Language Transfer

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Re: Language Transfer

Postby Random Review » Fri Jan 18, 2019 8:09 pm

CompImp wrote:I sampled the first two lessons of French because i thought this would be a good course the way people are expressing their enthusiasm about it.

I must say, i think the content is absolutely dreadful.

-Might be wrong but the guy sounds like he's not a native speaker. 1 non-native + 1 learner = useless.
-Are we learning French or English ? Up to now i can't tell, because it says French but i mostly hear English.
-Getting a learner with zero experience of the language to try to speak is also utterly pointless.
-The dialogues are boring and contrived.
-The whole thing feels and sounds very amateur.

All in all i would, based on two lessons, call this course less than worthless. It's so boring i would have to be paid to sit through the whole thing. I wanted to turn it off less than 2 minutes into 'lesson' 1.

Is there something i'm missing ? I've heard raves about this all over the internet and yet it seems like a bad mock up of some of the worst available 1-1 'teaching' the internet has to offer. :|


This is such a staggeringly unfair review that I initially answered quite childishly. Having deleted my first message and to answer your points in turn:

1) Indeed he's not a native speaker of French (or any languages except English and Cypriot Greek). He has native-speaking volunteers check his work.
2) You're learning French, but the first few tracks he is explaining how the whole thing works, so it's mostly English. Afterwards the course is a mixture of English and French. This family of methods would be even better if a way could be found to eliminate the need for English prompts; but no one has found a way yet. As is, many of us feel the pros of the method more than make up for that limitation at the absolute beginner stage.
3) The method overlaps with that of Michel Thomas and one thing they share is that the non-native learner is a feature not a bug. Far from being pointless, it's actually essential for the method to work.
4) There are no dialogues. What on earth are you talking about?
5) Well, apart from the Swahili course, which was paid for, it is amateur in the literal sense; however the teaching quality is far better than many professional courses.
Last edited by Random Review on Fri Jan 18, 2019 8:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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German input 100 hours by 30-06: 4 / 100
Spanish input 200 hours by 30-06: 0 / 200
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Spanish study 200 hours by 30-06: 0 / 200
Spanish conversation 100 hours by 30-06: 0 / 100

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Re: Language Transfer

Postby David1917 » Fri Jan 18, 2019 8:27 pm

CompImp wrote:
Random Review wrote:3) The method overlaps with that of Michel Thomas and one thing they share is that the non-native learner is a feature not a bug. Far from being pointless, it's actually essential for the method to work.

Not sure this is proven correct. It makes no logical sense in any case.


I find the non-native learner to be the weakest part of the MT courses I've listened to. I understand it's probably meant to make the listener feel more "comfortable" by having someone else make mistakes/guesses/ask questions that they might ask themselves were they in a classroom, but listening to someone pronounce things awfully is only detrimental. The other problem is if one of the students clearly isn't "getting it" then you're spending valuable time sitting around waiting for them to come up with the right answer. The female student in MT French was awful, and I think they caught on because she was only prompted to give like 25% of the responses as the course went on!
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Re: Language Transfer

Postby Random Review » Fri Jan 18, 2019 8:44 pm

David1917 wrote:
CompImp wrote:
Random Review wrote:3) The method overlaps with that of Michel Thomas and one thing they share is that the non-native learner is a feature not a bug. Far from being pointless, it's actually essential for the method to work.

Not sure this is proven correct. It makes no logical sense in any case.


I find the non-native learner to be the weakest part of the MT courses I've listened to. I understand it's probably meant to make the listener feel more "comfortable" by having someone else make mistakes/guesses/ask questions that they might ask themselves were they in a classroom, but listening to someone pronounce things awfully is only detrimental. The other problem is if one of the students clearly isn't "getting it" then you're spending valuable time sitting around waiting for them to come up with the right answer. The female student in MT French was awful, and I think they caught on because she was only prompted to give like 25% of the responses as the course went on!


I understand that, but unfortunately the learner is necessary for the method to work. In addition you need to remember that many (perhaps most!) of the people using these course (both Thomas and LT) will be inexperienced learners who struggle as much as any weak students on the tapes. If the student(s) in the course is/are too strong, the course will be useless to these learners. You need to remember that members on here are not typical of most of the people who start a new language. As Cainntear pointed out recently. we are the survivors who succeeded in spite of poor teaching.

One improvement LT made over Thomas (at least in his Greek course) is that he kept a lot of the corrections with the actual mistakes edited out when they became annoyingly repetitive.
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German input 100 hours by 30-06: 4 / 100
Spanish input 200 hours by 30-06: 0 / 200
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Re: Language Transfer

Postby David1917 » Fri Jan 18, 2019 8:45 pm

CompImp wrote:I've never heard anything but samples of MT but what i heard was truly dire.


I actually liked the French one for a very specific purpose - when I could only partially pay attention, and to reinforce actual study. I listened to it while biking to and from the gym, and the way things were presented in the simplest possible terms was a good way to consolidate some of what I'd been seeing/hearing. The "utility" of it worked out as well, because I definitely used phrases I heard in that course and that course alone while in Paris. But I was only able to understand the responses due to actual study. I think a better alternative would be something that isn't marketed as a "teaching" course with the asinine learners, but rather just lectures on the language with example sentences.
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Re: Language Transfer

Postby David1917 » Fri Jan 18, 2019 8:49 pm

Random Review wrote:I understand that, but unfortunately the learner is necessary for the method to work.


I don't understand why, other than to facilitate an overly easy experience for the average learner.

In addition you need to remember that many (perhaps most!) of the people using these course (both Thomas and LT) will be inexperienced learners who struggle as much as any weak students on the tapes. If the student(s) in the course is/are too strong, the course will be useless to these learners. You need to remember that members on here are not typical of most of the people who start a new language. As Cainntear pointed out recently. we are the survivors who succeeded in spite of poor teaching.


I agree with this, and I do actually recommend MT to people who ask me about learning languages, since I know they may not have the same drive/proclivities as myself. I always remind them of the drawbacks (bad accents from learners) but that it will be a good introduction before taking on further study. Also people that want to do something "in the car" (the inundation of this marketing tactic has really poisoned most peoples' minds on what it is to learn a language) I recommend it to. Again as starter or supplement.
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Re: Language Transfer

Postby Random Review » Fri Jan 18, 2019 8:53 pm

CompImp wrote:
David1917 wrote:I find the non-native learner to be the weakest part of the MT courses I've listened to. I understand it's probably meant to make the listener feel more "comfortable" by having someone else make mistakes/guesses/ask questions that they might ask themselves were they in a classroom, but listening to someone pronounce things awfully is only detrimental.

Exactly. Listening to unnatural language, with poor accent, is never beneficial. Whether some 'renowned' course says so or not.

The other problem is if one of the students clearly isn't "getting it" then you're spending valuable time sitting around waiting for them to come up with the right answer. The female student in MT French was awful, and I think they caught on because she was only prompted to give like 25% of the responses as the course went on!

I've never heard anything but samples of MT but what i heard was truly dire.

This LT course is mostly in English, which means it's an utter waste of time. There are literally hundreds of things that are more valuable uses of time than doing this course.

I mean i know this is like the most vanilla forum on the planet where naughty words offend so-called adults but surely we're allowed to have negative opinions of stuff ? I mean it's not like i just out and out slated it and called it a pile of doop* without any explanation. And this is, without exaggerating, one of the doopiest piles of horse doop i've ever seen.

('Doop' is the 'swearword' we use with our kids because we don't want them to swear, but want them to have a word for when something is total and utter doop. I thought it'd be appropriate on this forum.)


It's not your conclusion that is the problem and certainly not your choice of words, it's the way you reach that conclusion (for example you still haven't answered how you got the idea that the course contains dialogues) and the unfair way you present its perceived uselessness as utterly obvious and universal without further analysis. You can consider any course that is mostly English a waste of time and say so, Christ in a bucket, you can even consider it "shit if you truly want to use that word (it doesn't offend me in the slightest); but you need to explain why this makes it shit or doop or whatever, because many people don't find it useless. Many successful language learners on here considered this process very useful* at the absolute beginner stage.

Those are the two reasons your review is unfair.
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German input 100 hours by 30-06: 4 / 100
Spanish input 200 hours by 30-06: 0 / 200
German study 50 hours by 30-06: 3 / 100
Spanish study 200 hours by 30-06: 0 / 200
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Re: Language Transfer

Postby Random Review » Fri Jan 18, 2019 8:58 pm

CompImp wrote:
Random Review wrote:I understand that, but unfortunately the learner is necessary for the method to work.

Necessary for the method to 'work' to do what ? What is the outcome ? Learning a few poor choice sentences or phrases ? I mean in the last lesson he's still explaining 'aller' and 'avoir'. In English. On lesson 40. :lol:


And here you again fail to understand what the course even is. This course does not aim to teach you any words or any phrases. Not one.

Late edit: in fact Thomas even explicitly forbids you to try and learn anything!

CompImp wrote: Sorry but this course is a total waste of time. I'm finding it implausible that someone could actually champion it as being useful even to a total rank beginner.


And here again you are asserting your impressions as universal and obvious without backing them up in any way whatsoever. Do you see the pattern?

CompImp wrote: You could just go on forvo for free and listen to a native speaking a sentence, google translate it and repeat. Or go on youtube and get XPod101's entire library for free and listen and repeat.


And again. See point 1 above.

CompImp wrote:I literally can't think of anything that is more useless. Listening to totally incomprehensible 6-way slangy conversation as a rank beginner is even more useful than this.


And yet again. See point 2 above.
Last edited by Random Review on Fri Jan 18, 2019 9:12 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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German input 100 hours by 30-06: 4 / 100
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Re: Language Transfer

Postby Random Review » Fri Jan 18, 2019 9:09 pm

David1917 wrote:
Random Review wrote:I understand that, but unfortunately the learner is necessary for the method to work.


I don't understand why, other than to facilitate an overly easy experience for the average learner.

In addition you need to remember that many (perhaps most!) of the people using these course (both Thomas and LT) will be inexperienced learners who struggle as much as any weak students on the tapes. If the student(s) in the course is/are too strong, the course will be useless to these learners. You need to remember that members on here are not typical of most of the people who start a new language. As Cainntear pointed out recently. we are the survivors who succeeded in spite of poor teaching.


I agree with this, and I do actually recommend MT to people who ask me about learning languages, since I know they may not have the same drive/proclivities as myself. I always remind them of the drawbacks (bad accents from learners) but that it will be a good introduction before taking on further study. Also people that want to do something "in the car" (the inundation of this marketing tactic has really poisoned most peoples' minds on what it is to learn a language) I recommend it to. Again as starter or supplement.



I've seen these courses misused, mate. Anyone who ignores the instructions and tries to learn these courses will risk a mediocre (Mihalis) or bad (Thomas) accent. That's just one of several reasons why you should absolutely follow the instructions: don't try to learn anything!
Do the courses and acquire a fundamental grasp of the core grammar and an accurate phonemic map, then move on to something else and your accent won't be harmed.

If you don't follow the instructions and try to learn the course, yes, it will probably harm your accent. Cars are great; but of course if you try to drive a car the way you ride a bicycle, people will get hurt.
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German input 100 hours by 30-06: 4 / 100
Spanish input 200 hours by 30-06: 0 / 200
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Spanish study 200 hours by 30-06: 0 / 200
Spanish conversation 100 hours by 30-06: 0 / 100

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Re: Language Transfer

Postby David1917 » Fri Jan 18, 2019 9:17 pm

Random Review wrote:I've seen these courses misused, mate. Anyone who ignores the instructions and tries to learn these courses will risk a mediocre (Mihalis) or bad (Thomas) accent. That's just one of several reasons why you should absolutely follow the instructions: don't try to learn anything!
Do the courses and acquire a fundamental grasp of the core grammar and an accurate phonemic map, then move on to something else and your accent won't be harmed.

If you don't follow the instructions and try to learn the course, yes, it will probably harm your accent. Cars are great; but of course if you try to drive a car the way you ride a bicycle, people will get hurt.


That's now how I understood Thomas's instructions not to "learn" the courses. The way he says it, is that you are not to memorize anything, and it is his job to make sure you "learn" the material, and how to come up with an appropriate response. After all, if the purpose wasn't to teach you the words why would you listen to him quiz someone on...the words?

"Learn a new language in hours, not years"

I did use the course in the manner you're suggesting, to get a quick overview of grammar basics, though I would say that by listening to non-natives butcher the speech, you will not "acquire an accurate phonemic map." You would do that by listening to native speech ad nauseum.
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Re: Language Transfer

Postby Random Review » Fri Jan 18, 2019 11:39 pm

David1917 wrote:[
I did use the course in the manner you're suggesting, to get a quick overview of grammar basics, though I would say that by listening to non-natives butcher the speech, you will not "acquire an accurate phonemic map." You would do that by listening to native speech ad nauseum.


Just a slight disagreement there. Cainntear explained this really well for Michel Thomas back on the old HTLAL site; but it applies also to LT:

the teacher doesn't have to nail every single phoneme perfectly like a native for you to come away with an accurate phonemic map. For example I don't have the /ʊ/ phoneme in words like book in my dialect of English (but I am a native speaker FWIW), so when I teach it, I actually can't produce a bang on, perfect native phoneme, I instead use the German one (which is so close it has the same IPA symbol) and has the advantage for me that I have spent hours drilling it while learning German and so is easier for me to produce*. This means any students bizarrely choosing to copy me for the rest of their lives (no student would actually be so daft lol) will have a slight "foreign accent" for these words. However to the extent that I succeed in teaching, they will have an approximate map of the difference between /ʊ/ and /u/ and can zero in later on native pronunciation if they choose.

Another example Cainntear gave for Thomas is (ironically) his French course, where he did actually screw up one of the phonemic distinctions in the vowel system (at least that was what I remember him saying). This was a weakness in that course even if used as designed.

However when you try to learn these kinds of courses (which sadly I have seen people doing on the old site), that process obviously does involve copying the pronunciation you hear. I wouldn't want to use Thomas as a model even for German and certainly not for Spanish, french or Italian! Mihalis generally has pretty good pronunciation, but obviously a native model is better for that (much longer) stage of learning a new language. FWIW and where the combination is available (i.e. FIGS), I think Thomas or LT plus Pimsleur is a really solid starter combo.

Anyway, people are far too harsh on Thomas for his pronunciation, we're talking about a man who learned his languages long before cassette tapes, let alone the internet.

* At first I tried to get it perfect by practicing and checking with English and American colleagues, but in fact I soon noticed that (as with many vowels) there is a slight difference between the US [ʊ] and the one used in England (but again so close that they use the same IPA symbol). I didn't know which one to choose.
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German input 100 hours by 30-06: 4 / 100
Spanish input 200 hours by 30-06: 0 / 200
German study 50 hours by 30-06: 3 / 100
Spanish study 200 hours by 30-06: 0 / 200
Spanish conversation 100 hours by 30-06: 0 / 100


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