Difference between Michel Thomas and Pimsleur methods

[Kelven Gump]

Comparison between Michel Thomas and Pimsleur methods

Pimsleur is bad.

I wanted to learn French. Found Pimsleur and listened to all its courses every day and it took me three months. After them I understood that it made me a good tourist, no more. I still could not understand a word what the french say.
And it's a long story, but I found Michel Thomas. Michel Thomas first eight-hour course taught me everything in 8 hours that Pimsleur did in 45 (but the numbers). Then I got Advanced French with Michel Thomas and it was the best course imaginable. Only 4 discs, but all the grammar is reveiled. For example, Pimsleur makes me remember:
Je voudrais faire quelque chose., Je amerais faire quelque chose and et cetera. I can use it only by my memory without even knowing how it comes.
Michel has thought me the voudrais form. In the advanced course, he told me that -ais is the would form of to want. But to want is voloir, so voudrais is an exception. Aimerais is the would form of aimer (to love), but it's regular. Not only that I can create new verbs in the would form. He told me all the other tenses, he revealed a lot. There is no point of memorising things, one must understand them. That's the point of Michel Thomas and I like it a lot.

Kelven Gump

[Guest]

Everyone is different, but I personally couldn't disagree more with the above poster as to the merits of Michel Thomas vs those of pimsleur.

Having completed the Michel Thomas 8-lesson Italian and now being 5 lessons away from finishing the pimsleur italian comprehensive course, I have to say that I thought pimsleur gave me much greater skill in just about every area. Michel Thomas's Italian accent is very poor and you don't learn to be quick enough to converse or understand at native italian speed. Also, idiosyncrasies in his english pronunciation (pronouncing want and won't the same for example) produce incorrect answers from any student (including those on the tape) which he does not realise are his fault (in the example mentioned he goes on and on repeatedly about how in other languages want and won't are different words!). Then, when you move on to his "vocabulary builder" it turns into rote learning, parrot fashion. The advanced course doesn't follow straight on from the 8 lesson course (presumably the extremely dull vocabulary builder is the bridge between the two). This was the point at which I changed to pimsleur- I have since felt no need to return to michel thomas. Pimsleur uses native speakers at native speeds and is a complete progression. It gives you more vocab than michel thomas without resorting to rote learning. Also, it takes the time it says it will- half an hour a day. With all the pausing required, michel thomas's courses are much longer than the length of their recordings.

[Guest]

oh, and I should add that I personally found pimsleur better than michel thomas at ingraining the grammer (pretty vital in italian). Maybe MT's French course is better than his italian.
I know nothing about Rosetta stone except that libraries don't stock it where I live...

[very old student]

Hello friends! What can you tell us about approach M Shestov?
very old student

[Milamber]

Hi all,

Sorry to resurrect this old thread, but I came across it while looking for comparisons between Michael Thomas and Pimsleur methods.
I've not really found much other than this thread that makes a direct comparison!

My own feeling is that the two approaches work differently for different people, and that an optimum approach may be to use both. Since they are both purely audio and can be listened to in otherwise dead-time situations (e.g. driving), the extra investment in time is not necessarily a burden (the money may be though).
Personally I have the French, German and Spanish courses from Thomas, and of those I have listened to the French ones several times and I think I have about 90-95% committed and understood. I'm considering the new advanced follow-up (didn't think much of the vocab builder).
I enjoyed the initial course, but I felt the approach worked best as an introduction, and as a confidence builder, to get you off the ground, but I'm not sure it stands up to the more advanced material - it was already being stretched towards the end of the first 8 hours.

I haven't (yet) tried Pimsleur's French, but I have their Comprehensive Russian part 1 (16 hour) course, of which I listened to just over half, so far.
Now Russian is a more complex language than French, and is further from English - also the pronunciation is harder for an english speaker - and yet I found my progress has been similar to my learning of French at the hands of Thomas.
Does this make Pimsleur better over all? I'm not sure I'd go that far. I think it suffers from the same problem of being well suited to getting you off the ground, but at some point you just too many questions about grammer etc stacked up that are not being answered, and it starts to get you down.
I'll see how I feel by the end of the course.
Another problem with Pimsleur is that the amount of repetition involved, although not drill-like, does start to wear you down in places too - and slows the pace. Having said that I believe my pronunciation is pretty good, considering how hard it is.

Ultimately, my personal opinion is that the best strategy is to start out with a Pimsleur course. Either get one of the cut down (5-10 hour) courses, or get a 30 hour course and do half of it to start with. At that point you will have started to "lock in" to the language, and be picking up an ear for it - and in particular you will have many of the unique sounds that are slightly different to english equivalents down.
Then start doing, in parallel, a book based course - I found the Penguin one to be the ideal companion for Russian.
As you do so you'll catch many of the same words you have been speaking and you can compare how you thought they were spelt to how they actually are. This may give you insight into how to pronounce idiomatic spellings (esp. important in something like Russian) - and could also feedback the other way - correcting mispronounciations.
At this point I think it is safer to continue the two forms of study in parallel. Where the two courses teach you the same things they will reinforce each other (and give you a boost as get through the material faster), and where they cover different ground, what you have learnt from the other source will give you insight into pronunciation or spelling that you might not have got from one approach alone.

This is the approach I am taking now, and it seems to be working well for me so far (but I'm still very much a beginner, so it may not stand the test). I'd appreciate hearing from anyone else how has tried something similar.

Regards,

Milamber

[screenager]

Both courses have advantages and disadvantages, which will vary from person to person. I have used both for Italian - I'm finished Michel Thomas's foundation course and have been working through the Pimsleur course for a few weeks.

Michel Thomas

Format
Essentially, it's a recording of Michel Thomas conducting a tutorial with two students. There are 8 CDs in the Foundation course, 4 in the Advanced and 2 in the third-stage Language builder; you dip in and out when you want, there's no recommended interval to listen to in one sitting. MT will ask the students to say a sentence. You pause the CD and think of your answer, then resume to hear the student's answer. MT will point out any mistakes they have made in sentence structure, verb conjugation or word emphasis and then give the full, correct sentence.

Content
His emphasis is on verbs. He will introduce a verb and show you how it would be used in a sentence. Grammar and vocabulary are picked up along the way.
His gimmick is to ask you to put together long sentences from the very beginning - for example, "I cannot speak with you now because I am very busy, but I will call you later." It's not the standard tourist stuff, but it makes you feel more confident using the language and gives the impression that you're learning it properly right from the start: learning to construct meaningful sentences and rules for translating English words - not memorising stock phrases like I did for GCSE French.

Criticisms
In the Italian course at least, the students become incredibly annoying in the second half. They seem to ignore the rules MT has laid down and answer questions in the wrong tense. They make really stupid mistakes and keep repeating them, to the point where even the teacher becomes (very occasionally) dismayed and frustrated.
Also, not much vocab that would be useful for a tourist.

Evaluation
The Michel Thomas method suits me down to the ground. I found that just about everything covered seemed to be miraculously retained.
Mr Thomas explains the literal meaning of each phrase you learn and how it is used. He draws comparisons between how something would be expressed in Italian and how we would say it in English. Some people might find that information superfluous and would prefer to stick to bare Italian, but I found it very helpful in understanding how the language works.
Mr Thomas's English accent poses a problem now and then, but I think this is overstated by some reviewers because my Italian doesn't seem to have suffered. I have yet to find a discrepancy between the pronunciation I learned from the MT course and that of native speakers from other course CDs.
No course covers everything, but MT lays down very solid foundations - if his teaching method suits you.

Pimsleur

Format
The Pimsleur approach is very structured and based mainly on repetition. Each lesson begins with a conversation in your chosen language, which is broken down word by word. You are guided through the pronunciation by native speakers and repeat the phrases for most of the lesson. The lesson finishes with a conversation in which you think of the answer for yourself before hearing and repeating the correct answer.
Pimsleur strongly recommend that you do one half-hour lesson per day, every day.

Content
I'm not yet through the Pimsleur course so unfortunately can't comment much.
One big advantage with Pimsleur is the emphasis on pronunciation: the demonstrations are by native speakers, so you get a more realistic idea of the speed of an exchange in your language - though still slower than in reality, of course!

Criticisms
The information sinks in, but the constant repetition gets boring. I don't look forward to my daily half-hour sessions. I find them very dry.
Nearly a week in, I was able to say I didn't understand Italian very well, but that was only true because the course had covered next to nothing! Quite apart from wondering how much value there is in an Irish kid spending a week learning how to tell an Italian I am American, it's the pace (or lack thereof) more than anything that bothers me.

Evaluation
Pimsleur is simply refining what I'd learned from the Michel Thomas CDs. Many have pointed out that Thomas is very obviously not a native speaker, but the difference between his pronunciation and that of the Pimsleur teachers was negligible and at the end of the day it's pronunciation that counts.
Where there have been small discrepancies between Pimsleur and MT, I've asked Italians over the net and it usually turns out that Pimsleur teaches the 'textbook' way of saying something, whereas MT teaches the more natural, everyday usage.

I would recommend starting with Michel Thomas. When you're a few CDs into the 8-hour course, start doing the Pimsleur course in parallel. Neither are completely comprehensive, and you will still need spelling practice and extra vocab, for which I would recommend the Teach Yourself range and Rosetta Stone.
At the end of the day, the only way to really, properly learn a language inside out is immersion, but a good combination of materials tailored your learning style can give you a massive boost.