Foundation Swedish (Michel Thomas Method) - Lesson 1 of 9

Learn Swedish with the Michel Thomas Method, Book 1

By: Michel Thomas

Narrated by: Håkan Rosenqvist, Roger Nyborg

Length: 1 hr and 16 mins

Publisher's summary

This is Lesson 1 (of 9) of the Foundation Swedish course.

Looking for a beginner language course that fits into your busy lifestyle and gets you speaking a new language in a matter of weeks, not years? Michel Thomas's unique method is designed to overcome the frustrations usually faced by language learners so you can...

• Pick up Swedish naturally and unforgettably without strain or stress
• Learn from listening and speaking, without the pressure of writing or memorizing
• Build up your Swedish in manageable steps by thinking out answers for yourself

For 50 years, Michel Thomas worked on decoding languages into their most essential component parts. These 'building blocks' are introduced sequentially so that you reconstruct the language for yourself - to form your own sentences, to say what you want, when you want. Within the very first hour you will be able to generate complete sentences instinctively, having absorbed the language and grammatical structures.

You will learn at your own pace, pausing and responding where necessary, and complete the 8 one-hour lessons in about 20-30 hours. By the end of the Foundation course, you will understand and have the confidence to speak basic Swedish. You can continue to review and practice with the additional 2-hour Review course before moving on to the next level.

What is next?

This is Lesson 1 of 9 of the Foundation Swedish course. The next lesson is Lesson 2 of 9 of the Foundation Swedish course. The full course is broken into eight easy-to-manage one-hour lessons. It is important that you complete the lessons in order. The Method is successful because it builds on the language you learn in each lesson and 'recycles' language taught in earlier lessons. Do not skip and always begin with Lesson 1.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©1999 Thomas Keymaster Languages LLC. (P)2018 Hodder & Stoughton, Ltd

Critic reviews

"The thrill is that you're actually figuring it out on your own. You're engaging with another language, not just parroting it... It's an excellent way to start, and leaves the listener thinking, Hey, Ich kann do dis." (David Sedaris, New Yorker, humorist and author)

Cannot recommend this

I’d not used the Michel Thomas method before, but if this is representative, it has minimal usefulness.

The first flaw is each lesson is extremely expensive for what you get unless you purchase during a big discount sale.

Second, though the Michel Thomas method emphasizes speaking, Mr. Nyborg does not attempt to correct the egregious pronunciation of the students except half-heartedly and occasionally.

Correct intonation should be critical if the whole point of this method is to learn by speaking. Also, inflection is incredibly important in Swedish and this falls by the wayside. Learning Swedish inflection when one speaks a non-inflected language like English requires active listening and usually a lot of correction and repetition.

Third, not having any real grammar or spelling guidance is a huge problem. For example, when they get to the verb, “to buy,” the male student asks how “köp,” which sounds a bit like “shop” is spelled. Nyborg says “k-o-p, the o with a dot.”

There’s no discussion of how “köp” sounds entirely different from “kopp,” cup, which has been used previously. There’s no discussion of Swedish’s notoriously confusing use of the letter k sounding something like “sh” at times.

Other issues similar to this occur as one goes on. There’s no real discussion of å, ä, or ö sounds at all. Even when the difficult sj prefix comes up, Nyborg is inconsistent and confusing as to how this should be pronounced even when asked repeatedly.

Imagine if you were learning English and did not know that plough, cough, rough, and dough were all pronounced differently and spelled similarly. Some things you need to see to learn, and a lot of things that will never make sense just have to be memorized and heard repeatedly.

Fourth, whether or not this is scripted, the female student is far less prepared, or has less aptitude, than the male student. A lot of the time the instructor laughs at her nervously. Both students are British so the added and dropped r’s will add confusion for some American students.

Fifth, the pdf is breathtakingly short and as such not particularly useful.

Methods of learning Swedish without any guide to reading are not for serious students. Passive methodologies like this render a slapdash result where a student will pronounce Swedish improperly and have no reading comprehension.

TLDR: Skip this annoying waste of your time.