(London)
Hello,
It is not the first time that I have heard/read comments about his accent. He created a method, now the MT method is applied to many languages and I guess that - as long as the target language's teacher is both a native speaker and fluent in English, everyone (maybe not everyone, there will always be one who picks holes) is happy and no-one complains about accents.
- He makes learning incredibly easy by disassembling the language in simple, easily understood chunks and then by reassembling it with the same ease.
- 'No memorizing' means: use your logic, following what he explains, do not try to guess grammar structure (do not pause and repeat thirty times a word to yourself just like the traditional methods because the focus is on something much more important). Vocabulary is not that important, you can even try to guess it or you can have fun with cognates (by the way, he explains a lot about learning 'needed' words by reading material of interest in the form of interviews ...), on the contrary the language structure is essential. If you memorize the structure you are doing just that, memorizing, not understanding. Oh wait!... if there were not a head on my neck, you would have a good point, as without a brain, no information whatsoever could be retained or processed at all. But what Michel talks about is just a little more subtle than that.
- Michel repeats a few times that people should listen to and read native speakers' material.
- The course aims at making learning, and the ability to interact orally in the target language, effortless. And there are scripts if you really want to see the written word.
I am Italian, he might have an accent but I would recommend his Italian course one million times compared to the boring books etc from which hardly anyone seems to have ever learnt as much and as quickly as with this method.
Michel to me is the best option if you cannot travel to the country of the language you want to learn.
If he - HE - had not created this method, WE would not have this method.
I read with a smile the jokes about elephants being seen as donkeys yet they are still elephants etc: on the same lines, I feel like saying that in order to appease the people who complain about the accent of the creator of a method of language learning, Michel Thomas should have been born in 6 different countries and experienced 6 lives, being born in 6 different places, growing up in 6 different cultures and being able to speak 6 mother tongues. He would have been six people. But He was ONE, I pay tribute to this man. He/it could have not been any different.
Alex