January 8, 2008

Those who know me know my goal is at some point in my life to be a fluent speaker of a language, preferably Spanish.

I recently bought a cd-set by a dude - now deceased - called Michel Thomas.

It’s an 8 hour cd course that he made in the years leading up to his death as a way of preserving his teaching methods.

Michel Thomas became famous amongst the glitterati of Hollywood for his ability to teach a language in a phenomenally quick amount of time.

Celebrities beat down his door to be taught by the great man. As such, as the years of his life slowly drew to an end, his company was able to charge $25,000 (you heard right) for a 5 day group course. He also offered a 100% money back guarantee, which was not once redeemed in the entire history of the company.

Realising his unique methods needed to live on, he made a cd set based on Day 1 of the course for French, German, Italian and of course, Spanish.

Since then his proteges have released titles in Russian, Arabic and Mandarin. (Ballsy.)

I’m halfway through the sixth cd of the course and let me tell you, it’s .. amazing.

Normally when you’re learning you feel like you HAVE to do it, for your own benefit. Even if you know it’s good for you, you still must discipline yourself.

Not so in the case of Michel Thomas. I decided to listen to half an hour of the first cd just to see what it was like. It was my intention to do the course properly in June.

That half an hour ended up turning into 3 and a half hours, and let me tell you, I only stopped because I had to go to work in the evening! I listened until the very last possible minute!

It was the same case today. As soon as I got some free time I sat down to the cds, and man, this guy is mind blowing.

You always feel as if you’re just above the water, that you could sink any minute, but he’s holding you, you can trust him completely, that he knows what he’s doing. If something doesn’t lodge instantly in the memory it doesn’t even matter!

He seems random as he is presenting - at first - but he builds a very neat tapestry of understanding. He gets you to understand the logic of the language and then prompts the students to use that logic to figure out a word. It’s quite brilliant. I will definitely buy the 5Cd Advanced, 2Cd builder and 5Cd Vocabulary builder. It’s $123 more to get all that but man, will it save me a lot of time and energy when I get to Spain.

I was running out of petrol on the way to work today and it was getting very dicey. My car was losing power majorly and was jerking along.

I was desperately looking for somewhere - anywhere - I could get some of that sweet smelling nectar. A Safeway Petrol loomed around the corner.

Just as I was about to pull in, my car died. I use the remaining momentum to swing in and slot in next to the bowser. My car could not have gone 5 metres more.

Sometimes life is like that. I would have been pretty annoyed if it conked out 10 seconds earlier!