Would you be able to discuss the finer points of the war in Iraq or would you still be stuck at the stage where you can order a beer, say good morning and that’s about it?

We asked four writers to see how far they could get in the time limit and here is Paul Humphreys' report. Click on the links on the left to find out how Bernice Davison, Pat Wheare and Don Berry got on.

The big snooze

The renowned linguist and teacher Michel Thomas makes a bold boast on the box of his eight-CD Italian course: “no books, no writing, just confidence – in hours.”

So I felt distinctly optimistic as I put my headphones on, relaxed in a comfy chair and pressed the play button.

In his spoken introduction, the avuncular Mr Thomas says “there is nothing to memorise or learn. You don’t have to take any notes or do any homework, even mental homework.” Sounds pretty good, I thought.

Then it gets better: “It is important never to worry about remembering. Never try to remember. The responsibility for your remembering is with the teacher, not you, the learner. It’s very important not to review, even mentally, what you’ve learnt. Let it become absorbed as knowledge – and what you know, you won’t forget.”

I decided to try it on the first morning of our holiday in Ireland. I settled down in an armchair in front of the fire and pressed the play button. My wife and I have a slight divergence of opinion as to what happened next.

I maintain that I listened to most of the first CD. She claims I fell asleep within minutes. Either way, I have to confess that I absorbed very little.

Michel Thomas has a conversational style of teaching, gradually introducing new words and building them into sentences. On the CDs, he works with two students and the listener becomes his third pupil. He might say, for instance, “How do you say ‘I want to know how much it is’?”

At this point, you press the pause button and give your answer (voglio sapere quanto). Then you hear one of the pupils give an answer and, finally, the teacher comes in with his rendition (or correction).

Having abandoned the soporific armchair approach, I tried listening to the CDs on the train, in the car, walking along the promenade, even sitting in a restaurant, but it was no good. It simply didn’t sink in.

Speaking aloud is recommended, but this is not really an option on a train or in a restaurant and, fool that I am, I felt strangely embarrassed about talking aloud even when alone at home, overheard by no one.

This course is all about the spoken language. My trouble was that after a 30-year career in print journalism, I had an overwhelming desire to write things down – or at least know how they are spelt.

So, ignoring the specific instructions of Michel Thomas, I found myself sitting at a desk with a big notebook and an Italian dictionary. Instead of merely answering the questions out loud, I pressed the pause button and wrote down my answers – guessing the spelling – and then looked up all the words and corrected what I had written.

Using this approach, I began to feel “Hey, this is working!” Then Michel Thomas would completely throw me by suddenly referring back to a word or phrase from way back – perhaps on the previous CD. It was clear that I was remembering things only for short stretches – and by the next day, most of it would vanish from my memory.

Over three months I must have played the opening CD 15 or 20 times. I ventured on to the second and third CDs maybe half-a-dozen times and played the complete set only once.

I have to take issue with Michel Thomas when he says that you do not have to 'remember' things. He argues that you 'learn' something and then 'know' it – but surely this amounts to the same thing? What is the difference between knowing a word and remembering it?

I am no expert in the philosophy of linguistics, but for me the conclusion is straightforward: Mi dispiace, ma non é possible per me imparare Italiano così (I’m sorry, but it’s not possible for me to learn Italian that way).

The Michel Thomas eight-hour Italian course has a list price of £70 and the two-hour introductory course costs £14.99. Discounts on both new and secondhand copies are widely available on the internet.

Written by Paul Humphreys

This article was created: 23 August 2006.
This article was last edited: 13 November 2006.

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