French With Michel Thomas: The Language Teacher to Corporate America and Hollywood (8-CD Deluxe Edition) (English and French Edition) [Audiobook] [Audio CD]

Michel Thomas (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0658007858 | ISBN-13: 978-0658007859 | Publication Date: May 2000

No books. No writing. No drills. And nothing to memorize -- ever! With his unique program, Michel Thomas has taught French, Italian, Spanish, and German to celebrities, corporate leaders, and schoolchildren -- with immediate and amazing results. Now the Language Teacher to the Stars invites everyone to join his class!

Listeners learn in real time-fully understanding as they go along, turning words into short sentences, and then building them into longer, more complex sentences, until they are conversing in a foreign language.

Michel will have listeners formulating their own thoughts and sentences from the very beginning, even if they have never succeeded in learning a language before. Michel has used this very method to teach celebrities such as Mel Gibson, Woody Allen, Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty, and Princess Grace of Monaco.

Feature 8 full hours of instruction on 8 CDs for greater proficiency in each language.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Ideal for any business traveller who needs to be able to get around confidently." -- Sunday Business "A great way to learn; it's fast and it lasts". -- The Daily Telegraph "Michel Thomas is a precious find indeed." -- The Guardian "Thomas makes it simple" -- Sunday Times "Michel's methods will teach you effectively and easily" -- Daily Star "Hugely inspiring" -- Red --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Back Cover

No books. No writing. No drills. And nothing to memorize—ever! With his unique program, Michel Thomas has taught French, Italian, Spanish, and German to celebrities, corporate leaders, and school children—with immediate and amazing results. Now, the Language Teacher to the Stars invites you to join his class!

• So effortless, natural, and stimulating is Michel's system for learning, once you get started you won't want to stop. You will learn in real time—fully understanding as you go along, turning words into short sentences, and then building them into longer, more complex sentences, until you are conversing in a foreign language.
• Immediately, you will feel the excitement of understanding and expressing yourself in French. Michel will have you formulating your own thoughts and sentences from the very beginning, even if you have never succeeded in learning a language before.
• This Deluxe Edition contains eight hours of instruction on 8 CDs. Starting as a beginner, you can progress to a level of language proficiency that will enable you to converse naturally and communicate comfortably in a wide variety of situations.

Michel has used this very method to teach celebrities such as Mel Gibson, Woody Allen, Barbra Streisand, Emma Thompson, Warren Beatty, and Princess Grace of Monaco.

At home or in the car—in any place and at any time—you can learn from a world-class language teacher and become one of Michel's star students today!

"As the newly nominated—and subsequently appointed—U.S. ambassador to France in 1989 I had to brush up my French in a hurry. Michel Thomas performed a minor miracle with his innovative, no-pain learning system. Merci beaucoup, Michel!" -- W. J. P. Curley, former U.S. Ambassador to France and Ireland

"Michel Thomas has developed a truly revolutionary method of language instruction. All you have to do is follow his lead: no memorization, homework, or stress. I was amazed by my success using Michel's method." -- Warren Keegan, Professor of Business at Pace University in New York

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: NTC Publishing Group (May 2000)
• Language: English, French
• ISBN-10: 0658007858
• ISBN-13: 978-0658007859
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.9 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (82 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,129,171 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

204 of 211 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't have unrealistic expectations, April 4, 2002

By 

Ryan Mack "New Yorker" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: French With Michel Thomas: The Fastest Way to Learn a Language (Deluxe Language Courses with Michel Thomas) (Audio CD)

After reading some of these reviews you may be expecting some kind of miracle. You will be disappointed. I give this course five stars, however, because it provides a great deal of information painlessly, in a short period of time.

After eight hours with Michel Thomas you will have a fairly solid command of the present tense and personal pronouns. Possesive pronouns are briefly touched upon, with others receiving even less attention or none at all. You will be able to speak in the future tense using aller: to go. "I am GOING TO buy it tomorrow." He briefly touches upon the real future tense - "I WILL buy it tomorrow" - though the coverage is lacking. His coverage of the past tense is bad, at best. He very briefly discusees the imperfect, but not the passe compose. Without getting into grammar, lets just say you'll need the latter in every day speach, i.e., "I SAW him yesterday."

Michel Thomas likes to say "Don't say it, think it" which happens to be the exact opposite philosophy of the Pimsleur program. With Pimsleur you learn how to speak without having to think out sentence structure, which is exactly how we speak our native tounges. This course is perfect for what it is, however. No other program, Pimsleur included, will have a total beginer speaking so much in so little time. If you are starting with Pimsleur or another program this course is definitely worth buying. After all, we all want to be able to speak the language we're trying to learn, and this will get you off the ground in a short period of time.

I must complain that little emphasis is placed on pronounciation. In fact, no one on the CD is a native speaker. I also have to add that anyone with any experience with the Romance languages - a few years of Spanish, a semester or two of Latin - could probably learn all the grammar taught in this course in about an hour. Don't expect all the complexities of the French language to be made clear after 8 hours. This course is a GREAT introduction, but an introduction is all it is.

59 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the perfect crash course, February 24, 2001

By 

"anderdog" (Camp Hill, PA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: French With Michel Thomas: The Language Teacher to Corporate America and Hollywood (8-CD Deluxe Edition) (English and French Edition) (Audio CD)

I picked up this set of CD's to prepare for a week-long trip to Paris. It is a fun, painless way to get exposure to the language. It's a bit optimistic to think you'll speak French well after the course but it will give you an adequate grasp of the language, enough to muddle your way through. The great thing about this approach is that you'll learn the mechanics of the language and be able to use it somewhat creatively in real world situations. Drawbacks: you won't learn much vocabulary and at the end of the eight CD's, you'll wish there were more. Michel Thomas is on to a good thing and I hope he will publish future volumes. The Pimsleur Method (also available from Amazon) uses a similar method and offers three volumes - just shy of 50 CD's in all so if you have more time and cash, you might want to go this route. I did just fine in Paris. I traveled with a guy who had some high school French (so more vocabulary) and between the two of us, we were able to get by with a minimal resort to English.

55 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars great method, January 8, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: French With Michel Thomas: The Fastest Way to Learn a Language (Deluxe Language Courses with Michel Thomas) (Audio CD)

I believe this 8 CD set is great if you meet each of the following requirements: 1) You have some foreign language experience. This is necessary because there are no pronunciation explanations, and there is a presumption that the listener will learn things as quickly as the students on the recording. If you have no French experience, you might have to listen to a CD several times before moving on. Also, future lessons do not always build on earlier lessons, so you must either replay CDs or practice your lessons with others. 2) You have large chunks of time to listen and focus on the CDs. I listened to these in my car on long freeway commutes, which worked well. I could not imagine simply listening in my home, where I might be easily distracted by phone calls, people, pets, etc. 3) You are planning to visit a French-speaking place soon. The tapes are very good at teaching French, but unless you plan to practice your lessons immediately after, it might all disappear from your head.
Overall, I believe his method is a good one. Michel Thomas focuses on teaching the "small" but extremely important words, and less focus on general vocabulary. After years of enduring high school French, I believe Michel Thomas' is the much better method for learning to get your point across in a foreign country.
Slight irritation with Mr. Thomas' crackly voice and idiosyncracies, strong irritation with one of the students towards the end of the tape. Overall, though, it gets the job done.