend a year in Belgium, but never learned a word of it before.

I've try my newly acquired russian actually speaking with russian and ukrainian people and it went really great. And now I'm back at university, to learn languages and translations, with specialization in russian and german and I can say this method was a major help in preparation for this. And thats the point: I was unable to remind a new language, while the support language is really close to the new language.

So I kept answering in english. And finally stopped to go back to less oral methods, using french as support, which worked better for me. This wasn't a problem with russian, due to the fact that I already knew the language and due to the distance between english and russian.

I will actually give a try later to MT method for another language that I don't know, just to see what will be the result but this time using my own language as support, maybe italian or chinese. But the effectiveness is yet to prove for a totally new language. Or you won't be able to just read a menu in a restaurant not knowing a single hanzi. A good side method but that should not be the single one you use. And I really want to point this :pay attention to the closeness between the support language and the learned language, it can be a difficulty and I'm pretty sure that learning german from zero through english would have been quite difficult too.

And also, I didn't respected the deal, working on my own, listening severaltimes, reading newspapers, using other sources. A good, and, actually, very good method for rewieving acquired knowledge, maybe not that great for starting something new. I've just read your review, and I think I will probably agree with you. Sure, you learn quite "a lot" in only two hours, but what annoyed me from the begining is that the teacher isn't a native speaker.

And it's a BIG problem. I am not German, but for example one of the student was pronouncing "nicht" which means "not" When the teacher finally decided with his weird accent to explain how to pronounce "ch" in German.

I mean, I have started German for only one week and even I noticed it immediately! Not the teacher. And here's the second problem : I think it's bad to hear several time in a row other students making mistakes, because it's not good to hear something wrong to learn I mean for me.

German is actually the 4th language I am learning, and I can also say from my personnal experience that this "way of thinking" MT way, block by block isn't very efficient. It is better to directly think in the language you are learning. Like google. Isn't a good way. Of speaking.

Because you will. Be stuck. Like this. For a long time. I think I will finish "the Foundation" anyway, to give it a shot.

But I will use it as a tool only. I have tried all the main and some of the online German courses and none of them gets the mind to work as it should do to be able to create an understandable sentence by compounding words quite like MT's method. I did find Paul Daniel's Magic Language course in tapes for French allowed me to now to remember words and gender that I learned 20 years ago.

I found this is an extremely good vocabulary learning method but not good for creating sentences. Most of the most up to date methods of learning language incorporate pictures but these pictures aren't as compelling as the pictures you create in your mind via Daniel's audio tapes.

Visual hooks as they are termed, need to be created in conjunction with the words to be fully effective. As MT states, we are no longer children and therefore we cannot learn as they can. I do sense a little professional jealousy among others with regard to MT's teaching methods.

As a psychologist, I would agree that there is no such thing as a bad student but a poor teacher is the centre of all our educational drawbacks. Not because they are incapable of teaching, but that the structure of teaching is simply wrong. Montesori teaching methods work, but are not recognised by teaching autorities and governments. The authorities are right and everything else that is different is wrong. MT states very clearly that learning is to be a stress-free as possible so that the direction he gives can be absorbed.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that he allows the student to self teach but to correct when needed. Many students, even those at school, will find an excuse for not learning. It's in our nature to do so as we have been allowed those excuses. I have heard those holding business seminars and writing on chalkboards and the like, state that they are dyslexic when they are not.

They just can't spell and can't be bothered to learn to spell. The USA have met their students half way and simplified the spelling of words so that they are logical such as theater instead of theatre and use liter instead of litre.

Most of the 'ou' vowel combinations have been replaced with 'o' as in labor and neighbor. I guess that the students are saying When I was told about the MT method of learning, I was sceptical.

The reason for my sceptisism is that it isn't the latest method of learning. However, that is a typical modern day wy of thinking. I think we all tend to want the latest most up-to-date language teaching method, that has been scrutinised by psychologists and teaching professionals and hopefully a little magic comes out of it.

That is a pipe dream, and an expensive one at that. The top language learning tapes do not match the hype and the misleading adverts that sell them. Would that you could follow a trail through a park and as people and things are met with your eye, that a label comes up with the word association.

However, the reality is that yes, you have pictures but they are a series of repeat still pictures. You will eventually learn the words but you still have to find a way to memorise them. It isn't natural any more than it is permanent. It requires the student to apply themselves to the task of memorising. That isn't absorbsion its the same old same old school test of how much you can remember of a subject prior to an exam.

This is the measure of what you can store and recall and has nothing to do with learning. Why do I know this? Beacuse I am a psychologist and that is not how the mind works. The most brilliant 20 century mathmatician Srinivasa Ramanujan whos work is still used today was not formally educated.

He was not taught to work in any particular way. He saw the patterns of mathematics in his head and translated this to pen and paper.

His biggest problem was to prove his answers. He had no workings out in the margins of his text book. Because he didn't do things the way they understood them. The truth is he took days to create a theory that took them years. He didn't keep going down blind alleys, but visualised a form of clarity within the maize that led him directly to the centre.

To those taught by regular methods, his was an incomplete peice of work. They needed to see how he worked it out. He couldn't tell them because he didn't work by a series of lists in chronological order as they had been taught. His was a natural, cerebral, connection of mathematic patterns that fitted like a puzzle. Music, language and mathematics are all things that should be allowed to naturally form in the confines of our minds to eventually be realised by communication of those thoughts.

If Srinivasa Ramanujan's work is still being used today to solve complex mathematical equations such as black holes, then we should never arrigantly state that because something is old it is no longer relevant. Too much emphasis is placed on a person's learning ability and application than the method of teaching.

Too much emphasis is placed on the method of testing the ability to recall and remember facts. If a history exam can be passed by remembering dates and a physics exam by remembering Archimedes principal or Boyle's law then we have learned nothing useful. If we fill a bath to the brim, get in and weigh the water that overflows, then we experience the phenominon.

Michel Thomas invites the student who has a desire or need to learn a new language. His method is logical and therefore useful to those who can benefit most by this method. It may not be for everyone. Most of us carry some sort of scepticism and as such will create a barrier to learning. If you retain that barrier it can be guaranteed you will get nowhere with it. Most will find an excuse for giving up. The only thing that MT does not mention is to make time each day to listen and learn.

That requires a discipline we are not used to. In fact I would say that it is a discipline we thought we had left behind when we left school. Much has been said about actors and actresses being used as marketing tools for MT's language course.

Just because Woody Allen failed to be able to speak fluent French, does not mean he did not enjoy the course or had an opportunity within the US to practice it. I grew up speaking German but after I was 5 I spoke nothing but English.

I forgot all my German. This wasn't because I did not learn it properly, it was because English became my first form of communication. A necessity for everyday life. If you learn a new language, you need to be I a position where its use is compulsory or communication will falter very quickly. Of course Michel Thomas is no longer around to argue his case, so it is easy to snipe at his methods when he can no longer defend them.

Of course, the earning method is still being sold by the publishers or whomever holds copywright. Today, if you are not taking full advantage of marketing aids then you will not compete with the wild calims of others. I am surprised that MT's biggest critics ave not said "where is his qualification in linguistics" but will remark that his qualification as a war hero doesn't apply.

Its called life experience and life experience relates to a professorship in any language. I certainly would not trust a BSc in mechanical engineering, with no practical experience to show me how to service my car rather than an experienced grease-monkey who does it every day.

If you need to learn a new language not necessarily just want to learn a new languge then I recommend this type of language course above all others. Incidentally, actors spend a considerable amount of time learning lines and therefore are very self disciplined. Those who study the Stanislavski acting will attach an emotion and motivation behind the lines that make them more real and therefore much easier to recall as written or near enough. Whether they are ideal candidates for learning languages is debatable.

But if the studio is paying for them to do so, why not? If they are using German within a film, they would want to be able to express Stanivlaski's method acting by wanting to know what they are saying and with the right conviction. My guess is, if he has any success with actors then ordinary people will be a breeze. That in itself will invariably interfere with learning. This kind of student is not a good example of a typical language learner but why not mention them if it helps sell copies.

You would not necessarily respond if you were told Lena Bakover of Leicester say's "The most extraordinary learning experience of my life" So what? I'm using the MTM to learn Russian after having tried other courses.

I've found it brilliant and it helped me enormously during my three and a half months in Russia this past twelve months. Yes, you have to invest time to learn. I would have thought that obvious. And you do get reward for effort. I like very much the conceptual building blocks that it assembles as a way of assisting one to learn.

And I'm told that I'm picking up the language more quickly than others that have been learning for a comparative period of time. The issue with the teacher correcting the students and hurting their self-esteem is garbage. If you are worried about that I would suggest that everyone go and swallow some toughen up pills. Too much emphasis in these days on everyone being offended instead of getting on with things. I found that when I was in Russia I was able to think in Russian.

And I like the focus on getting things grammatically correct. If you know how to speak things in a correct grammatical sense then people will understand you once you tweak with the accent, etc. I could not continue with MT beyond the first few CD's. I find Pimsleur way better. It gave me a great headstart with my Spanish and Italian which I could successfully continue acquiring after listening to Pimsleur courses.

As for Michel Thomas, bless him, he was a nice sounding old man, who had a rather pleasant voice, but his accent was terrible. Apart from no or little input by native speakers, I also took issue with his insistence that I should always know grammar rules "even if you guess correctly, it is still a wrong answer as far as I'm concerned, because you do not know the RULE". For goodness sake, how many rules do we know when we speak our native language or a second one which we have a really good command of?

That seems to me a classical example of an old-school mid 20th century grammar-translation method, which only remains popular because of a clever marketing campaign involving all those celebrities. And then Michel Thomas was awarded the Silver Star after that report was refuted.

I am not sure about the Michel Thomas Arab course - you might have a point there. However I used his method together with Pimsleur for learning Spanish and French and found it really useful.

I did not learn the languages in a week but after a couple of weeks with focus it helped me a lot. I really like how he explains the Grammar and has a clear system. Right now I am learning Czech and there is unfortunately no System like that so its much more complicated. I agree with the folks who say your review was poorly titled, since you only reviewed the Arabic language version.

Not fair to what is actually a huge expanse of products. But my personal opinion is that a lot of language learning and really any type of learning is what works for you, is good. I have lived in multiple countries, and always tried to learn some of the language. And over decades I have tried many different programs, free and paid, online and CDs and books and even classrooms.

Some I've learned more from than others, and some more has stuck with me than others. But to me, personally, the MT German program I took was the most effective of the entire bunch. There's nothing I find more irritating than being taught a phrase, then being taught what seems like a similar phrase but with slightly different words or conjugations or meaning, with NO explanation as to why they were so similar or different. The one thing I really liked about MT is he explained as he went, never just expected you to memorize things as if they were immutable nuggets of wisdom.

That allowed me to start feeling the structure of the language, which led to starting to think in the language. My wife took 4 years of high school German, while I did the MT beginner course.

At the end people say I speak better German than she does, and are amazed at how little time it took me. And as to the assertion that people think it is good because they know it's been around a long time, I had literally never heard of it when I tried it. So I had no preconceptions. Firstly, I need to thank you for your review as the responses to it have been some of the best endorsements I've read about Michel Thomas Method courses, and it was heartwarming!

But also, because some of your comments truly resonated and addressed issues I have been concerned about for a while - like the over-reliance on celebrity endorsements, many of which have become outdated. And also, some of the unclear claims about the method. This year we relaunched the product - putting it in eco-friendly packaging, as well as putting it online, but also, being more specific about what the product does and does not do.

We have removed the celebrity endorsements. Your review was helpful in giving me the ammunition to make this update. So thank you. For the reason that you make at the end of your review for why it is not effective! They play it. We often use similar analogies to describe our courses. Akshay Bakaya, author of the Hindi Michel Thomas course explained the method with:. You get into the water, or on the dance floor, with a good coach, and get on with it. And, cards on the table, I was dubious of it when I first took on the role of Publishing Director for Hodder.

Its claims were counter to what I learned as a student of Applied Linguistics. But once I got past the hype and marketing and started using the course, understanding the method, looking at the research and trials that went into their development, attending recordings, speaking with real-life users, I realised that it works better than anything I had ever seen for a self-study learner to get past the initial hurdle of learning a language.

You are figuring out a language and producing it by thinking through answers. By hearing your own progress, you are motivated to continue. And motivation is often the key ingredient in successful language learning that should not be overlooked. Instead, they teach you the underlying structure of a language. And by structure, I mean grammar! They teach very little vocabulary, but go through most of the verb tenses in a language. These courses were only ever intended to be a very solid foundation for further learning.

The first step that makes the rest of the journey a little bit easier. Yes, there is a lot of English. This is for the benefit of the self-study learner, but also because the whole method is about revealing what you already know about a new language and relying on English as a base for cognates, mnemonics and also to reduce stress.

Not everyone wants to walk into an immersion classroom on day 1! It seems to me you are criticising the method for things it does not even claim to do. It does not teach comprehension. It does not deal with reading or writing. Listening comprehension is important, usage is important. Authentic practice — very necessary!

But these are step two. First you need input — language to use and a base upon which you can start to comprehend. Michel Thomas Method courses are simply step 1. As the publisher for Michel Thomas Method courses for the past eight years, I have had countless emails and phone calls from people telling me how it has worked for them, even changed their lives. To put words together and USE the language.

We have run pilots in schools that quantitatively show a significant improvement in speaking and confidence in language learning when using Michel Thomas Method courses. But I was able to put it all the words together to say what I wanted. The waiter never responded to me in English. Like them, I have experienced how it works. I wholeheartedly recommend Michel Thomas courses to anyone I speak to as the absolute best way to start learning and using a new language.

Alas, they're simply not for everyone. He was awarded this at a ceremony at the new second world war memorial in Washington. Thomas was also recognised at the US Holocaust Memorial in a ceremony honouring the liberators of the camps. I used the Spanish Method and went through every course ever made in Spanish. I loved it and recommend it. It really helped me a ton with grammar and vocabulary.

Today I can speak Spanish pretty well, but I still have a problem understanding people talk unless they slow down for me. I read and write Spanish really well also, but I've had a lot of Spanish speaking friends and we texted in Spanish for years.

I am a retired language teacher who has used the Total and Perfect Greek courses to gain a working knowledge of the language upon which.

I can build. I find the method adopted - teacher and two students - congenial and effective. The claims - Total and Perfect - are of course misleading but it is difficult to find accurate level indicators when only one skill - speaking - is addressed. To clarify, I feel that I have acquired a good working knowledge of how the language works and that I can cope with reasonably advanced structures. Attention to the sparse booklets which contain all the language practised has imparted an ability to read and reproduce in writing what I have learned, although admittedly this flies in the face of the advice, implicit and explicit, not to spend time on study outside the confines of the course.

As you say, not good advice. As a linguist I was perhaps hoping for more than a mere 'language indispensable for a visit to Greece' course, and this I got, although it would have been good to get this as well. Although skills other than speaking are not well covered, and although this skill needs a lot of reinforcement with vocabulary post-course - preferably using similar methods to impart - I feel that I got more than I hoped for from the course, my expectations fairly low having tried other courses which do provide the missing practice in functional language but neglect the structures which allow one to build confidently, courses therefore which are fiddly and unsatisfying.

I would happily buy an 'Even More Perfect Greek' course, but hope for a better title! Perhaps I want too much from a course. On the basis of my experience of the Greek course, and my wife's on the Perfect Italian course, I will certainly buy a Michel Thomas Total Spanish course if I can find one at a fraction of the new cost.

I find your review a little harsh while sharing some of your caveats - total teacher responsibility, for example - but, as an ex teacher, I would, wouldn't I? By the way, in the UK at least, it's not 'complimentary', as in a cost-free glass of raki after your Cretan restaurant meal , but 'complementary' in your use of the word to describe the function of the not-too-active native speaker whose role is to top up and flesh out that of the real teacher.

It really comes down to how you learn. For me, Michel Thomas worked. I had taken lots of Spanish classes, dated a Peruvian and was immersed in Spanish on several occasions, and am an avid salsa dancer, but I couldn't learn Spanish.

For me, it worked wonders and I love it. I know others who have had success with it, and none with classes or other methods. So, it will vary from person to person. It just depends on how you learn. Michel Thomas teaches in a way that works for me. Having no prior French skills my partner and I did the Michel Thomas method for two months together before moving to France and we were absolutely rocking it by the time we got there. I started a french language course and was boosted up several levels because of how much I'd learned with MT, and it's one of the only things I enthusiastically recommend on a regular basis.

I disagree with almost everything you've said, I'm afraid. I've found the Michel Thomas method to be absolutely wonderful - quite the best way of learning a language. I have a degree in Spanish and have found that using Thomas's method to learn Italian, and to brush up on my French, has been a tremendous experience. In my view it has no parallel in terms of competitive language-learning products on the market. Thank you! I have never heard so much rubbish.

Twenty two years ago I asked a language teacher friend of mine if he could recommend a teach yourself course in Spanish. We had just bought a house in Spain. He immediately recommended Michel Thomas. I asked him if i did the course diligently would my Spanish be fairly good. Would have been happy if there was just the male student.

This is without doubt the best beginner course that I came across. There's a lot I don't like about it, and a lot of places where it could be improved, and I wish it went to a move advanced level, but it was the only thing that got me learning Portuguese grammar. This is a great review of the Michel Thomas Method for Portuguese.

I had a lot of the same issues as the writer here. I felt like there was too much emphasis on memorizing everything and that the other student mistakes were damaging.

The course doesn't really teach vocabulary but I was picking that up naturally anyway. I also don't think it covers listening very well, as most of what you're hearing is spoken in English anyway. But it is a really great course. I've tried group classes and other Portuguese textbooks but this course was the best at explaining Portuguese grammar to me.

First of all I should say that this is a fantastic course and it helped me get a basic level of Portuguese. I tried classes but this was much better. But there were a few things I didn't like about it. Firstly why can't I say eu, tu, ele, ela, etc. This does seem to be said in Portugal and it makes it easier to understand what's being said.

Secondly the accompanying book could be better. The Michel Thomas Method focuses on no memorization but in all honesty you do need to go over what youve learnt once you get to the more advanced lessons.

I don't know where I would be without Virgina's mnemonics and verb groupings e. She really breaks Portuguese grammar down into a much more digestible form. There were things I didn't like. The female student made a lot of mistakes which did confuse me and I found Virginia a bit patronising at times.

Maybe that wasn't on purpose. These two courses together are everything you need to speak Portuguese to an intermediate level. These digital courses are available to stream online or download to the Michel Thomas Method Library app.

About Portuguese. Start Portuguese. Foundation Portuguese. Intermediate Portuguese. Michel Thomas Portuguese Bundle. About Portuguese Portuguese has a wide geographical spread. Virginia Catmur. Virginia Catmur Virginia Catmur grew up in a multilingual environment, and used her language skills working as a freelancer for various publishers.

Free lesson.