Not for those who want to learn Italian well
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I am Italian native speaker and bought this course for my girlfriend. I am totally unsatisfied by the bad quality of this product. The girl speaking has really a bad and nasty American accent, not mentioning the other two guys (only one is probably Italian).
Apart from lots of unnecessary comments that in my opinion make this course quite tiring, I noticed severe spelling errors and basic grammar errors. And the main voice should repeat the sentences with the right pronunciation rather than pronuncing all the sentences badly.
It's incredible that we had to pay for this, I was tempted to bring it back straight.
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Non vale la pena
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I was very disappointed with this additional michel thomas course. I have completed both the foundation and advanced courses which both have some kind of method and consistency.. where in this he just rambles on for over an hour by himself giving you no time to pause or understand what he has just tried to say.
I've noticed a few mistakes and it really gets to me how he can't speak informally in the 1st person and always has to use the 3rd person formal tense which is hardly used at all in italy now!
If you can stand all of this then i would highly recommed this but i've listened to it once and i cant bare the thought of listening to it again.
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There's no such thing as perfection but.....
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I am an ESOL and German teacher and decided to give his 8 hour beginner Italian course a go because it was free in a newspaper.
As a linguist i found i could easily do a CD a day in the car and remember it and there is no other method of learning a language which is so quick and effort free. i have drawn much inspiration from his teaching in my teaching needless to say. however i did find in the initial course that as there was no difference between his pronunciation of 'won't' and 'want' that both i and the students on the cd got in a tizz, which he attempted to quell but only confused us more because we hadn't misunderstood the concept only his pronunciation and his attempts at solving 'the problem' only made it more confusing.
as for the builder. i disagree with the reviewer who said you might as well listen to the first one again as there is nothing new. i feel my italian is far, far richer after it and i can do a disc in two days. he teaches you more day to day phrases that you would hear in the workplace, in hotels or on the street.
however what i didn't realise before doing a michel thomas course is this: he gently instils structure into you which is great i.e. verbs, pronouns, conjunctions and prepositions but i probably only know the names of about eight things after two courses.
for example in under two weeks from scratch i can confidently say:
"That's very nice of you. i would have done it for you but at the minute i am extremely busy. would it be possible for me to find it for you tomorrow?"
and other long sentences and clauses which many university languages students could simply not manage after years of bad classroom practice but apart from 'message', 'journey', 'house' and 'information' i don't really know many nouns at all.
i realise he has given us the structure and it is up to the learner to find out the vocabulary. in all honesty no teacher can "teach" vocabulary so i shouldn't really be complaining.
i did get confused though over a couple of things. near the beginning of CD1 he says that "la settimanna prossima" is next week but later on in the cd he says "la prossima settimana". which is it? i'm confused.
he also teaches "I intend" initially as "ho l'intenzione" but later on omits the 'l'. as i don't know anybody who speaks italian i have no idea which is right.
however i have been the harshest that i possibly could be. it is excellent in general and as i mentioned there is no better method/teacher in the world. we just have to remember that nobody is perfect.
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Excellent
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I enjoyed Michel's 8 hour "foundation" course and managed to pick these two CDs up for a fiver in a sale. They are fantastic !. Michel gallops through loads of useful Italian phrases at a fair old pace. The set is more focussed on useful phrases and vocabulary than the foundation course, and I am really enjoying it. There are no students on this tape and it does move ahead pretty fast - you need to listen to it several times. Michel remains his amiable gravelly self. Sometimes his pronunciation is a little confusing but that just motivates me to listen again and look up words in the dictionary. Even if you haven't done the foundation course, I recommend this - loads of short useful phrases - it should work with any basic Italian knowledge. Highly recommended.
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Not bad
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Given all the raving about Michel Thomas, I decided to give the Advance Italian audiobook a try. I liked Michel's method of teaching, it's almost like having a conversation with a friend. However, the most off-putting things for me were his accent and his enunciation. There were some things I couldn't catch (and my Italian husband had to repeat for me!). I thought it would have been much better to get someone with a crisp, clear English accent/diction. So I'm slightly disappointed. But I will press on and perhaps I can get used to his accent...
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