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The best language course on the market
By Dirk Bansch of Summit Consulting & Training Ltd
If you learned a foreign language at school, you might have felt a certain frustration that even after several years of learning vocabulary and grammar, you still did not feel comfortable expressing yourself in that language when you had to use it. I know I did! When I had English and French at school (I am originally from Germany), it was like a theoretical exercise and it took living abroad to actually reach a measure of competence in either language. When I needed to refresh my French recently, I came across a language course by a Belgian gentleman by the name of Michel Thomas. He has a very interesting backstory that I might relate in another intel, but the important bit is the way he approaches languages. Basically, he deconstructs them and finds what certain languages have in common. That is the starting point and it is incredibly effective. Little example: any word in English that ends in -ion or -tion is the same in French, German, Spanish, Italian - it is just pronounced differently. Communication - communication - Kommunikation - communicacion - communicazione Relation - relation - Relation - relacion - relazione There are many other shortcuts like this and after listening to him for half an hour, you have learned about 4000 words of the other language and you did not even have to memorize anything! Why did my teachers never mention anything like this? That's just the start. The basic course in French, German, Spanish, or Italian is on 6 CDs, I believe and there is an advance course, as well as a vocabulary builder course. It is my firm belief that you could become quite proficient in a language within 30 days using this course. Highly recommended!
Dirk Bansch is Director of Learning & Development at Summit Consulting & Training Ltd.
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Michel Thomas French Basic
| Michel Thomas Spanish Basic
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I have always noticed that among the central European languages there are literally thousands of words in common. By changing the pronunciation most people already know at least 1,000 common words in French, German, Italian and Spanish. The real trouble most English speaking people have with languages is grammar because so few of us were taught adequately in the subject. Then, of course, there are those words that sound like they ought to mean what you want to say, my two most emabarrassing examples being when I old my noisy, fidgety German mother in law "Stillen sie!" and told my Spanish neighbour that "soy embarazado". I didn't know that I had told my MiL to go breast feed until the hysterical laughter died down nor that I had told my neighbour that I was pregnant!
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
LOL about the false friends example with "Stillen Sie"! You seem to be right about English people having difficulties with grammar. My partner teaches at a Uni and about half of the second-year students in her Old English class did not know what an adjective was...
Thank you for sharing this fine read with great information, Dirk. I never had the opportunity or need to learn a foreign language. General course students were not involved with college prep courses.
Best wishes.
Frederick
The noun 'Relation' is not proper German. It is a Fremdwort or Lehnwort (borrowed word from another language). When I went to school we got bad marks for using foreign words.
Meantime, you will encounter the expression 'Relation' all over the media. However, I have no doubt that a half hour lesson of similar modern day words which look the same in 4 or 5 languages takes away all fear to learn a new language. That is the best basis to start with.
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