Michel Thomas Method

Rose Lee Hayden met Michel Thomas in 1982 as a result of her interest in his innovative method and amazing results, and studied German with him. This was the beginning of a long and exciting collaboration, developing his programme and teaching his 'Second Phase' Spanish students. She now lives outside Rome, where she continues to write, teach, and play jazz piano. Paola Tite is a teacher of Italian and an author of Italian language books. At present she works as an editorial consultant and author for Hodder Educational, Oxford University Press, Macmillan Italia and Helbling Languages. As a native speaker of Italian, Paola attended Michel Thomas's Italian workshops and recording sessions at Hodder and Stoughton, and became an enthusiastic follower of his approach not only to language learning but to teaching in general.

1 WHAT YOU ALREADY KNOW - COGNATES; Introduction: How this course came about, what it does and does not include, how it works, and how it is both faithful to and expands upon the Michel Thomas Language Courses; Cognates: - iible and -aible, -ente and -ante, -zione, -ario, -enzia and - anzia, -ico, -mente, -cia; Endings: - TIAL/-CIAL to -ziale, -ISM to -ismo, -ASM to -asmo, -TY to -ta, -Y to -ia; 2 BEING ON THE RIGHT TRACK - VERBS; Simple present tense (-ARE track and 'the other track' of -ERE and -IRE verbs); '-ing' or 'at this very moment' way of expressing an action; other tenses (imperfect, preterite, command tense, some use of compound tenses); Review of verbs introduced ESSERE with new vocabulary; expressions using AVERE/FARE; expressions that trigger the command tense (doubt/uncertainty, wanting and wishing, commands themselves; Introduction of approx. 30 new verbs, mostly -ARE verbs since these constitute 90 per cent of all Italian verbs; How the reflexive 'si' changes the meaning of verbs; Verbs generally used in the reflexive; 3 BITS AND PIECES; Idiomatic expressions (e.g. after all, in the final analysis, at the same time, unless, in spite of everything, still, everybody, already, etc.); Idiomatic expressions with verbs (e.g. to count on, to rely on, to notice, to realize, to think of, to return to, to do again); time expressions; negatives; question words; USER GUIDE; Summary and contents of the CD tracks; Glossary of all vocabulary (alphabetical, English-Italian, Italian-English), plus "bonus" words that round out categories such as days of the week, months of the year, seasons, family members, numbers and counting, common expressions, etc.