Business speak...

[Platypus]

Im going to learn using audio from http://www.michelthomas.co.uk/

Highly recommended

Look an amazon - can get the same for much less money

In fact half price
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Michel-Thoma...8996739&sr=1-1

[ookook]

I've never been very impressed by the tapes - I listened to a few once and they seemed a bit "emperors new clothes" he gets you saying longish sentences but theres no grammar rules taught.. Its all very well being able to say "Theres a frog in my bidet" or whatever, but you need to be able to construct the sentence to be " theres is/was/will be/might be a frog in my/your/his/hers/your plural/ours/their bidet" and you cant do that without knowing how to construct all the verb forms and the irregulars which you need to memorise..

[Platypus]

The Rosetta Stone stuff looks very good but very expensive.

Anyone tried these?

[BrianSnail]

blimey, my 2000th non-LR post.

[lightng]

Always wondered about the Michel Thomas courses. I dismissed it as hype but maybe I'm wrong. Is it completely or mostly audio based? I'm looking for a course I can do whilst driving mainly.

[NetwkSupport]

completely audio based but the do do a book too if you want.

[Lockhouse]

Always wondered about the Michel Thomas courses. I dismissed it as hype but maybe I'm wrong. Is it completely or mostly audio based? I'm looking for a course I can do whilst driving mainly.

They're good for tourist level (French) but I reached a plateau quite quickly. I didn't try the vocabulary builder though. I want to retire to France but my language isn't going to improve until as others have suggested I a) learn all the irregular verbs and tenses and b) go and live there.

They are tapes (or MP3s) btw.

[Turion]

Learning a language takes years. It is not like learning some technical stuff for your job. There is no way that you can learn to any reasonable standard without being there for a number of years and taking many lessons. As for learning mandarin, it's virtually impossible unless you grew up with the language.

[NetwkSupport]

Learning a language takes years. It is not like learning some technical stuff for your job. There is no way that you can learn to any reasonable standard without being there for a number of years and taking many lessons. As for learning mandarin, it's virtually impossible unless you grew up with the language.

BS. Japanese is just as hard and i know someone who has learnt it to a good conversational level after just a few years.