LANGUAGE APPS REVIEWS

Renowned polyglot Michel Thomas famously claimed that there was no such thing as a bad student, only a bad teacher. In fact, his courses were what got me enthusiastic about language learning ten years ago. Even today they are my point of reference when I start learning a new language (if the lessons are available in that language, of course).

With Michel Thomas, the listener virtually joins the class with two other virtual learners on the recording who are also beginning the language. Michel Thomas breaks the language down into its component parts and gives you the tools to reconstruct the language using these building blocks. Listeners are asked to translate basic sentences from English into Russian, and the course moves incrementally from there, allowing the listener to both consistently and rapidly develop competence in Russian. The knowledge is consolidated by a form of spaced repetition in which previously covered material reappears later in the audio recordings.

I really enjoyed the Russian version of the course and I highly recommend it to beginners and intermediates alike.