Category: Michel Thomas

Michel Thomas teacher Harold Goodman. Hebrew course

It has finally happened! After so many years of thinking, planning, wishing I made the first part of my Hebrew course a reality. This is the pilot or beta stage of what will later be released as a much longer beginner Hebrew course. That course will probably run around 7-8…

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Harold Goodman: some recent stuff.

Dear friends After a hiatus of two years, at least, I decided to post something here. A few years ago a reader chided me for not posting on a regular basis. He was right, of course, if I wanted to build a large audience. When people come to me as…

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Learning Hebrew in an Israeli Ulpan.

Previous to meeting Michel Thomas in the mid-90’s, my experience in learning languages was entirely based on using books and, in some cases, having others instruct me using more traditional approaches. However, I could never really communicate in any of these languages. In fact, the very idea of comfortably conversing…

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Tim Doner, an amazing polyglot.

When Timothy Doner, a 12 year old boy in New York City, was being instructed in Biblical Hebrew in preparation for his bar mitzvah, he became fascinated with the language. So he decided to learn Modern Hebrew. He bought a grammar book and found someone with whom to speak. In…

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Learn foreign languages by having fun reading. Part 2

I once asked Michel Thomas about studying on my own. He urged me to read in the language I was studying. “Read what you enjoy and don’t look up words in a dictionary. Just keep on reading,” he told me. His advice was built on the fact that when we…

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Reading Chinese the easy way.

One of the major hurdles for anyone wanting to read real Chinese, Chinese written for Chinese natives, is the simple fact that Chinese has no alphabet. The characters in which it is written can appear overwhelming to the neophyte. This in itself discourages many from plunging into reading as would…

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Learn foreign languages by having fun reading. ( 1)

One of the many pieces of advice Michel Thomas gave me was to read. I am the first of five kids. Born in NYC I was alone for many years. Sure I had a brother and three sisters but we were never close friends. To this day, I am only…

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What do I do after the Michel Thomas course?

I received a query asking what does one do after using the Michel Thomas course if one wishes to continue on. First a little background information. Hodder is the publisher of the Michel Thomas courses. I am the author of the Mandarin Chinese course; I do not publish them. Hodder…

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Another lesson, another lightbulb goes off.

There are times when, because of being tired, wanting a little time off from Russian, or just pure laziness, that I think, I hope Boris cancels class today. It would be so nice to just sleep in. Then I get up, shower, eat a bite, jump in my car and…

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