Language Transfer

[David1917]

[
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.

I'm not criticizing Thomas's pronunciation as much as the learners. It's the same detriment that an introductory class where students are forced to try and speak too soon can have on those around them.

A worse example is the Russian course. One of the learners on there cannot roll the R, and instead uses some weird half-French R in Russian words. Even though you hear the instructor speaking "properly" - you still get mixed input at a stage where what you hear should be getting very well-tailored. Even different native accents are better to hear than someone trying to speak the language for the first time. Moreover, in these courses the amount of target language is pretty minimal, so I'm very skeptical of thinking that it gives a "phonemic map" as much as an "exposition to the new sounds you'll have to learn elsewhere"

You're right that basing one's learning off of these courses would be a mistake. However, the "average learner" is going to succumb to marketing and think that they only need ONE method, since they all market themselves as being COMPLETE, etc. It is with this in mind that I think having learners on the recording is detrimental, and it would be much more beneficial to have a group of natives explaining the language back and forth, and of course to transition to a higher ratio of TL:English.

[Random Review]

acquire a fundamental grasp of the core grammar and an accurate phonemic map

This is a joke, right ? Please tell me you're joking ?

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.

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!

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?

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.

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.

Ok, so it's a course that isn't supposed to teach you anything. You're not supposed to learn words and phrases. 'Not one'. And you also hear zero genuine, phonemically correct French. So it's absolutely, totally and utterly useless for learning. Good, we're getting somewhere.

I backed up my assertions. You can delve into SLA research yourself (or even just common sense) if you want to know why not hearing any genuine French and a bunch of English isn't going to do anything for your French.

We're done here. I don't have to defend my logic to you. You either like what i've said and why i said it or you don't. It's my review, i can say what i like. I've backed it up with the 'whys' and you don't accept them. Good for you.

I wish you a pleasant evening.

Come on, mate. You know I didn't say it isn't supposed to teach you anything; it just isn't supposed to teach any of the things you assumed. Give it a fair chance and try it on its own terms. Sure, you might still hate it, there are a few people I respect on here who don't find it personally useful; but your new review will be more interesting and helpful.

Of course, as you say, you don't have to defend your views to me; but if you don't advance any arguments in support of your views, how can anyone reading your review fairly judge it and how can we have a discussion that doesn't go around in circles (which TBH it has started doing)?
Come on, mate: you know that even if you are right and the people who like LT are all wrong, it can't be as simply and obviously worthless as you assert for the simple reason that we include quite a few successful learners. So maybe it is worth explaining why you think we're wrong.

SLA research I do have to read some as part of my job (teaching English); but AFAIK there is no study of the kind of process that Mihalis (and people like Thomas and Margarita Madrigal before him) are/were trying to bring about. All the studies I have seen were about completely different learning processes. Perhaps you do know of a relevant one and can tell me about it.

[rdearman]

This topic was split here because it was diverging from topic. The new thread is located in the General Discussion area.

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 14&t=10025

[romeo.alpha]

I have long been a fan of this guy, I did his early Greek course, which is basically Michel Thomas with a few minor improvements. That in itself is no small thing! Everyone else who tried to continue what MT was doing (whether Hodder & Stoughton, Harold Goodman, Paul Noble, etc) missed the point completely!

I'm not familiar with Harold Goodman, but I have to disagree with your take on Paul Noble. The way he set up the course is actually quite brilliant, and I've seen that approach applied in textbook courses as well (Kullu Tamam/Ahlan wa Sahlan for Egyptian Arabic for instance). What he does is look at what order to present a language in to make it easy. With French he starts with the past tense, because then you don't need to worry about different conjugation based on person or gender. Then he introduces it back in later. That's not a normal order that French is presented. Ahlan wa Sahlan does basically the same thing by having you work with daughter, son, paternal grandfather, uncle, mother and sister. But not brother, father, grandmother or aunt. Because the chosen relations all function the same way for a particular grammatical concept. It's a lot more thought than MT put into his course, simply working off cognates. It is also something Mihalis did really well with Arabic, just going with adjectives as verbs because it's a lot easier to work with than conjugating everything.

This may seem like a small thing, but I think part of the effectiveness of Thomas was that he managed to do something most teachers pay lip-service to: teaching one thing at a time. If you teach vocabulary and grammar simultaneously, you're teaching two things. But you can't teach grammar without vocabulary for the grammar to act on.

This seems to be begging the question a bit, in that it accepts that Thomas actually was an effective teacher. Donovan Nagel does a pretty good takedown of that in his review of Michel Thomas, and juxtaposing Woody Allen's endorsement of the method with the video of him unable to converse in French is quite damning. I'm really not convinced Michel Thomas is effective at anything more than making people think they can speak a language, and giving them the confidence boost to keep on learning.

I think he's made a rod for his own back with the voting system.

If the Arabic crowd are abandoning it due to the disappointment of someone playing the system, that means the system's already unsustainable, and it will only get worse. On the commissioning page he says it costs €8000-15000 per course, and the subscriptions are pulling in $742 a month. Let's round that to €10k per course and imagine he gets the subscriber base up to €1000. It'll still take 10 months to get the money for each course. There's 20 languages on his voting map -- to do one course for each would take 16 years and 8 months, so if the voting patterns never changed, we'd expect to see Serbian in autumn of 2033.

OK, as he says, he'll get quicker with practice, but then again we have multiple courses per language, so any time gained in speeding up is still going to be time lost to other courses. Plus in the interim, there may well also be other commissions that interfere with his timetable.

Yeah, I think this ties in to his AMA on reddit, where he made a comment I found really discouraging, namely that he hasn't even properly learned and doesn't speak the languages he's teaching anymore. It's also quite apparent in how much of a train wreck his French course is compared to how good his Arabic course was (admittedly I'm in a different position to judge his French, given I speak it leagues better than he does, while he is without a doubt far better at Arabic than I am). He's making a mistake Paul Noble didn't make, in branching out into too many languages. Paul Noble has his 4 languages he teaches, and has left it at that. Language Transfer would have been much better had he stuck to Spanish, Arabic, Greek and Turkish. And from discussions I've had with people about it and looking at the courses for the languages I know (French and German) I really think those are the only good courses he has to offer.

[neumanc]

Paul Noble has his 4 languages he teaches, and has left it at that.

Not quite true. There has been a recent addition: Chinese. Furthermore, he has issued "next step" courses for all of his languages, including Chinese. I cannot review them, because I haven't used them. But for Chinese, I would be willing to try his courses at some point in the future.

[romeo.alpha]

Paul Noble has his 4 languages he teaches, and has left it at that.

Not quite true. There has been a recent addition: Chinese. Furthermore, he has issued "next step" courses for all of his languages, including Chinese. I cannot review them, because I haven't used them. But for Chinese, I would be willing to try his courses at some point in the future.

Thanks for the heads-up. That will definitely be one I'll look at if I decide to give Mandarin another go.

I notice that the co-author is Kai-Ti Noble. While I can't find any information about Paul's personal life (and that's fine), it does look like he married a Chinese woman and that he learned Mandarin because of that. It's a pretty big difference to be teaching a language you're that invested in personally, and one that was just requested by fans.

It looks like Next Steps is only offered on Audible, which is a bit of a bummer. I like the option of being able to buy from smaller book stores and the like. And that is more what Mihalis should have done (like some other people commented, make Complete Arabic before starting French, for example).

[Random Review]

I have long been a fan of this guy, I did his early Greek course, which is basically Michel Thomas with a few minor improvements. That in itself is no small thing! Everyone else who tried to continue what MT was doing (whether Hodder & Stoughton, Harold Goodman, Paul Noble, etc) missed the point completely!

I'm not familiar with Harold Goodman, but I have to disagree with your take on Paul Noble. The way he set up the course is actually quite brilliant, and I've seen that approach applied in textbook courses as well (Kullu Tamam/Ahlan wa Sahlan for Egyptian Arabic for instance). What he does is look at what order to present a language in to make it easy. With French he starts with the past tense, because then you don't need to worry about different conjugation based on person or gender. Then he introduces it back in later. That's not a normal order that French is presented. Ahlan wa Sahlan does basically the same thing by having you work with daughter, son, paternal grandfather, uncle, mother and sister. But not brother, father, grandmother or aunt. Because the chosen relations all function the same way for a particular grammatical concept. It's a lot more thought than MT put into his course, simply working off cognates. It is also something Mihalis did really well with Arabic, just going with adjectives as verbs because it's a lot easier to work with than conjugating everything.

This may seem like a small thing, but I think part of the effectiveness of Thomas was that he managed to do something most teachers pay lip-service to: teaching one thing at a time. If you teach vocabulary and grammar simultaneously, you're teaching two things. But you can't teach grammar without vocabulary for the grammar to act on.

This seems to be begging the question a bit, in that it accepts that Thomas actually was an effective teacher. Donovan Nagel does a pretty good takedown of that in his review of Michel Thomas, and juxtaposing Woody Allen's endorsement of the method with the video of him unable to converse in French is quite damning. I'm really not convinced Michel Thomas is effective at anything more than making people think they can speak a language, and giving them the confidence boost to keep on learning.

I think he's made a rod for his own back with the voting system.

If the Arabic crowd are abandoning it due to the disappointment of someone playing the system, that means the system's already unsustainable, and it will only get worse. On the commissioning page he says it costs €8000-15000 per course, and the subscriptions are pulling in $742 a month. Let's round that to €10k per course and imagine he gets the subscriber base up to €1000. It'll still take 10 months to get the money for each course. There's 20 languages on his voting map -- to do one course for each would take 16 years and 8 months, so if the voting patterns never changed, we'd expect to see Serbian in autumn of 2033.

OK, as he says, he'll get quicker with practice, but then again we have multiple courses per language, so any time gained in speeding up is still going to be time lost to other courses. Plus in the interim, there may well also be other commissions that interfere with his timetable.

Yeah, I think this ties in to his AMA on reddit, where he made a comment I found really discouraging, namely that he hasn't even properly learned and doesn't speak the languages he's teaching anymore. It's also quite apparent in how much of a train wreck his French course is compared to how good his Arabic course was (admittedly I'm in a different position to judge his French, given I speak it leagues better than he does, while he is without a doubt far better at Arabic than I am). He's making a mistake Paul Noble didn't make, in branching out into too many languages. Paul Noble has his 4 languages he teaches, and has left it at that. Language Transfer would have been much better had he stuck to Spanish, Arabic, Greek and Turkish. And from discussions I've had with people about it and looking at the courses for the languages I know (French and German) I really think those are the only good courses he has to offer.

I didn't express myself well about Paul Noble. He's an interesting teacher in his own right. I just believe that he made a mistake in ditching sone of the things that annoy people on here but that ensure that people with no experience in language learning and those with low self-confidence can also keep up, such as a genuine student who makes mistakes. I don't mean to diss him and what he is doing; more power to his elbow.

Noble's looking at the order to present a language to make it easy is not original with him, it's what the best teachers have always done. Regarding published courses, admittedly it's sadly far less common (I think that is a publishing industry problem rather than a problem with language teaching: in this regard people might like to compare the brilliance of their best professors at university with the insipid, monochrome approach of all the textbooks. Stephen Jay Gould had a brilliant essay about this back in the day).

I would add as an aside that it is similar with institutions. One of the banes of my life as an EFL teacher is having to follow course maps that present English in a stupid order. But the best teachers have have always presented things more intuitively and logically. Thomas also did it and it's a key part of what Language Transfer is doing. The X for reading series does it (in a logical order for reading that is). Margarita Madrigal did it, indeed also starting with the past tense for Romance languages (more on her later). Noble is not a lone voice in the wilderness.

You cast doubt on whether Thomas was a good teacher. I know from personal experience with his courses (at a time when I hadn't a clue how to learn a language) that he was. It's hard to convince people who already know how to learn languages of this, they mostly find it impossible to remember what it was really like and put themselves in that place when judging his products. At any rate Paul Noble also thinks so FWIW. He doesn't mention it now for obvious reasons, but back before he started his own series, he credited Thomas with opening his eyes to a better way of teaching. I don't mean that as a snide attack on Noble BTW, for some sad reason this lack of acknowledgement is par for the course in this area. Both Noble and LanguageTransfer have removed all past comments of theirs about their debt to Michel Thomas. Thomas in turn never mentions his very obvious debt to Margarita Madrigal. None of these people copied the other, they all have their own take, but they all owe massive intellectual debts to each other that they don't acknowledge.

Woody Allen... I don't know the context. I'm not particularly convinced by celebrity endorsements anyway. I base my favourable assessment of certain courses on my own experience. However if Woody Allen is like many people I've seen commenting on this thread, the mystery might be solved. You simply can't learn a language in a few days and no teacher on earth can give you that: not Thomas, not Noble and not Donovan Nagal. You still have to put the work in afterwards. If you're walking from London to Beijing, Thomas can give you a lift to Moscow in his car and give you a map to help you thereafter, but you still have a long way to walk the rest of the way yourself. In fact that's all any teacher or any course can do.

On the subject of Donovan Nagal, I am aware of him and think he is clearly a competent linguist and an excellent polyglot. If I can be permitted a quick and dirty classification of language learners into Newbies, intermediates and Pros when it comes to language learning, I as an intermediate find his blog interesting and useful; but in fact I didn't find him at all empowering when I was a Newbie (a period that lasts quite a long time I would say, learning how to learn a language is also a long process). In contrast, I wouldn't speak Spanish today if it weren't for Michel Thomas. It saddens me to see "takedowns" like that, because in my mind's eye, I see the people he is disempowering. Similarly people have shared similar stories of being empowered by LanguageTransfer with Mihali.
That's not me wedded to the approach of LanguageTransfer or Michel Thomas BTW, other people with very different approaches that inspired and empowered me include Khatzumoto of AJATT, Professor Argüelles, whoever it was that invented LR and wrote that very weird guide and Margarita Madrigal.

Obviously I am a fan of all the above mentioned names; but in fact I can even say the same about someone I fundamentally disagree with like Benny Lewis. I don't agree with "speak from day 1"; but the fact remains that his body of work as a whole is all about empowering people and that there are definitely people walking around today who speak a second language who wouldn't if not for his work. For this reason some of the hostility that comes his way is out of order. There is a difference between disagreeing with "speak from day 1" and claiming his new book series is a failure and needs to be redone (probably as much due to the publisher as him IMO) on the one hand and implying that the man knows nothing and his advice be should be avoided on the other.

The Richard Feynman's of this world are vanishingly rare: people who are both geniuses in a field and wonderful educators who empower people with their ability to educate. I say rare, Feynman is literally the only one I can actually think of. If I can return to my rough categorisation above Donovan absolutely has important and interesting things to say to the intermediates (and presumably also the pros); but when people like that do "take downs" of other people like Thomas who are empowering newbies, they do a lot of damage.

As far as LT's funding goes, the commissioning is a separate thing from the voting. I'm sorry to hear that the French course has problems. In fact he only claims to speak his two native languages (English and Cypriot Greek) and Spanish. The other courses (such as the Arabic and Swahilli courses) were all done with the help of native speakers. I don't know the ins and outs of the French course; but I do remember an odd comment he made (I think in spring 2016) about how the French course would be quick to make, because he could just base the structure of it on the Spanish course. This is certainly not the usual LT approach and if he did indeed do that (at a time when he was under a lot of emotional pressure), it would perhaps explain it.

You know Thomas, Madrigal, Noble... they all got rich on their courses... Benny is trying to do the same. Upsetting and unfair though I think blanket attacks on their work (as opposed to constructive criticism of specific points) definitely is, I could at least ascribe it to normal human jealousy. However Mihalis has massively undervalued his time and energy for years and has refused to monetise his courses out of a sincere desire to help ordinary people, and he has helped people. He definitely makes mistakes (even his biggest fans acknowledge this) and of course as with anyone, his method can be improved and constructive criticism is completely valid; but the sustained blanket attacks on his work genuinely make me feel very sad. I just don't understand it.

[romeo.alpha]

I didn't express myself well about Paul Noble. He's an interesting teacher in his own right. I just believe that he made a mistake in ditching sone of the things that annoy people on here but that ensure that people with no experience in language learning and those with low self-confidence can also keep up, such as a genuine student who makes mistakes. I don't mean to diss him and what he is doing; more power to his elbow.

While I can see the value in that approach, and absent any alternatives MT doing it with real students isn't a bad way to go about it. But there is a better way to go about it, and I think Paul Noble's approach is more elegant. He actually sets up a specific mistake for you to make in the French course. I forget what it was specifically, but he says something along the lines of "Now you probably said ...., and that's fine, I left that mistake there for you to make because it's a good way to learn that particular concept." So you still get that encouraging approach that motivates you to keep going, without the distraction of everyone (including Michel Thomas himself, whose accent is horrible in everything except German) speaking with a bad accent.

You cast doubt on whether Thomas was a good teacher. I know from personal experience with his courses (at a time when I hadn't a clue how to learn a language) that he was. It's hard to convince people who already know how to learn languages of this, they mostly find it impossible to remember what it was really like and put themselves in that place when judging his products.

I can actually back up why specifically I think he's a bad teacher, and lacks integrity as a person. In the French course, he starts out by saying there's no such thing as bad students, just bad teachers, not to worry, and let him handle it. Then in the first lesson, very quickly into it, he gets frustrated with the woman making a mistake, borderline screaming "Noooo" at her. He doesn't even have faith in what he claims at the beginning is the strength of his method (Jane Wightwick, for all her failings when she did the MTM Arabic course, at least had the integrity and resolve to stick to the plan that Michel Thomas promised). That's gaslighting the student. Imagine how bad it would be to be incredibly nervous about learning a language, trying it out with a teacher who promises to hold your hand the whole way, says you don't have to worry about making mistakes, has you recorded for commercial purposes, and one of the first things he does is scold you for screwing up.

Both Noble and LanguageTransfer have removed all past comments of theirs about their debt to Michel Thomas. Thomas in turn never mentions his very obvious debt to Margarita Madrigal. None of these people copied the other, they all have their own take, but they all owe massive intellectual debts to each other that they don't acknowledge.

Mihalis got a C&D letter from Hodder & Stoughton, so I imagine that has something to do with it.

Woody Allen... I don't know the context. I'm not particularly convinced by celebrity endorsements anyway. I base my favourable assessment of certain courses on my own experience. However if Woody Allen is like many people I've seen commenting on this thread, the mystery might be solved. You simply can't learn a language in a few days and no teacher on earth can give you that: not Thomas, not Noble and not Donovan Nagal. You still have to put the work in afterwards. If you're walking from London to Beijing, Thomas can give you a lift to Moscow in his car and give you a map to help you thereafter, but you still have a long way to walk the rest of the way yourself. In fact that's all any teacher or any course can do.

You're absolutely right about that, but the marketing MTM uses with the celbrity endorsements presents an absolutely different claim. When you consider how Benny Lewis is criticised for saying you can be fluent in 3 months (when it's just conversational in 3 months), the claim that Allen has now learned a language in a way he will never forget is much more egregious. So part of the criticism for MTM is that the gap between the actual results (giving people the motivation to get started with learning a language - as long as they don't do MT French) and the claims is massive. The criticism then is not only on the course and its own merits, but about the results that are claimed for it.

As far as LT's funding goes, the commissioning is a separate thing from the voting. I'm sorry to hear that the French course has problems. In fact he only claims to speak his two native languages (English and Cypriot Greek) and Spanish. The other courses (such as the Arabic and Swahilli courses) were all done with the help of native speakers.

He actually says he speaks Arabic regularly, mentioning that it's one of the languages he's passionate about.

I don't know the ins and outs of the French course; but I do remember an odd comment he made (I think in spring 2016) about how the French course would be quick to make, because he could just base the structure of it on the Spanish course. This is certainly not the usual LT approach and if he did indeed do that (at a time when he was under a lot of emotional pressure), it would perhaps explain it.

I'd have to look at the Spanish course to see if that is actually the case. Because if the Spanish course is anything like the Arabic course, the French one was a stark departure. In fact, while I felt LT Arabic was in some ways inspired by Michel Thomas, it was sufficiently different to truly be its own thing. LT French really struck me as if he had just copied MT French without giving it much of his own thought. And coincidentally (or perhaps not so coincidentally) it was not long thereafter that he was served with a C&D by Hoddor & Stoughton.

You know Thomas, Madrigal, Noble... they all got rich on their courses... Benny is trying to do the same. Upsetting and unfair though I think blanket attacks on their work (as opposed to constructive criticism of specific points) definitely is, I could at least ascribe it to normal human jealousy. However Mihalis has massively undervalued his time and energy for years and has refused to monetise his courses out of a sincere desire to help ordinary people, and he has helped people. He definitely makes mistakes (even his biggest fans acknowledge this) and of course as with anyone, his method can be improved and constructive criticism is completely valid; but the sustained blanket attacks on his work genuinely make me feel very sad. I just don't understand it.

I'm not sure there are any blanket attacks on Mihalis and Language Transfer. I think everyone who criticises him, and particularly the newer courses, as well as his current business model, acknowledges that his first few courses really were good.

[Random Review]

I didn't express myself well about Paul Noble. He's an interesting teacher in his own right. I just believe that he made a mistake in ditching sone of the things that annoy people on here but that ensure that people with no experience in language learning and those with low self-confidence can also keep up, such as a genuine student who makes mistakes. I don't mean to diss him and what he is doing; more power to his elbow.

While I can see the value in that approach, and absent any alternatives MT doing it with real students isn't a bad way to go about it. But there is a better way to go about it, and I think Paul Noble's approach is more elegant. He actually sets up a specific mistake for you to make in the French course. I forget what it was specifically, but he says something along the lines of "Now you probably said ...., and that's fine, I left that mistake there for you to make because it's a good way to learn that particular concept." So you still get that encouraging approach that motivates you to keep going, without the distraction of everyone (including Michel Thomas himself, whose accent is horrible in everything except German) speaking with a bad accent.

You cast doubt on whether Thomas was a good teacher. I know from personal experience with his courses (at a time when I hadn't a clue how to learn a language) that he was. It's hard to convince people who already know how to learn languages of this, they mostly find it impossible to remember what it was really like and put themselves in that place when judging his products.

I can actually back up why specifically I think he's a bad teacher, and lacks integrity as a person. In the French course, he starts out by saying there's no such thing as bad students, just bad teachers, not to worry, and let him handle it. Then in the first lesson, very quickly into it, he gets frustrated with the woman making a mistake, borderline screaming "Noooo" at her. He doesn't even have faith in what he claims at the beginning is the strength of his method (Jane Wightwick, for all her failings when she did the MTM Arabic course, at least had the integrity and resolve to stick to the plan that Michel Thomas promised). That's gaslighting the student. Imagine how bad it would be to be incredibly nervous about learning a language, trying it out with a teacher who promises to hold your hand the whole way, says you don't have to worry about making mistakes, has you recorded for commercial purposes, and one of the first things he does is scold you for screwing up.

Both Noble and LanguageTransfer have removed all past comments of theirs about their debt to Michel Thomas. Thomas in turn never mentions his very obvious debt to Margarita Madrigal. None of these people copied the other, they all have their own take, but they all owe massive intellectual debts to each other that they don't acknowledge.

Mihalis got a C&D letter from Hodder & Stoughton, so I imagine that has something to do with it.

Woody Allen... I don't know the context. I'm not particularly convinced by celebrity endorsements anyway. I base my favourable assessment of certain courses on my own experience. However if Woody Allen is like many people I've seen commenting on this thread, the mystery might be solved. You simply can't learn a language in a few days and no teacher on earth can give you that: not Thomas, not Noble and not Donovan Nagal. You still have to put the work in afterwards. If you're walking from London to Beijing, Thomas can give you a lift to Moscow in his car and give you a map to help you thereafter, but you still have a long way to walk the rest of the way yourself. In fact that's all any teacher or any course can do.

You're absolutely right about that, but the marketing MTM uses with the celbrity endorsements presents an absolutely different claim. When you consider how Benny Lewis is criticised for saying you can be fluent in 3 months (when it's just conversational in 3 months), the claim that Allen has now learned a language in a way he will never forget is much more egregious. So part of the criticism for MTM is that the gap between the actual results (giving people the motivation to get started with learning a language - as long as they don't do MT French) and the claims is massive. The criticism then is not only on the course and its own merits, but about the results that are claimed for it.

As far as LT's funding goes, the commissioning is a separate thing from the voting. I'm sorry to hear that the French course has problems. In fact he only claims to speak his two native languages (English and Cypriot Greek) and Spanish. The other courses (such as the Arabic and Swahilli courses) were all done with the help of native speakers.

He actually says he speaks Arabic regularly, mentioning that it's one of the languages he's passionate about.

I don't know the ins and outs of the French course; but I do remember an odd comment he made (I think in spring 2016) about how the French course would be quick to make, because he could just base the structure of it on the Spanish course. This is certainly not the usual LT approach and if he did indeed do that (at a time when he was under a lot of emotional pressure), it would perhaps explain it.

I'd have to look at the Spanish course to see if that is actually the case. Because if the Spanish course is anything like the Arabic course, the French one was a stark departure. In fact, while I felt LT Arabic was in some ways inspired by Michel Thomas, it was sufficiently different to truly be its own thing. LT French really struck me as if he had just copied MT French without giving it much of his own thought. And coincidentally (or perhaps not so coincidentally) it was not long thereafter that he was served with a C&D by Hoddor & Stoughton.

You know Thomas, Madrigal, Noble... they all got rich on their courses... Benny is trying to do the same. Upsetting and unfair though I think blanket attacks on their work (as opposed to constructive criticism of specific points) definitely is, I could at least ascribe it to normal human jealousy. However Mihalis has massively undervalued his time and energy for years and has refused to monetise his courses out of a sincere desire to help ordinary people, and he has helped people. He definitely makes mistakes (even his biggest fans acknowledge this) and of course as with anyone, his method can be improved and constructive criticism is completely valid; but the sustained blanket attacks on his work genuinely make me feel very sad. I just don't understand it.

I'm not sure there are any blanket attacks on Mihalis and Language Transfer. I think everyone who criticises him, and particularly the newer courses, as well as his current business model, acknowledges that his first few courses really were good.

It's a long thread and I don't want to repeat myself too much, so I'll limit myself to a few things I don't think I've said before.

1) Thomas was clearly a grumpy old sod. He'd definitely have been a better teacher without that, but I think it's pretty clear that he didn't lack integrity. He definitely walked the walk as far as taking responsibility for his students' learning. I think you can read too much into a grumpy personality getting tetchy at times. While I can easily understand why his courses aren't everyone's cup of tea, the idea that he was literally a bad teacher is genuinely hard for me to process. His impact on me was like a light switch being thrown on. I'll never forget it. As a language (EFL) teacher myself, there are a number of incredible teachers I look up to and try to emulate in my own limited way and he is one of them. I genuinely can't fathom the idea of him being a bad teacher. It feels a bit like hearing someone say Henrik Larsson was a rubbish footballer.

2) Mihalis's old version of his site with the mentions of the impact of Thomas (and indeed some quite poetic stuff about the impact of Cyprus) on Mihali disappeared many, many years ago. Long before Hodder and Stoughton tried it on. I've never heard him claim to speak Arabic (I have heard him claim to be passionate about it- I'm passionate about Chinese; but I wouldn't claim to speak it), I apologise if I got that wrong (please hook us up with some links of him claiming this). I know he's quite explicit about not speaking most of the languages he teaches.

3) Noble and correction without the student: there are two problems I can see with his approach: the first is that he is relying on his experience as a teacher to anticipate errors, which is an extremely difficult skill. The second is that witnessing genuine correction is a recognised learning method. It's something good teachers do all the time in class. Noble made a legitimate value judgement and Thomas a different (but equally legitimate) one on the pros and cons of this. You find Noble's approach more elegant; I find Thomas's approach more helpful to weaker students.

At the risk of provoking groans in here, I'm going to resurrect my analogy from the previous post and stretch it probably beyond breaking point.

If you are walking from London to Beijing, using one of Thomas's courses is a bit like getting a lift as far as Moscow and a free very basic map of Eurasia from Jeff Daniels and Jim Carey if you are Danny Aiello (you all know the scene). If you are an experienced walker, you don't really need the lift and you already have a much better map anyway. Maybe you aren't in a rush and want to enjoy the beautiful walk through Europe anyway, why would you get in the car with those nutters? Of course, if you want a short cut you might take the lift after all. It all depends.

However we've all of us done quite a lot of walking on this forum and we tend to forget that every year thousands of Anglophones set out on this journey, most without even a map, and the vast majority never even make it as far as Berlin. Getting a lift from Thomas gives them two things: first of all it gives them a basic map that they will need, secondly it gives them enough trust in the process to continue ("holy crap, I made it to Moscow! I can make it to Beijing"). We all know that there are stretches where you seem to be making no progress and you have to keep going and trust your process.

It seems to me that Nobel has kicked Jeff Daniels and Jim Carrey out of the van for the sake of time efficiency and a lower annoyance factor*. He's programmed the van's computer to drive you there using Google maps or something. This is not an unworthy goal, it's a fair enough move. However as a teacher I also believe that for the least experienced walkers of all (or the ones with the lowest self-confidence), seeing the actual process of Jeff and Jim making it to Moscow is every bit as important as physically getting there themselves in preparing them for their onward journey.

4) Woody Allen: again, I don't know the details; but if all he ever did was Thomas, he's going to stumble and struggle, of course he is. That doesn't mean he forgot everything. In my experience Thomas was right: what you really learn, you genuinely don't forget (being able to access it at the drop of a hat is another matter). I see it a bit like that research that shows that the higher the level you reach in a language, the less likely you are to forget it.

5) Marketing hype? Yup, I can't defend that, you are totally right about that. Thomas liked money, as does Noble and their respective publishers like it even more. It's not right; but it doesn't make them bad teachers or what they were doing any less important.

Now Mihalis on the other hand... No marketing hype, no chasing money (quite the opposite, sadly for him) and a genuine concern to help people first and foremost. Look how undervalued he has been because of that.


* Me personally I like Jeff and Jim and prefer spending time with them to being driven by a computer; however I acknowledge that many on this forum differ from me on that. Always remember that it's not the people on this forum that really need this type of start.

[romeo.alpha]

1) Thomas was clearly a grumpy old sod. He'd definitely have been a better teacher without that, but I think it's pretty clear that he didn't lack integrity.

Oh it's absolutely clear he did, not just as a language teacher but in every aspect of his life. Think of how bad it is to testify at Klaus Barbie's trial, as a witness for the prosecution, and have the prosecutor say about you "With the exception of Mr. Thomas, all the witnesses are of good faith." Thomas is a serial liar, and I'd be willing to put that aside if I actually believed there was value in his method. I really don't, although I do recommend Michel Thomas Dutch despite being attached to his name because it is good, on account of only following his template as much as was apparently demanded in the contract.

He definitely walked the walk as far as taking responsibility for his students' learning. I think you can read too much into a grumpy personality getting tetchy at times. While I can easily understand why his courses aren't everyone's cup of tea, the idea that he was literally a bad teacher is genuinely hard for me to process. His impact on me was like a light switch being thrown on. I'll never forget it. As a language (EFL) teacher myself, there are a number of incredible teachers I look up to and try to emulate in my own limited way and he is one of them. I genuinely can't fathom the idea of him being a bad teacher. It feels a bit like hearing someone say Henrik Larsson was a rubbish footballer.

Well, for one his method concept is rubbish from the start. While making use of cognates is certainly a good idea once you have a solid foundation in the language, it's one of the worst ideas for beginners. Michel Thomas Dutch barely touches on cognates, making it quite a good program. Paul Noble uses them when convenient but they're not the guiding principle behind the course. The problem with cognates is they make it way too easy to get L1 intrusions. So you have an audio only course, and here Thomas is telling you how every word is spelled. Maybe he was a decent teacher of his ill-conceived method, but looking at the whole thing, I really can't recommend anyone use the courses he himself taught, because there's a number of things wrong with them. And when you consider that the ones he taught himself also happen to be covered by Paul Noble, and are sold for cheaper, I just can't see any value in it.

I apologise if I got that wrong (please hook us up with some links of him claiming this). I know he's quite explicit about not speaking most of the languages he teaches.

Here it is: https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearni ... r/dy80ths/ I had it embedded in my original comment, but embedded links are easy to miss.

3) Noble and correction without the student: there are two problems I can see with his approach: the first is that he is relying on his experience as a teacher to anticipate errors, which is an extremely difficult skill. The second is that witnessing genuine correction is a recognised learning method. It's something good teachers do all the time in class. Noble made a legitimate value judgement and Thomas a different (but equally legitimate) one on the pros and cons of this. You find Noble's approach more elegant; I find Thomas's approach more helpful to weaker students.

I can see the argument there, but it can really get screwed up and it will depend on the learner. For instance with the MT Dutch course, both students are making mistakes where they try to speak German instead of Dutch. Since a lot of Dutch learners will probably have learned German first, it's probably quite useful. But for someone who hasn't learned German first, most of the corrections are going to be irrelevant.

Then you also have the cost of having to listen to bad pronunciation. I think that defeats the purpose of having an audio only course for beginners. The good thing with an audio only course is you can start out without the interference of reading a foreign language through an English lens. You can just listen and repeat. When you've got Michel telling you how the word is spelled, you're just going to be listening to students who have their pronunciation screwed up (and I also suspect that's why he's so bad at every language he speaks except German and Polish).

It seems to me that Nobel has kicked Jeff Daniels and Jim Carrey out of the van for the sake of time efficiency and a lower annoyance factor*. He's programmed the van's computer to drive you there using Google maps or something. This is not an unworthy goal, it's a fair enough move. However as a teacher I also believe that for the least experienced walkers of all (or the ones with the lowest self-confidence), seeing the actual process of Jeff and Jim making it to Moscow is every bit as important as physically getting there themselves in preparing them for their onward journey.

Maybe, but then he'd have to not be a grumpy old fart. I think your analogy and argument there is a better defense of Mihalis than Michel. Like you can certainly take that template and get that benefit out of it. And it's also dead easy to do it better than he ever did. Which is also where I'm about as flabbergasted by your claim that he's really a good teacher as you are by my claim that he isn't.

4) Woody Allen: again, I don't know the details; but if all he ever did was Thomas, he's going to stumble and struggle, of course he is. That doesn't mean he forgot everything.

Even if he didn't forget a single thing, doing Michel Thomas French wouldn't prepare a single person on this planet to have a conversation in French. French prosody makes that exceptionally difficult, but even if we were looking at a language like Spanish or German which isn't quite as brutal in that department, the only thing you're doing in MT is practicing translating English sentences into the target language. There's absolutely no practice listening and responding. So it's the problem you get if you learn MSA, where you can go to an Arab country and speak it to them, and they'll probably understand you, but you won't understand their response. Except it's with every language in that course.

And that's of course a problem with Paul Noble and Language Transfer as well. But with Paul Noble and Language Transfer (with the good courses anyway) you get a good foundation in the grammar of the language. With MT (excluding Dutch) you have a pocket full of double edged razor blades that cognates are.