Le Baron wrote:I've not followed every post, but I too question the value of MT. Whilst I have to always admit that people learn differently.
I argue that people's apparent differences are superficial. What "macro" techniques the teachers give us may change, but I do feel that what we as good language learners actually do -- the thinking strategies we employ to get through the techniques -- are very similar.
It does seem the method is being repeatedly touted as something greater than what it is.
Oh, absolutely it is. But that doesn't mean it isn't a very big step in the right direction.
Like Irena I went to have a listen to the French course after reading about experiences with it here. I found it limited and that Michel Thomas himself isn't the best imitation model for the language.
Listening to something teaching a language you already know doesn't help you analyse the teaching method... unless you listen to the whole thing, catalogue the language taught and learned and compare it to what another course could teach in a similar span of time.
How's your Spanish? I can recommend using MT's Spanish course if you haven't got very far with it yet, and it will take you a very long way -- in fact, in your case, you've probably got enough of a variety of vocabulary in other languages that you'll find the course very useful.
I'm also flummoxed in a way because MT does a lot of correction, whereas Cainntear seemed to think this doesn't work (am I wrong about that?).
I started off this thread by saying that delayed correction doesn't always work, but that immediate correction is far more successful. MT doesn't make a note of student errors in the course of 40 minutes then deliver the corrections of all those errors in a 10 minute session.
I would assume the similar issues with MT as with Pimsleur, both positive and negative. That they pursue communicative speech. I'm limited in my comments because I have done neither of these for French, but I do know that the issue of the gulf between spoken and written French would in this case (and in any language really) put the learner at a bit of a disadvantage.
In the case of MT, the goal is command of grammar and it is taught by using using translation tasks that are focused deliberately and vary enough to not be substitution drills, but don't vary as much as Pimsleur tasks do. Pimsleur is effectively teaching phrases for memorisation and therefore doesn't have the range.
Nowadays practically all learners know they need audio input so the those inclined to book learning make that valuable effort; whereas those who feel they can make most progress lying in the sun listening to audio are still a bit recalcitrant with regard to the value of checking grammar and using written material to propel themselves.
Yes, people who use audio materials and don't pay attention are not going to learn a lot, but you can use an MT course that way. Pimsleur you can go into auto-pilot and echo the language from memory.
But you can't use MT that way, because there's no real repetition so you can't just memorise the right answers.
Pimsleur had at its heart various ideas that were in vogue when it started, and it owes a lot to the audio-lingual methods pioneered by the US army and took it further into the realms of memory schedules.
MT was not like that.
Reading information is surely the fastest way of getting it. I know I can read an article faster than I can listen to one.
Define "getting it". You might be able to read fast, but the physical act of reading is different from "getting it".