Michel Thomas Method - Method

Method

With Thomas's method, the teacher cautions students to avoid making notes and to refrain from making conscious attempts to memorise, promising that the teacher will "be taking full responsibility" for their learning. Thomas stated that keeping the students relaxed, focused, and stretched with a feeling of mounting successful achievement lies at the heart of the method. The removal of the stress and anxiety of 'being put on the spot' of conventional language learning, especially school language learning, is a key advantage of the method.

Interviewed for the documentary The Language Master, Margaret Thompson, headmistress of the school in which the documentary was filmed, commented that in general, teachers "try and ... capture their interest by finding them interesting materials that are supposedly related to their interests" but that what Thomas had demonstrated to her was that "it's the learning process itself that motivates these kids", not the material used.

The teacher then introduces short words and phrases in the target language. The students are asked how they would say a phrase in the target language, starting with simple sentences and gradually building up to more advanced constructions. The phrases are chosen as common building blocks of the language's structure. When a student gives a correct answer, the teacher repeats the entire sentence with correct pronunciation. When the student's answer is incorrect, the teacher helps the student to understand their mistake and to correct it.

The most important words and phrases are reviewed repeatedly during the course. The method does not insist on perfect pronunciation from the beginning, instead providing progressive feedback and continual improvement by the process of shaping student response over the course of these repetitions.

In the courses recorded by Thomas himself (Spanish, French, Italian, and German), the teaching focuses on verb conjugations and modal verb constructions such as "I want to go". The vocabulary used in the course is fairly small, focusing mainly on function words in preference to lexical words. Grammar rules are introduced gradually, and grammatical terminology is generally avoided. In this way, the course builds complexity quickly, focusing on the skills required to translate sentences like "I want to know why you don't have it for me now, because it is very important for me and I need it", while avoiding much of the vocabulary and fixed-phrases presented in most mainstream courses. For example, in his recorded courses, Thomas does not teach counting, days of the week, or months of the year.

Michel Thomas often links cognates in the target language with their equivalents in the student's home language, and in his courses in the Romance languages, many of the Latinate borrowings in English are highlighted to allow the student to incorporate their existing vocabulary into the target language.

However, Thomas said of his use of cognates that it is an "effective gimmick to get started, but it is not the method".