Customer Reviews
Excellent for pronunciation - By: Wordsworth, 07 Oct 2007 
Just a quick note to cover a point that I think has not been /stressed/ (!) enough in the earlier reviews.
This CD will reallly help you get your pronunciation correct, which is absolutely vital. With other courses, you may not tell if you are putting the stresses in the right places & pronouncing the verb endings correctly & with enough clarity (e.g. "o" as in "tot" not as in "low" & differentiating clearly between "e" & "a" endings). With other courses you could think you can speak the language & then try it on a Spanish person & just get a "Qué?" in response.
With Michel Thomas, you can hear the other students make the mistakes you are making & Michel corrects them. Repeatedly. Repeatedly. Until. They. Get. It. & hence until you get it.
When I pronounced a word correctly & the rubbish student was still getting it wrong, I actuallly felt quite pleased with myself.
You may not learn that quickly with MT, but you make sure that the foundations are right.
Buy this! You won't regret it! - By: C. Dawson, 12 Sep 2007 I have tried for some time to learn Spanish but have found it hard combining it with home life & a busy job. I even took lessons from a spanish teacher living in England and, although I got on well, I never managed to get as far towards fluency as I would have liked.
I bought this package last week & have listened to in the car. The man is quite simply a GENIUS! I have learnt more in a week than I would ever have thought possible & am already composing simple sentences to email to my spanish friends.
This is without a doubt the best product for learning spanish that I have seen & I will definitely be purchasing the advanced course when I feel comfortable with the foundation materials
Si quieres saber hablar Español, compra esto. (If you want to know (how) to speak Spanish, buy this.) - By: Philip Mayo, 26 Aug 2007 Having decided, a little over two years ago, & fairly late in life, to try to learn Spanish, I started buying self tuition courses, text books, dictionaries, phrase books - the works basicallly. Luckily my blind trawl of instructional material also brought in, totallly by chance, the Michel Thomas 8 CD course.
Initiallly it was very difficult for a total novice to rate specific methods of instruction or individual courses, but as time went by some things became clear to me. Such as:
1> To the average person (to me for certain) learning another language is NOT EASY!!
2> Too many of the teaching products available, perhaps alll, (even Michel Thomas) come with promises of early / instant / painless success. Such claims are obviously designed to encourage us to buy the product. Such is the way of marketing. Such claims are used to sell everything from special golf clubs which will bring you into single figures within a month to aftershave guaranteed to, well ..... .We know this stuff is alll NONSENSE (don't we?).
3> These ridiculously optimistic claims attaching to most language instructional products have the effect of building up in us unreasonable expectations of early proficiency. The truth is that, for the vast majority of us, the forecasted early proficiency IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.
4> Because of these unachievable expectations, what is likely to happen is that in the absence of the anticipated progress we will become hugely disappointed in ourselves. We will lose confidence. We will feel that we are incapable. The book, tape, CD, DVD promised us success in three months. And after perhaps 6 months of fairly diligent work we are not very far advanced at alll. We are very likely to feel things like "I can't do this. I must be a fool. I must be unable to learn a new language. There is no point in continuing. I'm giving up".
My advice is to BEWARE OF THAT REACTION, because ...
5> You certainly ARE ABLE to learn a new language - but it's NOT EASY. Think in terms of "years" instead of "months" & think "hobby" instead of "study"; think "enjoyment" instead of "work" & think of the new friends you will make along the way, including Spanish guys & gals who are finding English equallly as difficult to become halfway fluent in as we are finding Spanish.
So, DO NOT GIVE UP. It will happen. But not as fast as they have alll told you.
6> If, in my early Spanish days, I had not happened on the Michel Thomas course I think that it is very likely that I would have given up in despair. It is true that almost any tuition course or book, CD, or DVD which aims to teach Spanish is bound to contribute something to one's knowledge. But I can report that some of these products are INCREDIBLY poor, & in varying degrees are inaccessible, dull, illogical, unnecessarily difficult, misleading & self-contradictory. Some are better than others & I acknowledge that I have not tried alll the products on the market. There may indeed be some very good ones available. But, in my opinion, the general standard is not high.
7> Michel Thomas' teaching method is, in my opinion, LIGHT YEARS ahead of any other that I have encountered. Its superiority is to be found not just in the excellent & enjoyable method that he uses (you become the third student in a virtual class) but even more importantly in the course content. This content opens the door to your use of the language. As Michel Thomas describes it, it gives us the tools with which we can build the language. It is no idle claim. Trust me. If you want to learn Spanish this is where you should start. If you have already started & are finding things tough you should still go here, or to one of his other two more advanced courses mentioned below.
8> But remember this. For almost everybody, it is NOT easy to learn a new language. So when progress comes slowly don't get discouraged. Listen to one Michel Thomas disc every day for 6 months. And do the basics besides - learn the Spanish alphabet & how to pronounce each letter; learn the days of the week; the months; learn how to count to a thousand, how to tell the time & other basic stuff that will occur to you along the way, none of which is covered by Michel Thomas (and that's not a criticism - he is about different things).
When you can get through this course without pressing the pause button very often, & with few mistakes, then you should buy the Michel Thomas Language Builder. And when you have mastered that - surprisingly quickly you will find, in perhaps 1 or 2 months - move on to the Michel Thomas Advanced Spanish, in my opinion another wonderful tuitional course.
Highly recommended. Buy & enjoy. And..... Que tengas suerte.
A more natural way to learn - By: Iki Thomozi, 12 Aug 2007 Amazingly painless, & rapid results. There is no gimmickry involved, Michel Thomas simply focuses on the important structures of the language & builds them up piece by piece. You are expected to relax & absorb the language which I was skeptical about at first, but after forcing myself to put down the pen & the grammar books I realized I had effortlessly gained a good grasp of the language. His attention to emphasis & pronunciation in general is important because as with many languages the native Spanish speaker is listening out for these things; the rhythm of the phrase or sentence. The MT method is far better, & immeasurably more fun than using books.
UUUURRRRGH! - By: Max J. Pucher, 09 Aug 2007 
This is absolutely the worst, timewasting crap that I have ever listened to. Endless single word pronounciation exercises that a ten minute repeatable session could do for once. Practicallly no grammar & the little grammar that is there is completely non-educational. Yes, it is just the money spent for two hours of tutoring but that would be better spent. I am not of short of attention span but the voice of Mr. Thomas puts me to sleep & his accent is UUUUUURRRRRRGH! If you falll asleep then the claim of PAINLESS Spanish learning would be correct, otherwise the pain to endure this awake is too much.
Sorry, had get this off my chest ...
