Learning *about* a language does not mean you've *learned* a language [Re: MT method devotees]

[@yourguyjay]

Donovan, there is definitely a strong feeling of you disagreeing with his teaching method, and therefore it must be bunk. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's definitely a big take away for me. The use of "religiously devoted" to demean people who have had success with this method displays a fair amount of contempt because you have a different opinion, you seem to be religiously devoted - fundametalist even - in your defence of your own opinion. The defence people are putting up almost certainly is born of your overly harsh blanket claims is an attack. Pushback is because you're pushing. I did about 3/4 of his Spanish foundation and went to Spain, after a few months I had gained a level of proficiency where locals were asking which part of Spain I was from (I'm from the UK). In high school I did awfully at language (french and german), and honestly coudn't have told you what a verb was (or other basic grammar terms) until I did the MT Spanish course in my early 20s. According to standards I had achieved a high intermediate level. Later in England I met a guy who had done all the available courses and went to Argentina. After one year he had achieved a native level of proficiency (and went on to write his thesis on the MTM and now runs his own language school). My experience simply does not match up with your harsh criticism. I also used pimsleur and rosetta stone to learn hebrew (big mistake) and found them totally unsuitable for a good learning experience, pimsleur being painfully slow (a few solid minutes with mostly silence to learn the word Shalom) and Rosetta being way too complicated (seconds of seeing flash cards with words in hebrew text, then being asked to say the translation - this was their idea of 101). On the other hand MTM was dynamic and I learnt a lot in a very short space of time, without ever feeling like it was going too slow, or being asked to do things beyond my level.

[@alanguages]

My favourite is Pimsleur, but that is my preference. I would recommend Michel Thomas after Pimsleur. I did notice the Donovan character, when people disagreed with him, he has a hard time coming to grips when people don't think like him. One occasion he implied that the people that did not agree with him about the MT review entered his mind, that they work for the Michel Thomas company. Another case, was a poster did not agree with his criticism of Assimil, so of course Donovan also stated, that he wondered if that person worked for Assimil. Imagine how egotistical a person has to be to say, something like that? He makes himself out to be so important, that staff from these language learning companies having nothing better to do, but criticize his reviews about their language programs.

[@nialltracey2599]

A reference to this popped up elsewhere, and I thought I'd revisit it. My previous response was pretty snippy, and I feel in a similar mood to how I felt when I wrote that one, because the entire video is so thoroughly dismissive of anyone who likes the course. You make one brief reference to the possibility that you're wrong, sandwiched in between frequent restatements that the people who disagree with you are wrong and ignorant about language learning, and the whole argument is based on the unproven assumption that the methodology is ineffective. You didn't like it. Fine. But: a) that's two courses, neither of which were actually Michel Thomas b) not personally liking them is different from them being ineffective. As I said before, I don't like the Arabic one. I abandoned it myself because the two-teacher thing was really distracting and totally unnecessary, and also because it wasn't a real MT course. Every course published on the label since Thomas's death has only served to reaffirm that no-one involved really understood what MT did. All the talk in the Arabic course about going through the "Samir door" or the "Samira door" was a weak copy of the Italian course where he made reference to Roberto and Roberta to simplify noun/adjective agreement. It worked well in Italian because almost everybody is familiar with Roberto and Roberta... but before starting the Arabic course, I wasn't particularly familiar with Samir and Samira, so I was actually reasoning through Spanish to internalise the rule, rather than the Samir/Samira thing. I was *extremely* sceptical when I first read reviews around Michel Thomas Spanish, but I was instantly impressed once I got it. Up to that point, my experience of language learning was short sentences with lots of concrete nouns and no object pronouns until "advanced", and a hell of a lot of phrase-book phrases that used grammar and vocabulary that I wasn't using anywhere else. With Michel Thomas I was able to manipulate the sentence much more freely, and I felt I was talking, rather than simply parroting. A few hours in, I was able to surprise Spanish people by saying to my sister "don't do that" when she was pretending to kick me in the face as we were waiting for a train with some Spanish friends of hers. This was at a point in my learning where I would only have expected to be able to say "Hello. My name is Niall. I am X years old. I live in Scotland." Spanish was my third foreign language, and while my experience of French and limited Italian clearly helped to some degree, I felt I came out of the Spanish course with broader sentence structure and better command of tenses than in either of my previous languages, and I actually went on to do the MT courses in both French and Italian in order to help fill in the gaps in my previous knowledge. It is not a complete course. It doesn't take you very far. But it *is* very *broad*. You could go to classroom lessons for years without covering all the grammar points covered in the MT French, Spanish and Italian courses, and you can't fully engage with authentic materials in a language without a breadth of grammar. Try to go a week without saying "would" -- you can't. Now imagine trying to live for a week in a foreign country without being able to understand the conditional mood. Getting that breadth of grammar opens the possibility of dealing with almost any type of text, with vocabulary then needing to be learned or assumed based on context. MT is not a complete course -- no course is -- but the Spanish course was the best start I've had on any language.

[@acroflyer6790]

I like the guitar analogy and found it perfect in this case. I have only done sample lessons with MT and also did not like it. Also, I think that learning a language with non-native speakers would be counterproductive in the end - especially in terms of accent development. I learned the importance of learning materials on accent development with German, Spanish and Mandarin. Germans say I am about 70% correct in pronunciation, Mexicans have mistaken me for a Mexico City native (until they actually see me) and Chinese speakers give me a “deer in the headlights” look. The German I learned in high school with an American teacher. Spanish was largely with Pimsleur and Assimil combined (and communicating with my Mexican mother-in-law). The Chinese was from a book I found at a bookstore. I think that for languages close to english, Pimsleur and Assimil will get you close, but you need contact with native speakers to really get it right. On that basis I have to agree that MT isn’t that good a choice (of course Pimsleur and Assimil have some duds too, but I like them for European languages).

[@walkernick86]

At the end of his course, MT even says himself that his course is a key to open the door to the language. I don't think he ever meant his audio courses to be a complete solution to language fluency. But these courses allow you to express yourself and be understood. The MT courses plant the christmas tree, then learning more vocabulary is like decorating the tree. You just add to the foundation. Then immerse yourself in the language for fluency.

[@EasyFinnish]

I study French now and listening his audiobooks and almost finished the whole course 8 course audiobooks. I didn't learn a lot at the first time but now this is my fourth time listening it, those all things coming easier. I speak English to my kids and they don't learn it instantly but in weeks they start saying "good morning" in English than in Finnish, also they know some French words now also. Your criticism was completely right, all things you addressed.

[@daysandwords]

Hey Donovan, I wanted to comment as someone who sort of has a foot in both camps. I am not a devotee to the MT method by any stretch, however I do think that the 4 European languages that HE HIMSELF goes through are pretty good. I got a good feel for French by starting with MT. Obviously I can't say I became fluent, and there was even some stuff that I had to un-learn and re-learn because it is wrong, because it is simplified slightly (though I can understand why he did that too). One example is that he says "because is parsk... think of putting the S in the park..." - and that TOTALLY works even though it's a very strange mnemonic, but it's slightly wrong because it's actually "pars-e-ke" (parce que). I think two big things are at play when it comes to whether it's good or not: 1. How close the language is to English. It works very well with French and German because there are so many mnemonics you can use, Spanish and Italian work OK too, Swedish would probably be OK (I haven't tried the Swedish one), but after that you start getting into murky water. 2. How prepared the listener is to re-learn some things. Myself, I'm fine with going "OK that was a good way of remembering but now I need to adjust that", whereas some people want a quick fix-all approach and so they will not hear that something they learned may be wrong. Those people are just bad learners anyway; they will ALWAYS struggle to learn a language no matter which method they use. I have another example: Busuu. I love it, more than anything in the whole world haha. I said so in my review of it. BUT, I was using it for French, and it's fantastic. I started learned Arabic for a one month challenge and... not so good for Arabic, because there is no explanation of the letters or the writing. So I will have to learn some stuff first, and then maybe go back to Busuu. So yeah, one method can be good for one thing and not great for another. Like I said, I'm not a MT devotee, but I think that's one of the reasons people like it a lot (because it is actually good for the languages close to English, and for the ones MT himself runs, and as long as you don't mind re-learning some stuff).

[@JV-km9xk]

Oh wow hey Lamont from 2 years ago. Love your content btw, you really helped me a lot and I must say your progress as a passionate language learner and content creator has come a long way since your beginnings. Cheers!

[@jz8267]

"I do think that the 4 European languages that HE HIMSELF goes through are pretty good". - This is exactly the point!

[@zabaanshenaas]

I'm a big fan of the 'Teach Yourself' and 'Colloquial' series of books, especially the older versions.

[@MatthewNewtonOnline]

C2 Spanish and got my start with Michel Thomas. 'It may just be because I'm wrong' Nailed it! This is exactly where you should be stopping. Michel Thomas - I have done Spanish and Arabic - is excellent in Spanish, and woeful in Arabic. There are underlying concepts in terms of how our brains are best educated, that Michel Thomas grasped over time, intuitively. The 'stupid student' in the room is no accident. It's deliberate, and is a proven method of accelerating learning. Unfortunately, based on the Arabic version, he was absolutely hopeless at figuring out how to *systemise* these concepts and now his legacy is being tarnished.

[@nialltracey2599]

Well I for one think you're almost diametrically wrong, because for me one of the things I liked about MT was that I really felt I was being taught stuff rather than simply being told stuff. And with two undergraduate degrees in language, a masters in TESOL, various levels of conversational fluency in 6 or 7 languages and a number of years under my belt working in language teaching and materials creation, I find it kind of presumptuous that you assume everyone who likes MT knows nothing about language. Now of course, I'm actually talking about real Michel Thomas, taught by Michel Thomas himself, and I would agree with you that the courses written after his death are pretty crappy, and aside from the poor organisation of the learning (because none of them really get what Thomas was doing) the thing that I found weirdest about them was how the native speaker who was effectively doing the job of a 20-year-old language assistant, when in reality they're (or certainly Mahmoud from the Arabic course is) among the top teachers of their language in the country. Why not just have the native speaker teacher doing the teaching? Why have two? Strange choice. And then you started talking about "devotion to something that you perceive to be a successful method that isn't really," but if you look at your review closely, you'll see that (apart from the two teacher thing mentioned above) your entire argument can be summarised as "this is not the communicative approach, so it's wrong". Is that not in itself a much a "religious" position as you claim support of MT is?

[@landonadams8122]

It takes us a lifetime, really--at least through childhood--to learn our native language; how could one possible learn a language in a matter of weeks?

[@mightyrem]

I used MT for spanish and it was overall excellent.

[@concordelounge]

I think it's not just a case that you are right and everyone else is wrong, or that people who disagree are religiously fervent. It's just that a) MT works really quite well in languages that share a great deal with English, and b) people with different brain types need to learn in different ways and for some of them MT works better. I am dyspraxic and MT Italian stayed in my head way better than Pimsleur or Rosetta Stone. Before my first two trips to Italy I had used Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone, and I simply couldn't make myself understood even when reading menu items to a waiter! On my post MT trips Italians understood me perfectly well, and I was even able to have an impromptu chat to a man in the street in Montalcino about a car he was selling, which I could never have done before. I think the thing the MT does is give you confidence to speak, and you find yourself constructing sentences that are way more complicated than you ever thought you would manage. I personally found it better that he wasn't a native Italian speaker because it taught me that getting the syllable emphasis, and basic pronunciation right was a separate thing from having a good Italian accent. With native speakers I was always confusing myself about which part of the way they said it was necessary, and what was just the accent. Another thing that was a revelation was that he was teaching more 'real' Italian rather than 'proper' Italian, and not cluttering up all the verbs with personal pronouns that nobody ever actually uses. This actually did help my listening comprehension. (although It's still not great by any means) You're right though that listening comprehension is a weakness of these courses, and I would also add an almost total lack of nouns to that list. You've got to get that from somewhere else. Interestingly a few years later I thought I'd try the French course to improve my spoken French. The French course appears to use the same students as the Italian one and has the same structure and phrases. Which meant that the first responses that came into my head were the Italian ones!

[@mlowe7245]

Can you recommend a course for beginner Russian language. Thank you

[@cloeye32]

Hello my friend, I have MT for Arabic, Dutch, Russian, French, Italian and Japanese. I have gone through the entire Russian course however I have also supplementing it with other materials from different resources such as MEMRISE app tune in radio podcast etc. Now I am using Mango languages app in order to learn Cantonese, Turkish and Italian. I get more out of using the Mango app then I do Mt At the moment. I do have to say if you’re only going by this particular method and you’re not using any additional resources to help you increase your knowledge level of the language then of course you’re not going to get very far. You’ll be lucky to get out of an upper beginner level going into a low intermediate level however it will not help you with accent pronunciation and being able to speak with a native speaker or even understand a new speaker when they are speaking to you because you will be missing the opportunity to interact with a native speaker if you’re doing this from your home for 12 hours or more. It might be a great way to start off in learning a language for those who have never attempted to learn a language before. However, if you are a serious language where there are other materials and resources that are available to you that you can use in order to start learning a language correctly. Sorry for the typos I’m using voice over in conjunction with Siri dictation feature on my iPhone 6s to write this message to you. PS, when will you be available for me to interview you on my podcast show? Happy new year. I really enjoyed this video.

[@lechlishon]

Hi Donovan, can you recommend some good methodologies (online) to learn languages?

[@Allyne42]

I like your guitar analogy. I use a sports one. Many fans of football/basketball/pick-one understand the rules of the game and sometimes even a nuanced sense of strategy, but knowing how the game is played is not the same as being able to play the game.

probably those people who were criticizing you were their employees?

[@mezzoguild]

That definitely crossed my mind.

[@nialltracey2599]

And maybe Mezzofanti Guild is a shill for Big Teacha that wants to debunk popular self-teaching courses to support the rip-off teaching industry. … which of course is patently absurd. Why do so many people assume that anyone with differing opinions is part of some kind of conspiracy these days? Bloody hell those Russians are clever -- they've completely convinced us that everyone else is a shill, and they don't even need their "troll factory" for us to all hate each other all of the time!!

[@alanguages]

@@nialltracey2599 I agree with you. My point of view, the author gave a misleading title of this video. If people were learning "about" a language, they would be doing linguistics. I have tried out MT courses and a person does actually learn the language, but what they learn is a tiny percentage from the big picture. A person does get the false sense of security, the knowledge above zero, is considerably great, even though it is in the low single digits. I do agree with some of the uploader's criticism of MT. There are polyglots that even recommend MT, but others don't. MT like other language learning programs are not a panacea. It works for many, and the opposite is true as well. Once, the op suggested people might work for the MT company, due to a disagreement, indicates the ego of the op and the uploader.

[@nialltracey2599]

After rewatching this, I got a KZbin link to the documentary on Michel Thomas that was shown on the BBC in 1997 (it's been uploaded by the director, so I'll trust that it's properly cleared and therefore won't be taken down). I thought you might be interested to see him for yourself. If you watch it through, you'll see that Michel Thomas's philosophy is actually diametrically opposed to the claim in your video title of "learning about language". If you watch it from this point -- kzbin.info/www/bejne/hnfRgJWHgKmJlZI -- you'll get an example of him criticising metalinguistic knowledge, saying he's not talking about infinitives and pronouns, and doesn't even say "it" goes before "do" -- "do it" is "le faire". In Thomas's own teaching, there is genuinely very little discussion of syntax etc... but his students learn i.

[@offorh.i.c8374]

I believe practice, especially within immersion, is the best way to learn and truly test one's knowledge after whatever material that works for different individuals. Moreso, that MT advises one not to relatively revisit or practice after each session, does not mean one should whole heartedly go by that advice. It is me who knows myself better than even MT and knows what best will work for me. For me i'd use his obviously awesome course and apply my own followup practice, especially in an immersion environment to test myself in the real world. I usually would visit neighboring countries to mine that speak the language i'm learning off any material. That's my own view though to this language learning stuff.

[@thursoberwick1948]

Oddly enough you missed a major point, i.e. questions about his biography. As for his courses, I don't think they ever made anyone fluent, but they can give you a grounding. The same can be said about Duolingo. I don't think anyone is giving him "religious devotion", but it seems to get a lot of people further quicker than just parroting grammar. Language use is partly about confidence and I think these courses do give many people some confidence, rather than being bogged down early on in the complexities of a language. I suspect your first mistake was to do the Arabic course. I get the impression that his method works better with the major European languages, because they share a lot of concepts in common and even similar vocabulary.

[@LiamPorterFilms]

MT is a very inspiring figure that people, myself included, now hold in great affection if they encountered him as an absolute beginner. If one did not, his appeal might be somewhat mystifying.

[@mezzoguild]

You mean inspiring because of his war story? Or as a language teacher?

[@LiamPorterFilms]

@@mezzoguild Both!

[@horatiu6536]

It depends on what someone wants from such a course. I consider Michel Thomas and even Rosetta Stone very good for beginners. I used both and they are a lot better than the traditional methods used in schools.

[@jrdking1]

Hi D, I think you’re right. MT for me was similar to Pimsleur & Rosetta Stone amazing programs when I didn’t know much about language learning. Fast forward 20 years and several languages under my belt, those programs are just not a good use of my time. I also found Rocket Language for Egyptian Arabic to be a good starting point to build a solid A1 level foundation but advertisement always over-inflate results. You should help them develop 2 more levels of Egyptian Arabic which maybe will get a learner to a B1.

[@jamesskinner5794]

A lot of people are saying that the Spanish or French Michel Thomas courses are better. ANY course in those langauges are going to seem "more effective" just due to the fact that an easy language like Spanish for native English speakers is easier to aquire. I'm sorry but I've been studying languages for 7 years (successfully for around three). You are much better off with Glossika, LingQ, Pimsleur, or an Italki tutor. I use all of these programs/platforms together studying one language at a timer. This dude is explaining the clear distinction between *learning* about a subject/skill and *aquiring* that aforementioned skill.

[@MatthewNewtonOnline]

C2 Spanish here, got my start with MT, and you're wrong. ' ANY course in those langauges are going to seem "more effective" just due to the fact that an easy language like Spanish for native English speakers is easier to aquire. ' Nice theory. Makes a lot of sense. But is 100% wrong.

[@etienneturgeon]

I listened to your podcast, and it confirms what I felt about MT. "listening comprehension is the most difficult part of learning a language" Couldn't agree more. Regarding the Woody Allen case, his claim could be true in fact. He may have remembered what he learned with MT, but the real question is : is what he learned enough to be comfortable doing an interview with a french native speaker ? Of course not. That being said, I feel those methods all have the same flaw: they take you from A and bring you to B, while they promise you to bring you to Z. I for one love Assimil, but its preposterous to think someone could reach proficiency only with this material. It all bowls down to the same probleme : people evaluate their own level with superficial criteria, like for instance can I sustain a brief conversation about a predictable subject. Nothing about real listening comprehension. When I was learning english, I used to evaluate my own level as very bad until I was able to understand tv series and movies.

[@absmith4639]

go to audible.com and try the samples of the original MT for French, German... etc you can get a 15 minute sample. I'd say you are correct you do learn about the language way more than the actual language such as using Pimsleur. but could you not agree, if you knew absolutely nothing in French, and had the original MT as your teacher, it would be way better than almost any other high school/university teacher you had before? Also, I think MT only really works for languages similar to English with all those tips. But for Arabic, Greek etc wouldn't be that good, unless say you were learning the Saudi Arabia Dialect in Egyptian explanations, maybe they could tell you a lot of short cuts and would make sense to an Egyptian. That's why there are a lot of MT fans out there. I'm not even a fan of MT but have read many reviews and have listened to them before, would say is worth it for one time through if could get for free in a language closely related to English if you were a beginner, but I still like Pimsleur better. Also another thing is, try to imagine using the course when driving, honestly there are not too many audio courses out there that you can focus on at the same time as the road. but sitting at home, yeah can see how they could kind of suck and be boring. Also, a lot of the positive reviews come from people who took years of high school Spanish/french then tried MT 10 years later and he explained stuff that made a lot of sense, and they had these "ah ha" moments etc..

[@mvrlk]

It worked for me

[@hogepief]

I think it is good to get an opposing point of view, and my success with the French and Spanish course may be that I had learned those languages prior and simply hadn't used them for (over) a decade. It mostly thought me to understand language structure, more than vocabulary. I do feel a slight misinterpretation of the instruction not to practice or memorize. I believe what he means is to not repeat or "force" memory during the class, as it will interfere with the effectiveness of the program. There are some examples during the French course, where one of the students is sometimes whisperingly repeating things MT says. I strongly feel that applying the language outside the class is a prerequisite for actually mastering a language. In one of the courses he suggests getting a language coach (someone who is willing to take the time to understand what you are trying to say, and the patience to talk clearly and at a moderate pace themselves). I also have a slightly different experience with MT, though. As somebody who has spent significant time in Austria and Germany for work, I found the advance German course to be less than effective (although definitely not useless). It teaches concepts that I have either already internalized, or simply rarely use. The end result is that I recommend the beginner courses for Spanish, French and German to my Dutch friends, as most Dutch people easily understand English and we all had the latter two languages in early high school (many also have had Spanish and otherwise combing knowledge of French and English will give you a headstart).

[@Phil-p7p]

Low quality self-justifying waffle.

[@mezzoguild]

Just like your comment.

[@Phil-p7p]

@@mezzoguild Oh dear, you've let yourself down again. In what way was my comment self-justifying exactly?