Customer Reviews

Michel Thomas Method German Advanced, 5-CD Program (Michel Thomas Series)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This CD was to me like a German class that I could listen to and be involved in whenever I had free time. The constant review of words and the structure of German helped me to understand the German language quickly and without pressure. After about two months, I am in the middle of the Advanced set of CDs, because I am taking my time and branching off into reading. This set of CDs was easy to understand, and it helped me to learn the structure of German without the clutter of memorized phrases that I don't yet need. Just keep in mind that this is more for understanding the structure of the language and I would couple this together with a lot of listening to native German speakers.

If you liked the Michel Thomas basic German course, you will get more of the same style, but at a much more challenging level. This course delves deeply into German verbs, which are quite a challenge, but the reward for sticking with it is understanding the structure of the language in a way that many German courses never achieve. Michel says one must relax to absorb the information and "know" rather than memorize, but my brain has found it quite a challenge to learn the volume of new stuff without some hard work. Nevertheless I am a big fan of this course as it certainly gets you a long way in a short time, and if you do have other tapes, it helps enormously to have the understanding that Michel gives.

I have no knowledge of German. My initiative of learning German was to be able to communicate with the in-laws a little better. The beginner and advanced have given me quite a good grasp of the German language. So, I can say the CDs are money worth spent.

I was very disappointed that this is not what i wanted, which was conversation or lessons of an advanced type with complex sentences. It turned out to be fairly advanced GRAMMAR ONLY. Conjugate conjugate. I think it would have been better to keep all one type of sentence together so you can hear the set-up, grammatically speaking. Future mixes with past and he will pop back and forth to show the difference between how it would have sounded in future tense or past tense, which may be good or may hinder. The door was open. the door was openED. The door could open. the door could have been opened. The door will be open. etc ad nauseum.

I need grammar and this may provide it - every tense is covered, with umpteen practical examples- but what i actually had wanted was advanced german , the language itself, not crazy-advanced grammar. Changing the title would help.

Furthermore, of the five CD's, only four have new material; the fifth is review. Not fair to call this a 5-CD lesson.

I also find it long and somewhat frustrating to hear students on the tape trying to conjugate a sentence and him correcting their pronunciation over and over. He could say it correctly twice and be done. Surprisingly I find myself agreeing with the Enlgish-speaking students and then hearing that it was incorrect, as they made common English-speaker mistakes, as I would have, and then learning what it should have been. I don't know if it is a good or bad plan to hear wrong sentences even if you then hear them getting corrected. I think it's just better ONLY to hear correct things. I am afraid I will think "I heard that on the tape, so it's now officially a sentence I may use". I learned many wrong things when I was just starting out in Germany, so I picked up many fallacies, due to baby talk and people making it too easy for me, and I know that wrong ideas can be engrained by hearing it spoken by the 'authority'. I just wish they had not allowed wrong sentences...

this is teaching me WHY certain grammar usages go here or there. it will be useful..But it is slow, with stumbling students on the tape and their mistakes that I have to try NOT to listen to. Then there is the frustrating lack of information prior to purchase that did not specify that this is exclusively a grammar practise (not that you get to repeat anything!).

I was very disappointed and am still searching for a conversational tape of natural speakers just lettin' 'er rip!

I took this course as a way to re-learn German after having 40 years to forget. The Michel Thomas method is pure genius. You must remember to pause and think whenever he asks you how to say something, but avoiding hearing the other students make mistakes is motivation to pause and comfort if you make the same mistake. I wondered whether having forgotten German gave me an advantage, but I also bought his Greek course which has been equally easy to learn.

When I first listened to this series after going through his basic course I was a bit disappointed because most of it seemed like just a rehash of his basic course, though he did delve into past tense and the subjunctive case. I can't begin to count the number of times he's made us say the phrase "It is not possible to do it that way." However now I've found that the overlap means that once you've finished the basic course and moved on to the advanced course the basic course becomes irrelevant and when you need a refresher you can just listen to these disks instead. Like the basic course what it lacks in vocabulary, it makes up for in grammar and sentence structure. It's amazing to me that after 15 hours of language teaching (the basic, advanced, and Language Builder courses combined) Michel fails to mention anything at all about the dative and accusitive cases of nouns! This is something that is usually taught in the first few chapters of any German textbook. Instead of using nouns, Michel avoids the issue by refering to most objects in his sentences as 'it' instead. While this does make learning the sentence structure easier, it leaves big gaps in your overall learning of the language. (Nouns and accusative/dative concepts are covered in the 5-disk Michel Thomas German Vocabulary course). In retrospect I think what Michel should have done with this series was to combine all of his vocabulary from his 2-disk "German Language Builder" course into this one. As it stands though, I would consider this course to be an essential part of your better understanding of German sentence structure and grammar. Incidentally in case you're wondering what order to listen to all of the Michel Thomas courses, after his basic course you want Disk 1 of the 2-disk Language Builder/Booster course, followed by the 5-disk advanced course, followed by Disk 2 of the 2-disk Language Builder/Booster course, and lastly the 5-disk German Vocabulary Builder course which is the most advanced course of his series.