Fills out some gaps once you're more fluent, 11 Dec 2007
I commented on a previous review, then realised I hadn't reviewed this myself, despite giving 5 stars to both the Advanced course and 4 to the Foundation course. The reason I forgot was that I DID look over this BEFORE I used the Advanced course, having bought them together, and this being shorter. Wait, in my opinion. This Language Builder is where Thomas goes over many useful and common words and phrases VERY quickly, so there's a lot in the 2 hours. Using the booklet helps a lot, as you can read what you're hearing and visualise it.

A problem I'm seeing in some reviews is that some seem to have missed the Advanced course, which does cover past and future tenses very well. The lack of emphasis on 'tu' against 'vous' is due to the method here, in that Thomas tries to get you to hear similarities in spoken French for simplicity, and points out how the 'tu' form almost always follows the sound of the third person, so can be quickly deduced for speaking. For better grammar/ written French, you DO need more.

I decided to wait until I finished the Advanced course, then gain more from this once I had more confidence. If you're not confident enough, the speed will overwhelm you, and it needs to be paused and revised well, in sensible chunks. NEVER try it all at one sitting!

5 stars again, since I just think Thomas had the best method for efficiently mastering spoken language. Pity he's no longer with us to further his material! A great man and a genius - I must read the story of his life in the French Resistance. See my other reviews on the other courses.

Ça vaut la peine de le faire, mais...., 24 Apr 2007
This language building CD is great as long as you are not under the delusion that you will attain anything other than some very useful expressions. These tools are only effective as an aid to more conventional teaching / speaking environments, they are obviously not sufficient on their own. One problem I have with Michel Thomas is that he only gives you the formal 'Vous' structures, which is fine if you are taking to strangers but less useful when talking in informal contexts - in which case you would have to find out how to conjugate into the second person as it is not given here. I am currently living in France, with my bilingual fiancée, and she has expressed doubt at some of the expressions given which she feels are a little old-fashioned and not idiomatic enough. Therefore you may find in France that although these CDs give you some good structures to start a conversation, you will be baffled by the responses. Thomas touches some of the collocations in speech but nothing will prepare you for the speed of modern spoken French. Absolute immersion is obviously the key but it depends on what level you want to attain. For adding to your repertoire of vocabulary and expressions this is a fantastic tool although I would second a former reviewer's criticism that this doesn't begin to tackle the past tense.

Michel is Marvellous, 05 Jan 2006
I have just read a review from one of your customers who does not rate the Michel Thomas Language Builder as very good at all. I think it is just the opposite and has helped me enormously. I have lived in France now for just over one year, am in my 60s, and all my French friends tell me that I have improved enormously over the past few months - due, I believe, to the Michel Thomas Language Builder which has built on my previous knowledge of the language. To me he is like Alistair Cooke the "Letter from America" genius explaining everything very slowly and succinctly so that it makes good sense to idiots like me !! Thank you.

WARNING!!, 09 Jul 2004
Firstly, let me say I am a huge fan of the Michel Thomas method, and found his 8-hr French course an absolute joy. This Language Builder, however, is not what you might be expecting. The 8-hr course is lacking in two basic things - simple vocabulary (bread, apple, up, down, one, two, etc) and the past tense. It is touched on very swiftly towards the end of the final tape, but only with can/could, want/wanted and must/had to. I was hoping that the Language Builder would continue with more of the same teaching method and fill in these two missing areas. Unfortunately not - it is simply Michel reading out a phrase book, and very quickly at that. Without your finger on the pause button, it is very difficult to follow - which makes it impossible to use doing the housework, or driving the car. Michel's method in the 8-hr course is completely ignored, there is no variety of examples, and you need to listen over and over, doing exactly what you are not supposed to - memorising and learning by rote. I'm not saying it's a bad course - but it's nothing like the 8-hr tapes. If you think it's going to be, be prepared for a disappointment.

worked for me, 11 Jun 2004
The bloke's a genius. This is a fast and furious follow up to the 8 cd course which refreshes and adds to what you've done so far. I then went to france and impressed all my french friends and relatives with my new found language skills!!! Don't hesitate to get this.

Fills out some gaps once you're more fluent, 11 Dec 2007
I commented on a previous review, then realised I hadn't reviewed this myself, despite giving 5 stars to both the Advanced course and 4 to the Foundation course. The reason I forgot was that I DID look over this BEFORE I used the Advanced course, having bought them together, and this being shorter. Wait, in my opinion. This Language Builder is where Thomas goes over many useful and common words and phrases VERY quickly, so there's a lot in the 2 hours. Using the booklet helps a lot, as you can read what you're hearing and visualise it.

A problem I'm seeing in some reviews is that some seem to have missed the Advanced course, which does cover past and future tenses very well. The lack of emphasis on 'tu' against 'vous' is due to the method here, in that Thomas tries to get you to hear similarities in spoken French for simplicity, and points out how the 'tu' form almost always follows the sound of the third person, so can be quickly deduced for speaking. For better grammar/ written French, you DO need more.

I decided to wait until I finished the Advanced course, then gain more from this once I had more confidence. If you're not confident enough, the speed will overwhelm you, and it needs to be paused and revised well, in sensible chunks. NEVER try it all at one sitting!

5 stars again, since I just think Thomas had the best method for efficiently mastering spoken language. Pity he's no longer with us to further his material! A great man and a genius - I must read the story of his life in the French Resistance. See my other reviews on the other courses.

Ça vaut la peine de le faire, mais...., 24 Apr 2007
This language building CD is great as long as you are not under the delusion that you will attain anything other than some very useful expressions. These tools are only effective as an aid to more conventional teaching / speaking environments, they are obviously not sufficient on their own. One problem I have with Michel Thomas is that he only gives you the formal 'Vous' structures, which is fine if you are taking to strangers but less useful when talking in informal contexts - in which case you would have to find out how to conjugate into the second person as it is not given here. I am currently living in France, with my bilingual fiancée, and she has expressed doubt at some of the expressions given which she feels are a little old-fashioned and not idiomatic enough. Therefore you may find in France that although these CDs give you some good structures to start a conversation, you will be baffled by the responses. Thomas touches some of the collocations in speech but nothing will prepare you for the speed of modern spoken French. Absolute immersion is obviously the key but it depends on what level you want to attain. For adding to your repertoire of vocabulary and expressions this is a fantastic tool although I would second a former reviewer's criticism that this doesn't begin to tackle the past tense.

Michel is Marvellous, 05 Jan 2006
I have just read a review from one of your customers who does not rate the Michel Thomas Language Builder as very good at all. I think it is just the opposite and has helped me enormously. I have lived in France now for just over one year, am in my 60s, and all my French friends tell me that I have improved enormously over the past few months - due, I believe, to the Michel Thomas Language Builder which has built on my previous knowledge of the language. To me he is like Alistair Cooke the "Letter from America" genius explaining everything very slowly and succinctly so that it makes good sense to idiots like me !! Thank you.

WARNING!!, 09 Jul 2004
Firstly, let me say I am a huge fan of the Michel Thomas method, and found his 8-hr French course an absolute joy. This Language Builder, however, is not what you might be expecting. The 8-hr course is lacking in two basic things - simple vocabulary (bread, apple, up, down, one, two, etc) and the past tense. It is touched on very swiftly towards the end of the final tape, but only with can/could, want/wanted and must/had to. I was hoping that the Language Builder would continue with more of the same teaching method and fill in these two missing areas. Unfortunately not - it is simply Michel reading out a phrase book, and very quickly at that. Without your finger on the pause button, it is very difficult to follow - which makes it impossible to use doing the housework, or driving the car. Michel's method in the 8-hr course is completely ignored, there is no variety of examples, and you need to listen over and over, doing exactly what you are not supposed to - memorising and learning by rote. I'm not saying it's a bad course - but it's nothing like the 8-hr tapes. If you think it's going to be, be prepared for a disappointment.

worked for me, 11 Jun 2004
The bloke's a genius. This is a fast and furious follow up to the 8 cd course which refreshes and adds to what you've done so far. I then went to france and impressed all my french friends and relatives with my new found language skills!!! Don't hesitate to get this.

Wonderful product, in my opinion way ahead of the many other language courses that I have tried., 27 Aug 2007
This is an excellent follow-on course to the Michel Thomas Spanish Foundation Course (also highly recommended). I bought it a little less than a year after buying and becoming fairly proficient with the content of the Foundation Course. For me, proficiency in the Foundation Course took a lot longer than the 6 weeks or so that the publishers suggested. Perhaps that is because I am very bad at learning a new language - but I don't think so. I think I am about average and that the publishers claims are unrealistic.

My warning to all beginners like me, is - don't be depressed by slow progress - learning a new language is tough, but we'll get there in the end, and let's enjoy ourselves while doing it. And the Michel Thomas Language Builder is a very enjoyable way of making real progress.

The format is a little different to the Foundation course or the Advanced course. There are no students; we are one-on-one with Michel and things move along very briskly, resulting in a lot of very useful and conversationally relevant content being included. You need to listen to this course initially with your finger on the pause button, but in time you will be able to answer all the prompts without pressing the pause button once. That took me about three months, listening for at least one hour per day, 6 days a week. So don't expect instant results. That just does not happen to us normal people.

After the language builder my advice is to go for the quite superb Advanced Course. Not so advanced as to demand any special skills from us, but really important towards allowing us to "think your way through the language" , as the great man, Michel, put it.

Michel Thomas has given us a wonderful and innovative learning method, in my opinion way ahead of the many other language courses that I have tried.



Excellent follow on from the 8 hour course, 23 May 2006
This is the perfect follow up to the introductory course. Without the students present, the pace is faster than the 8-hour course.This means you do have to be ready with the pause button, as there are not the predictable pauses. However, there is a lot of new language, and I think it is taking me longer to digest it than the 8-hour course. I wholly disagree with a previous reviewer who says it goes over the same old ground. There is some revision, but always something else added to it, to build up your language. In short, it does what it says on the tin!

Omit this one!, 10 May 2006
I enjoyed and learnt a lot from the Michel Thomas 8-hour course that preceded this one, and from the Advanced course that followed it, and I'd recommend them both with enthusiasm. (Don't copy Thomas's accent, though, especially the way he stretches out stressed vowels! Every native speaker of Spanish that I've heard makes them short and sharp.)

But avoid this 'Language Builder'. It mostly goes over the same ground as the 8-hour course, adding only a few words and phrases. And it's much more clumsily presented. With no students to slow Thomas down, the speed with which he answers his own questions, often before you realise they are questions, makes it almost impossible to do as he asks and use the pause button to give your own responses first.

Good but fast pace at first, 27 Jul 2005
This language builder is excellent for those who have completed the 8 hour course or who are already rusty intermediate speakers of Spanish. I found the pace a bit frightening to begin with and also it is a bit annoying that Michel doesn't leave much time between what he is asking and his reply. You have to be quick off the mark with the pause button!

Otherwise, I have found this course to be very usefully in consolidating my knowledge of Spanish and practicing more structures. Some reviewers complain abou the course being dry, I don't think this is the case. You shouldn't try and do it all at once. Just do 10 to 15 minute bursts over a couple of days and you will pick it up. Infact if you look at what he is doing here it is very clever. He is repeating vocabulary that you know and then introducing just one or two new words at a time so that you don't feel bombarded with new stuff- I felt a constant sense of accomplishment as I went through the course.

We have waited a year since the release of the first course for this next installment, which one feels could have been done at a more leisurely pace than the two hours it has been allocated. Is there any more to come? and if so let's hope we don't have to wait another year! (Since writing this review an Advanced Course has been published, which will be the last course as Michel died in January 2005)

Also for those who already have the complete course, the style of this 'language builder' is different, there are no students to listen to, it is just Michel Thomas and you 'one to one', which I personally prefer. As Michel spent his formative years in Germany he does have a strong German accent. By all means use this course to gain the knowledge but then listen to authentic Spanish and practice to gain a good accent.

Overall a recommendation to buy if you have the grounding. If not, buy the complete course first and then buy this when you have finished, otherwise it might seem a little intimidating. A real improvement on the first course is that it comes with a little brochure with all the phrases in so you can see how each is written down- I found this very useful.

Michel Thomas Spanish Language Builder, 12 Feb 2004
I was put off after reading a couple of other reviews and then after taking the plunge felt that it did seem to be just a recording of Michel reading through a list of words. But I must say that I was wrong! This is equally as good as the first 8 hour course but runs at a much quicker pace and you need to be ready with the pause button. A lot of the ground covered is from the other course but this is good for consolidating what you have already learned. I paid £16 for this course and learnt more in the time spent with this than £80 for a 15 week, 2hour per week collecge course!

Fills out some gaps once you're more fluent, 11 Dec 2007
I commented on a previous review, then realised I hadn't reviewed this myself, despite giving 5 stars to both the Advanced course and 4 to the Foundation course. The reason I forgot was that I DID look over this BEFORE I used the Advanced course, having bought them together, and this being shorter. Wait, in my opinion. This Language Builder is where Thomas goes over many useful and common words and phrases VERY quickly, so there's a lot in the 2 hours. Using the booklet helps a lot, as you can read what you're hearing and visualise it.

A problem I'm seeing in some reviews is that some seem to have missed the Advanced course, which does cover past and future tenses very well. The lack of emphasis on 'tu' against 'vous' is due to the method here, in that Thomas tries to get you to hear similarities in spoken French for simplicity, and points out how the 'tu' form almost always follows the sound of the third person, so can be quickly deduced for speaking. For better grammar/ written French, you DO need more.

I decided to wait until I finished the Advanced course, then gain more from this once I had more confidence. If you're not confident enough, the speed will overwhelm you, and it needs to be paused and revised well, in sensible chunks. NEVER try it all at one sitting!

5 stars again, since I just think Thomas had the best method for efficiently mastering spoken language. Pity he's no longer with us to further his material! A great man and a genius - I must read the story of his life in the French Resistance. See my other reviews on the other courses.

Ça vaut la peine de le faire, mais...., 24 Apr 2007
This language building CD is great as long as you are not under the delusion that you will attain anything other than some very useful expressions. These tools are only effective as an aid to more conventional teaching / speaking environments, they are obviously not sufficient on their own. One problem I have with Michel Thomas is that he only gives you the formal 'Vous' structures, which is fine if you are taking to strangers but less useful when talking in informal contexts - in which case you would have to find out how to conjugate into the second person as it is not given here. I am currently living in France, with my bilingual fiancée, and she has expressed doubt at some of the expressions given which she feels are a little old-fashioned and not idiomatic enough. Therefore you may find in France that although these CDs give you some good structures to start a conversation, you will be baffled by the responses. Thomas touches some of the collocations in speech but nothing will prepare you for the speed of modern spoken French. Absolute immersion is obviously the key but it depends on what level you want to attain. For adding to your repertoire of vocabulary and expressions this is a fantastic tool although I would second a former reviewer's criticism that this doesn't begin to tackle the past tense.

Michel is Marvellous, 05 Jan 2006
I have just read a review from one of your customers who does not rate the Michel Thomas Language Builder as very good at all. I think it is just the opposite and has helped me enormously. I have lived in France now for just over one year, am in my 60s, and all my French friends tell me that I have improved enormously over the past few months - due, I believe, to the Michel Thomas Language Builder which has built on my previous knowledge of the language. To me he is like Alistair Cooke the "Letter from America" genius explaining everything very slowly and succinctly so that it makes good sense to idiots like me !! Thank you.

WARNING!!, 09 Jul 2004
Firstly, let me say I am a huge fan of the Michel Thomas method, and found his 8-hr French course an absolute joy. This Language Builder, however, is not what you might be expecting. The 8-hr course is lacking in two basic things - simple vocabulary (bread, apple, up, down, one, two, etc) and the past tense. It is touched on very swiftly towards the end of the final tape, but only with can/could, want/wanted and must/had to. I was hoping that the Language Builder would continue with more of the same teaching method and fill in these two missing areas. Unfortunately not - it is simply Michel reading out a phrase book, and very quickly at that. Without your finger on the pause button, it is very difficult to follow - which makes it impossible to use doing the housework, or driving the car. Michel's method in the 8-hr course is completely ignored, there is no variety of examples, and you need to listen over and over, doing exactly what you are not supposed to - memorising and learning by rote. I'm not saying it's a bad course - but it's nothing like the 8-hr tapes. If you think it's going to be, be prepared for a disappointment.

worked for me, 11 Jun 2004
The bloke's a genius. This is a fast and furious follow up to the 8 cd course which refreshes and adds to what you've done so far. I then went to france and impressed all my french friends and relatives with my new found language skills!!! Don't hesitate to get this.

Wonderful product, in my opinion way ahead of the many other language courses that I have tried., 27 Aug 2007
This is an excellent follow-on course to the Michel Thomas Spanish Foundation Course (also highly recommended). I bought it a little less than a year after buying and becoming fairly proficient with the content of the Foundation Course. For me, proficiency in the Foundation Course took a lot longer than the 6 weeks or so that the publishers suggested. Perhaps that is because I am very bad at learning a new language - but I don't think so. I think I am about average and that the publishers claims are unrealistic.

My warning to all beginners like me, is - don't be depressed by slow progress - learning a new language is tough, but we'll get there in the end, and let's enjoy ourselves while doing it. And the Michel Thomas Language Builder is a very enjoyable way of making real progress.

The format is a little different to the Foundation course or the Advanced course. There are no students; we are one-on-one with Michel and things move along very briskly, resulting in a lot of very useful and conversationally relevant content being included. You need to listen to this course initially with your finger on the pause button, but in time you will be able to answer all the prompts without pressing the pause button once. That took me about three months, listening for at least one hour per day, 6 days a week. So don't expect instant results. That just does not happen to us normal people.

After the language builder my advice is to go for the quite superb Advanced Course. Not so advanced as to demand any special skills from us, but really important towards allowing us to "think your way through the language" , as the great man, Michel, put it.

Michel Thomas has given us a wonderful and innovative learning method, in my opinion way ahead of the many other language courses that I have tried.



Excellent follow on from the 8 hour course, 23 May 2006
This is the perfect follow up to the introductory course. Without the students present, the pace is faster than the 8-hour course.This means you do have to be ready with the pause button, as there are not the predictable pauses. However, there is a lot of new language, and I think it is taking me longer to digest it than the 8-hour course. I wholly disagree with a previous reviewer who says it goes over the same old ground. There is some revision, but always something else added to it, to build up your language. In short, it does what it says on the tin!

Omit this one!, 10 May 2006
I enjoyed and learnt a lot from the Michel Thomas 8-hour course that preceded this one, and from the Advanced course that followed it, and I'd recommend them both with enthusiasm. (Don't copy Thomas's accent, though, especially the way he stretches out stressed vowels! Every native speaker of Spanish that I've heard makes them short and sharp.)

But avoid this 'Language Builder'. It mostly goes over the same ground as the 8-hour course, adding only a few words and phrases. And it's much more clumsily presented. With no students to slow Thomas down, the speed with which he answers his own questions, often before you realise they are questions, makes it almost impossible to do as he asks and use the pause button to give your own responses first.

Good but fast pace at first, 27 Jul 2005
This language builder is excellent for those who have completed the 8 hour course or who are already rusty intermediate speakers of Spanish. I found the pace a bit frightening to begin with and also it is a bit annoying that Michel doesn't leave much time between what he is asking and his reply. You have to be quick off the mark with the pause button!

Otherwise, I have found this course to be very usefully in consolidating my knowledge of Spanish and practicing more structures. Some reviewers complain abou the course being dry, I don't think this is the case. You shouldn't try and do it all at once. Just do 10 to 15 minute bursts over a couple of days and you will pick it up. Infact if you look at what he is doing here it is very clever. He is repeating vocabulary that you know and then introducing just one or two new words at a time so that you don't feel bombarded with new stuff- I felt a constant sense of accomplishment as I went through the course.

We have waited a year since the release of the first course for this next installment, which one feels could have been done at a more leisurely pace than the two hours it has been allocated. Is there any more to come? and if so let's hope we don't have to wait another year! (Since writing this review an Advanced Course has been published, which will be the last course as Michel died in January 2005)

Also for those who already have the complete course, the style of this 'language builder' is different, there are no students to listen to, it is just Michel Thomas and you 'one to one', which I personally prefer. As Michel spent his formative years in Germany he does have a strong German accent. By all means use this course to gain the knowledge but then listen to authentic Spanish and practice to gain a good accent.

Overall a recommendation to buy if you have the grounding. If not, buy the complete course first and then buy this when you have finished, otherwise it might seem a little intimidating. A real improvement on the first course is that it comes with a little brochure with all the phrases in so you can see how each is written down- I found this very useful.

Michel Thomas Spanish Language Builder, 12 Feb 2004
I was put off after reading a couple of other reviews and then after taking the plunge felt that it did seem to be just a recording of Michel reading through a list of words. But I must say that I was wrong! This is equally as good as the first 8 hour course but runs at a much quicker pace and you need to be ready with the pause button. A lot of the ground covered is from the other course but this is good for consolidating what you have already learned. I paid £16 for this course and learnt more in the time spent with this than £80 for a 15 week, 2hour per week collecge course!

Moving to more complex conversation, 31 Oct 2008
The advanced course is a direct extension of the Foundation course using exactly the same question-and-answer format which focuses on grammatical building blocks and even uses the same two learners. Hard to say how it would work as stand-alone package. I've studied German off and on for years, and most of the grammar-based teaching was dreadful. This is to me a more natural way of dealing with more complex areas. The first of the four CDs is relatively undemanding and revises some of the first course. Midway through CD2, though the complexity goes up a notch with mind-bending phrases of the variety "You could have come with us". This is the sort of construction you do have to learn in natural conversation, but I suspect it will take quite a few listens before it clicks. After this challenge the course settles down and a whole range of helpful grammar snippets are covered, including quite a bit of sneaked in subjunctive. I'm not sure about Michael's bold claim that you know all the major structures of the language by the end - gender, adjectives, cases, prepositions and so on are not really covered. I believe MT works best as a supplement to traditional courses and doubt it fits with modern 'theory' but it is undoubtedly effective in what it tries to do.

How NOT to teach German , 10 Apr 2008
I would like to write something positive about this curious recording.
Based on old sociolinguistics circa: 1960ties theories of teaching language, long forgotten as ineffective, M.Thomas perseveries.

THE pronunciation of "students" is appalling, and not improved at all;
from CD1 to CD 4 ( for example: the course's favorite word: zurueck, pronounced with Z instead of correct pronunciation: ts) is just an example. Many mistakes are uncorrected by M.Thomas. The bizarre terms he uses "handle" "divingboard" do nothing-at all- to explain simple grammar points (auxiliary verbs, and past participle respectively).
Avoid, (or buy for your German friends have a good laugh).


The grass is greener on the other side., 01 Aug 2007
What immediately struck me about this course following on from the Foundation Course was the sound quality. It's not that it's bad in any way, but my initial reaction was that Michel Thomas and his two guests were sitting some distance back from the mike.
The format of the course remains the same: Michel Thomas provides a series of explanations and an example sentence, followed by prompts when he expects the two learners to ideally answer correctly - if not he'll provide further elaboration. He makes no secret that grammar is the fundamental essence of the audio tracks, and he hints at this again on the fourth (of the five) discs, when he states that "all the open doors into the language...and into reading" have now been opened for learners.
Although shorter than the Foundation Course, the Advanced version manages to cover more ground - primarily because his two present guests are considerably more knowledgeable than his earlier learners. However it's obvious that this is a grammar course when you realize that there are some things which haven't been mentioned before in either Foundation or Advanced courses - especially vocabulary and some verbs. Clearly you'll need access to a dictionary, at the very least for spelling.
Unlike the previous course Michel Thomas is a lot less indulgent with variable usage on the part of his two guests. For example there he tolerated the placement of the word 'bald' (rendered as 'soon' in English); now he's a lot more insistent that such "time elements" usually come earlier within a sentence. For me this got rid of most of my earlier frustration, which was also exacerbated by the distracting sighs of his male student.
Although using non-native speakers definitely makes this course accessible, listening to other courses such as those produced by Pimsler makes it evident that things are quite different in real time. However if you've also had a negative cultural experience with high-school German in this country - in my case in south London - you'll not be bothered, especially if you're seeking rapid acquisition of some basics of the spoken language and more confidence with the written form.

Fills out some gaps once you're more fluent, 11 Dec 2007
I commented on a previous review, then realised I hadn't reviewed this myself, despite giving 5 stars to both the Advanced course and 4 to the Foundation course. The reason I forgot was that I DID look over this BEFORE I used the Advanced course, having bought them together, and this being shorter. Wait, in my opinion. This Language Builder is where Thomas goes over many useful and common words and phrases VERY quickly, so there's a lot in the 2 hours. Using the booklet helps a lot, as you can read what you're hearing and visualise it.

A problem I'm seeing in some reviews is that some seem to have missed the Advanced course, which does cover past and future tenses very well. The lack of emphasis on 'tu' against 'vous' is due to the method here, in that Thomas tries to get you to hear similarities in spoken French for simplicity, and points out how the 'tu' form almost always follows the sound of the third person, so can be quickly deduced for speaking. For better grammar/ written French, you DO need more.

I decided to wait until I finished the Advanced course, then gain more from this once I had more confidence. If you're not confident enough, the speed will overwhelm you, and it needs to be paused and revised well, in sensible chunks. NEVER try it all at one sitting!

5 stars again, since I just think Thomas had the best method for efficiently mastering spoken language. Pity he's no longer with us to further his material! A great man and a genius - I must read the story of his life in the French Resistance. See my other reviews on the other courses.

Ça vaut la peine de le faire, mais...., 24 Apr 2007
This language building CD is great as long as you are not under the delusion that you will attain anything other than some very useful expressions. These tools are only effective as an aid to more conventional teaching / speaking environments, they are obviously not sufficient on their own. One problem I have with Michel Thomas is that he only gives you the formal 'Vous' structures, which is fine if you are taking to strangers but less useful when talking in informal contexts - in which case you would have to find out how to conjugate into the second person as it is not given here. I am currently living in France, with my bilingual fiancée, and she has expressed doubt at some of the expressions given which she feels are a little old-fashioned and not idiomatic enough. Therefore you may find in France that although these CDs give you some good structures to start a conversation, you will be baffled by the responses. Thomas touches some of the collocations in speech but nothing will prepare you for the speed of modern spoken French. Absolute immersion is obviously the key but it depends on what level you want to attain. For adding to your repertoire of vocabulary and expressions this is a fantastic tool although I would second a former reviewer's criticism that this doesn't begin to tackle the past tense.

Michel is Marvellous, 05 Jan 2006
I have just read a review from one of your customers who does not rate the Michel Thomas Language Builder as very good at all. I think it is just the opposite and has helped me enormously. I have lived in France now for just over one year, am in my 60s, and all my French friends tell me that I have improved enormously over the past few months - due, I believe, to the Michel Thomas Language Builder which has built on my previous knowledge of the language. To me he is like Alistair Cooke the "Letter from America" genius explaining everything very slowly and succinctly so that it makes good sense to idiots like me !! Thank you.

WARNING!!, 09 Jul 2004
Firstly, let me say I am a huge fan of the Michel Thomas method, and found his 8-hr French course an absolute joy. This Language Builder, however, is not what you might be expecting. The 8-hr course is lacking in two basic things - simple vocabulary (bread, apple, up, down, one, two, etc) and the past tense. It is touched on very swiftly towards the end of the final tape, but only with can/could, want/wanted and must/had to. I was hoping that the Language Builder would continue with more of the same teaching method and fill in these two missing areas. Unfortunately not - it is simply Michel reading out a phrase book, and very quickly at that. Without your finger on the pause button, it is very difficult to follow - which makes it impossible to use doing the housework, or driving the car. Michel's method in the 8-hr course is completely ignored, there is no variety of examples, and you need to listen over and over, doing exactly what you are not supposed to - memorising and learning by rote. I'm not saying it's a bad course - but it's nothing like the 8-hr tapes. If you think it's going to be, be prepared for a disappointment.

worked for me, 11 Jun 2004
The bloke's a genius. This is a fast and furious follow up to the 8 cd course which refreshes and adds to what you've done so far. I then went to france and impressed all my french friends and relatives with my new found language skills!!! Don't hesitate to get this.

Wonderful product, in my opinion way ahead of the many other language courses that I have tried., 27 Aug 2007
This is an excellent follow-on course to the Michel Thomas Spanish Foundation Course (also highly recommended). I bought it a little less than a year after buying and becoming fairly proficient with the content of the Foundation Course. For me, proficiency in the Foundation Course took a lot longer than the 6 weeks or so that the publishers suggested. Perhaps that is because I am very bad at learning a new language - but I don't think so. I think I am about average and that the publishers claims are unrealistic.

My warning to all beginners like me, is - don't be depressed by slow progress - learning a new language is tough, but we'll get there in the end, and let's enjoy ourselves while doing it. And the Michel Thomas Language Builder is a very enjoyable way of making real progress.

The format is a little different to the Foundation course or the Advanced course. There are no students; we are one-on-one with Michel and things move along very briskly, resulting in a lot of very useful and conversationally relevant content being included. You need to listen to this course initially with your finger on the pause button, but in time you will be able to answer all the prompts without pressing the pause button once. That took me about three months, listening for at least one hour per day, 6 days a week. So don't expect instant results. That just does not happen to us normal people.

After the language builder my advice is to go for the quite superb Advanced Course. Not so advanced as to demand any special skills from us, but really important towards allowing us to "think your way through the language" , as the great man, Michel, put it.

Michel Thomas has given us a wonderful and innovative learning method, in my opinion way ahead of the many other language courses that I have tried.



Excellent follow on from the 8 hour course, 23 May 2006
This is the perfect follow up to the introductory course. Without the students present, the pace is faster than the 8-hour course.This means you do have to be ready with the pause button, as there are not the predictable pauses. However, there is a lot of new language, and I think it is taking me longer to digest it than the 8-hour course. I wholly disagree with a previous reviewer who says it goes over the same old ground. There is some revision, but always something else added to it, to build up your language. In short, it does what it says on the tin!

Omit this one!, 10 May 2006
I enjoyed and learnt a lot from the Michel Thomas 8-hour course that preceded this one, and from the Advanced course that followed it, and I'd recommend them both with enthusiasm. (Don't copy Thomas's accent, though, especially the way he stretches out stressed vowels! Every native speaker of Spanish that I've heard makes them short and sharp.)

But avoid this 'Language Builder'. It mostly goes over the same ground as the 8-hour course, adding only a few words and phrases. And it's much more clumsily presented. With no students to slow Thomas down, the speed with which he answers his own questions, often before you realise they are questions, makes it almost impossible to do as he asks and use the pause button to give your own responses first.

Good but fast pace at first, 27 Jul 2005
This language builder is excellent for those who have completed the 8 hour course or who are already rusty intermediate speakers of Spanish. I found the pace a bit frightening to begin with and also it is a bit annoying that Michel doesn't leave much time between what he is asking and his reply. You have to be quick off the mark with the pause button!

Otherwise, I have found this course to be very usefully in consolidating my knowledge of Spanish and practicing more structures. Some reviewers complain abou the course being dry, I don't think this is the case. You shouldn't try and do it all at once. Just do 10 to 15 minute bursts over a couple of days and you will pick it up. Infact if you look at what he is doing here it is very clever. He is repeating vocabulary that you know and then introducing just one or two new words at a time so that you don't feel bombarded with new stuff- I felt a constant sense of accomplishment as I went through the course.

We have waited a year since the release of the first course for this next installment, which one feels could have been done at a more leisurely pace than the two hours it has been allocated. Is there any more to come? and if so let's hope we don't have to wait another year! (Since writing this review an Advanced Course has been published, which will be the last course as Michel died in January 2005)

Also for those who already have the complete course, the style of this 'language builder' is different, there are no students to listen to, it is just Michel Thomas and you 'one to one', which I personally prefer. As Michel spent his formative years in Germany he does have a strong German accent. By all means use this course to gain the knowledge but then listen to authentic Spanish and practice to gain a good accent.

Overall a recommendation to buy if you have the grounding. If not, buy the complete course first and then buy this when you have finished, otherwise it might seem a little intimidating. A real improvement on the first course is that it comes with a little brochure with all the phrases in so you can see how each is written down- I found this very useful.

Michel Thomas Spanish Language Builder, 12 Feb 2004
I was put off after reading a couple of other reviews and then after taking the plunge felt that it did seem to be just a recording of Michel reading through a list of words. But I must say that I was wrong! This is equally as good as the first 8 hour course but runs at a much quicker pace and you need to be ready with the pause button. A lot of the ground covered is from the other course but this is good for consolidating what you have already learned. I paid £16 for this course and learnt more in the time spent with this than £80 for a 15 week, 2hour per week collecge course!

Moving to more complex conversation, 31 Oct 2008
The advanced course is a direct extension of the Foundation course using exactly the same question-and-answer format which focuses on grammatical building blocks and even uses the same two learners. Hard to say how it would work as stand-alone package. I've studied German off and on for years, and most of the grammar-based teaching was dreadful. This is to me a more natural way of dealing with more complex areas. The first of the four CDs is relatively undemanding and revises some of the first course. Midway through CD2, though the complexity goes up a notch with mind-bending phrases of the variety "You could have come with us". This is the sort of construction you do have to learn in natural conversation, but I suspect it will take quite a few listens before it clicks. After this challenge the course settles down and a whole range of helpful grammar snippets are covered, including quite a bit of sneaked in subjunctive. I'm not sure about Michael's bold claim that you know all the major structures of the language by the end - gender, adjectives, cases, prepositions and so on are not really covered. I believe MT works best as a supplement to traditional courses and doubt it fits with modern 'theory' but it is undoubtedly effective in what it tries to do.

How NOT to teach German , 10 Apr 2008
I would like to write something positive about this curious recording.
Based on old sociolinguistics circa: 1960ties theories of teaching language, long forgotten as ineffective, M.Thomas perseveries.

THE pronunciation of "students" is appalling, and not improved at all;
from CD1 to CD 4 ( for example: the course's favorite word: zurueck, pronounced with Z instead of correct pronunciation: ts) is just an example. Many mistakes are uncorrected by M.Thomas. The bizarre terms he uses "handle" "divingboard" do nothing-at all- to explain simple grammar points (auxiliary verbs, and past participle respectively).
Avoid, (or buy for your German friends have a good laugh).


The grass is greener on the other side., 01 Aug 2007
What immediately struck me about this course following on from the Foundation Course was the sound quality. It's not that it's bad in any way, but my initial reaction was that Michel Thomas and his two guests were sitting some distance back from the mike.
The format of the course remains the same: Michel Thomas provides a series of explanations and an example sentence, followed by prompts when he expects the two learners to ideally answer correctly - if not he'll provide further elaboration. He makes no secret that grammar is the fundamental essence of the audio tracks, and he hints at this again on the fourth (of the five) discs, when he states that "all the open doors into the language...and into reading" have now been opened for learners.
Although shorter than the Foundation Course, the Advanced version manages to cover more ground - primarily because his two present guests are considerably more knowledgeable than his earlier learners. However it's obvious that this is a grammar course when you realize that there are some things which haven't been mentioned before in either Foundation or Advanced courses - especially vocabulary and some verbs. Clearly you'll need access to a dictionary, at the very least for spelling.
Unlike the previous course Michel Thomas is a lot less indulgent with variable usage on the part of his two guests. For example there he tolerated the placement of the word 'bald' (rendered as 'soon' in English); now he's a lot more insistent that such "time elements" usually come earlier within a sentence. For me this got rid of most of my earlier frustration, which was also exacerbated by the distracting sighs of his male student.
Although using non-native speakers definitely makes this course accessible, listening to other courses such as those produced by Pimsler makes it evident that things are quite different in real time. However if you've also had a negative cultural experience with high-school German in this country - in my case in south London - you'll not be bothered, especially if you're seeking rapid acquisition of some basics of the spoken language and more confidence with the written form.


Great fun and it works, 27 Jan 2007
Finally, a language course that doesn't feel like a chore. I've listened to this several times and just ordered the full 8-CD course.
I don't see how you can criticise a 2-hour course for not including certain things, since in two hours it's bound to miss out almost everything. So don't expect to be able to chat to a German at the end of it.
This is about structure, so it would be easy enough to get a vocabulary book and apply what you learn to other words.
But I feel like I've gone from knowing nothing about German to the start of having a real feel for it. And in no time at all, with no pain.
The best thing to do is to stick it on your iPod, remembering not to say things out loud when you're on a train of course. With your iPod in one hand, it's dead easy to pause like MT suggests. Initially you get a beep to tell you when, but soon there's no beep and it's up to you.
I also think it's a good idea on the second or third listening to NOT pause. In real conversation you don't have three minutes to work out what to say so it's a good habit to get into to work out your answer fast. There's a small pause before the 'students' start speaking that should give you enough time.
I think the students are helpful, because you start to hear when they're wrong and work out what they should be saying. Perhaps they are annoying at times, especially when they just can't pronounce 'Ich' properly time after time (I keep expecting Michel Thomas to slap them or something).
Michel Thomas himself is simply entertaining, and sounds like a cross between Peter Ustinov and Victor Borge.
I can't wait to do the full course.

I thought it was great until..., 03 Sep 2005
What I really liked about this course was that it taught the language without any rote learning and seemed to do so very effectively. I had considered myself a linguistic lost cause previously and was delighted to learn anything at all. However, after completing the 8 lessons I discovered that I couldn't really understand anything said at normal speed, nor construct phrases without having to think really hard first. It would be useful if MT taught you the italian for hello, goodbye, telling the time or even any numbers beyond 3 for that matter, even if pleasantries and vocab aren't the focus of his course. A lot of MT cannot really be applied with an italian in italy- when you don't have that throaty voice telling you what to say, you are suddenly at sea. In my opinion he exaggerates how comprehensive his course is.

Also, idiosyncrasies in both his english and his italian pronunciation are a problem. Two examples: In english he pronounces "want" and "won't" the same when asking for translations- this produces "incorrect" answers from any student (including those on the tape) which he does not realise are his fault even though the same thing recurrs repeatedly (why did nobody tell him?). I found the long, slow, incorrect explanations that "want and won't are different in italian even though they are the same in english" irritating. In Italian he pronounces "Io" as one syllable Yo. It only ever sounds like this in very fast speech in italian.

The other problem is that you have to pause the cd to answer out loud (this is the constant method of instruction). This is a problem because it is very often not obvious whether MT has finished asking the question or not- it is very frustrating when the female student butts in straight away without giving you time to pause and think for yourself. With all the pausing required, MT's courses take much longer than the length of their recordings suggest (if you follow his instructions) and I was never sure where would be a good place to stop.
Neither of the students are really the ideal choice. In addition to the female student's bull in a china shop approach- really unhelpful in the "think- answer" method of MT- the male student makes very simple mistakes repeatedly. (That said, his pronunciation is often better than MT when he gets the words right!) It would be useful if the mistakes made by the students were not always quite so obvious- it is a waste of time listening to people giving very obvious wrong answers.

Impressed as I was at the time, however, I decided to continue.
The next stage, his "vocabulary builder" is, strangely, rote learning, parrot fashion. As well as being extremely boring, it is not very useful because the individual phrases are not explained in any detail- you don't know the meaning as you did in the 8 lesson course (the depth of understanding being one of its good points). The advanced course doesn't follow straight on from the 8 lesson course so you can't skip the vocab builder.

This was the point at which I changed to Pimsleur- which, in in my opinion is everything that MT should be! Pimsleur uses a similar method but in a much less haphazard fashion. All of the speakers are native. Pauses are on the cd, you learn to think and answer quickly and confidently in Italian and you also know exactly how long the lesson will last (each one is half and hour). There is a smooth progression from beginning to end. 5 lessons away from the end of Pimsleur (90 lessons in total), I have gone long way beyond what MT teaches (in all areas) and am a lot more comfortable using it. It gives you more vocab (including all the numbers you could ever want in part 1) than MT without ever resorting to rote learning. Like MT, all of the language learning is on the cd's, but Pimsleur does provide lessons in reading- so you know how to pronounce Italian from writing. In addition I found the grammar and word-order much less confusing. I think that completing part IA (15 lessons) of Pimsleur would be more useful than MT- although it does not cover as many verbs or tenses as MT, you would get by more easily in Italy and improvise more effectively with what you had.
I would say MT got me speaking Italian like an Austrian, Pimsleur like an Italian. I regret spending money on MT.

You can't buy comprehensive Pimsleur on Amazon UK and it is very expensive- quite a few public libraries have it though.

Amazing how quick you learn, 20 Aug 2004
I got this two cd course yesterday. I listened to the first cd yesterday and could formulate long sentences and questions on my own by the end of it. The second one expands on this and also brings in some grammatical help as well in formulating tenses and verbs etc. I was amazed that I could say what I wanted to say quickly. If you need to learn a language well and in a hurry I would recommend this course.
I have now ordered the full 8 hour course and can't wait for it.

However, there are some minor drawbacks with the course. Whilst the feeling is that you are in a classroom (there are two other students learning at the same time as you) which helps you to compare your progress and feel confident in your answers, the students do get irritating after a while. I felt like shouting the answer at them. Also, you have to use the pause button all the time. To use the cd properly you have to give yourself as much time as you need to formulate the answer. This can be very helpful and I liked this, but it means you can't listen on the move or whilst your washing up. Finally, there are so many other things I want to be able to say now which are not covered. However, as I know how to formulate verbs, using a dictionary can help with this.

All in all, it is the fastest language I have ever learned. I only wish he spoke Greek as well. (use bbc greek language and people for that one).

Michel Thomas is Brilliant, 28 Apr 2004
The methodology of Michel Thomas as he strives to teach you Italian isincredible. I have purchased the introductory set to his whole course andI am more than satisfied. I would reccomend this with no hesitation ordoubt. :) enjoy!

Language by questions, 23 Apr 2001
Its like being in the ring with a benavolent tiger, this guy knows his stuff. At first the pace seems slow but he introduces a word, then makes a phrase, then a sentence, then makes it negative and so on. Its not static like lots of other by rote courses.

Fills out some gaps once you're more fluent, 11 Dec 2007
I commented on a previous review, then realised I hadn't reviewed this myself, despite giving 5 stars to both the Advanced course and 4 to the Foundation course. The reason I forgot was that I DID look over this BEFORE I used the Advanced course, having bought them together, and this being shorter. Wait, in my opinion. This Language Builder is where Thomas goes over many useful and common words and phrases VERY quickly, so there's a lot in the 2 hours. Using the booklet helps a lot, as you can read what you're hearing and visualise it.

A problem I'm seeing in some reviews is that some seem to have missed the Advanced course, which does cover past and future tenses very well. The lack of emphasis on 'tu' against 'vous' is due to the method here, in that Thomas tries to get you to hear similarities in spoken French for simplicity, and points out how the 'tu' form almost always follows the sound of the third person, so can be quickly deduced for speaking. For better grammar/ written French, you DO need more.

I decided to wait until I finished the Advanced course, then gain more from this once I had more confidence. If you're not confident enough, the speed will overwhelm you, and it needs to be paused and revised well, in sensible chunks. NEVER try it all at one sitting!

5 stars again, since I just think Thomas had the best method for efficiently mastering spoken language. Pity he's no longer with us to further his material! A great man and a genius - I must read the story of his life in the French Resistance. See my other reviews on the other courses.

Ça vaut la peine de le faire, mais...., 24 Apr 2007
This language building CD is great as long as you are not under the delusion that you will attain anything other than some very useful expressions. These tools are only effective as an aid to more conventional teaching / speaking environments, they are obviously not sufficient on their own. One problem I have with Michel Thomas is that he only gives you the formal 'Vous' structures, which is fine if you are taking to strangers but less useful when talking in informal contexts - in which case you would have to find out how to conjugate into the second person as it is not given here. I am currently living in France, with my bilingual fiancée, and she has expressed doubt at some of the expressions given which she feels are a little old-fashioned and not idiomatic enough. Therefore you may find in France that although these CDs give you some good structures to start a conversation, you will be baffled by the responses. Thomas touches some of the collocations in speech but nothing will prepare you for the speed of modern spoken French. Absolute immersion is obviously the key but it depends on what level you want to attain. For adding to your repertoire of vocabulary and expressions this is a fantastic tool although I would second a former reviewer's criticism that this doesn't begin to tackle the past tense.

Michel is Marvellous, 05 Jan 2006
I have just read a review from one of your customers who does not rate the Michel Thomas Language Builder as very good at all. I think it is just the opposite and has helped me enormously. I have lived in France now for just over one year, am in my 60s, and all my French friends tell me that I have improved enormously over the past few months - due, I believe, to the Michel Thomas Language Builder which has built on my previous knowledge of the language. To me he is like Alistair Cooke the "Letter from America" genius explaining everything very slowly and succinctly so that it makes good sense to idiots like me !! Thank you.

WARNING!!, 09 Jul 2004
Firstly, let me say I am a huge fan of the Michel Thomas method, and found his 8-hr French course an absolute joy. This Language Builder, however, is not what you might be expecting. The 8-hr course is lacking in two basic things - simple vocabulary (bread, apple, up, down, one, two, etc) and the past tense. It is touched on very swiftly towards the end of the final tape, but only with can/could, want/wanted and must/had to. I was hoping that the Language Builder would continue with more of the same teaching method and fill in these two missing areas. Unfortunately not - it is simply Michel reading out a phrase book, and very quickly at that. Without your finger on the pause button, it is very difficult to follow - which makes it impossible to use doing the housework, or driving the car. Michel's method in the 8-hr course is completely ignored, there is no variety of examples, and you need to listen over and over, doing exactly what you are not supposed to - memorising and learning by rote. I'm not saying it's a bad course - but it's nothing like the 8-hr tapes. If you think it's going to be, be prepared for a disappointment.

worked for me, 11 Jun 2004
The bloke's a genius. This is a fast and furious follow up to the 8 cd course which refreshes and adds to what you've done so far. I then went to france and impressed all my french friends and relatives with my new found language skills!!! Don't hesitate to get this.

Wonderful product, in my opinion way ahead of the many other language courses that I have tried., 27 Aug 2007
This is an excellent follow-on course to the Michel Thomas Spanish Foundation Course (also highly recommended). I bought it a little less than a year after buying and becoming fairly proficient with the content of the Foundation Course. For me, proficiency in the Foundation Course took a lot longer than the 6 weeks or so that the publishers suggested. Perhaps that is because I am very bad at learning a new language - but I don't think so. I think I am about average and that the publishers claims are unrealistic.

My warning to all beginners like me, is - don't be depressed by slow progress - learning a new language is tough, but we'll get there in the end, and let's enjoy ourselves while doing it. And the Michel Thomas Language Builder is a very enjoyable way of making real progress.

The format is a little different to the Foundation course or the Advanced course. There are no students; we are one-on-one with Michel and things move along very briskly, resulting in a lot of very useful and conversationally relevant content being included. You need to listen to this course initially with your finger on the pause button, but in time you will be able to answer all the prompts without pressing the pause button once. That took me about three months, listening for at least one hour per day, 6 days a week. So don't expect instant results. That just does not happen to us normal people.

After the language builder my advice is to go for the quite superb Advanced Course. Not so advanced as to demand any special skills from us, but really important towards allowing us to "think your way through the language" , as the great man, Michel, put it.

Michel Thomas has given us a wonderful and innovative learning method, in my opinion way ahead of the many other language courses that I have tried.



Excellent follow on from the 8 hour course, 23 May 2006
This is the perfect follow up to the introductory course. Without the students present, the pace is faster than the 8-hour course.This means you do have to be ready with the pause button, as there are not the predictable pauses. However, there is a lot of new language, and I think it is taking me longer to digest it than the 8-hour course. I wholly disagree with a previous reviewer who says it goes over the same old ground. There is some revision, but always something else added to it, to build up your language. In short, it does what it says on the tin!

Omit this one!, 10 May 2006
I enjoyed and learnt a lot from the Michel Thomas 8-hour course that preceded this one, and from the Advanced course that followed it, and I'd recommend them both with enthusiasm. (Don't copy Thomas's accent, though, especially the way he stretches out stressed vowels! Every native speaker of Spanish that I've heard makes them short and sharp.)

But avoid this 'Language Builder'. It mostly goes over the same ground as the 8-hour course, adding only a few words and phrases. And it's much more clumsily presented. With no students to slow Thomas down, the speed with which he answers his own questions, often before you realise they are questions, makes it almost impossible to do as he asks and use the pause button to give your own responses first.

Good but fast pace at first, 27 Jul 2005
This language builder is excellent for those who have completed the 8 hour course or who are already rusty intermediate speakers of Spanish. I found the pace a bit frightening to begin with and also it is a bit annoying that Michel doesn't leave much time between what he is asking and his reply. You have to be quick off the mark with the pause button!

Otherwise, I have found this course to be very usefully in consolidating my knowledge of Spanish and practicing more structures. Some reviewers complain abou the course being dry, I don't think this is the case. You shouldn't try and do it all at once. Just do 10 to 15 minute bursts over a couple of days and you will pick it up. Infact if you look at what he is doing here it is very clever. He is repeating vocabulary that you know and then introducing just one or two new words at a time so that you don't feel bombarded with new stuff- I felt a constant sense of accomplishment as I went through the course.

We have waited a year since the release of the first course for this next installment, which one feels could have been done at a more leisurely pace than the two hours it has been allocated. Is there any more to come? and if so let's hope we don't have to wait another year! (Since writing this review an Advanced Course has been published, which will be the last course as Michel died in January 2005)

Also for those who already have the complete course, the style of this 'language builder' is different, there are no students to listen to, it is just Michel Thomas and you 'one to one', which I personally prefer. As Michel spent his formative years in Germany he does have a strong German accent. By all means use this course to gain the knowledge but then listen to authentic Spanish and practice to gain a good accent.

Overall a recommendation to buy if you have the grounding. If not, buy the complete course first and then buy this when you have finished, otherwise it might seem a little intimidating. A real improvement on the first course is that it comes with a little brochure with all the phrases in so you can see how each is written down- I found this very useful.

Michel Thomas Spanish Language Builder, 12 Feb 2004
I was put off after reading a couple of other reviews and then after taking the plunge felt that it did seem to be just a recording of Michel reading through a list of words. But I must say that I was wrong! This is equally as good as the first 8 hour course but runs at a much quicker pace and you need to be ready with the pause button. A lot of the ground covered is from the other course but this is good for consolidating what you have already learned. I paid £16 for this course and learnt more in the time spent with this than £80 for a 15 week, 2hour per week collecge course!

Moving to more complex conversation, 31 Oct 2008
The advanced course is a direct extension of the Foundation course using exactly the same question-and-answer format which focuses on grammatical building blocks and even uses the same two learners. Hard to say how it would work as stand-alone package. I've studied German off and on for years, and most of the grammar-based teaching was dreadful. This is to me a more natural way of dealing with more complex areas. The first of the four CDs is relatively undemanding and revises some of the first course. Midway through CD2, though the complexity goes up a notch with mind-bending phrases of the variety "You could have come with us". This is the sort of construction you do have to learn in natural conversation, but I suspect it will take quite a few listens before it clicks. After this challenge the course settles down and a whole range of helpful grammar snippets are covered, including quite a bit of sneaked in subjunctive. I'm not sure about Michael's bold claim that you know all the major structures of the language by the end - gender, adjectives, cases, prepositions and so on are not really covered. I believe MT works best as a supplement to traditional courses and doubt it fits with modern 'theory' but it is undoubtedly effective in what it tries to do.

How NOT to teach German , 10 Apr 2008
I would like to write something positive about this curious recording.
Based on old sociolinguistics circa: 1960ties theories of teaching language, long forgotten as ineffective, M.Thomas perseveries.

THE pronunciation of "students" is appalling, and not improved at all;
from CD1 to CD 4 ( for example: the course's favorite word: zurueck, pronounced with Z instead of correct pronunciation: ts) is just an example. Many mistakes are uncorrected by M.Thomas. The bizarre terms he uses "handle" "divingboard" do nothing-at all- to explain simple grammar points (auxiliary verbs, and past participle respectively).
Avoid, (or buy for your German friends have a good laugh).


The grass is greener on the other side., 01 Aug 2007
What immediately struck me about this course following on from the Foundation Course was the sound quality. It's not that it's bad in any way, but my initial reaction was that Michel Thomas and his two guests were sitting some distance back from the mike.
The format of the course remains the same: Michel Thomas provides a series of explanations and an example sentence, followed by prompts when he expects the two learners to ideally answer correctly - if not he'll provide further elaboration. He makes no secret that grammar is the fundamental essence of the audio tracks, and he hints at this again on the fourth (of the five) discs, when he states that "all the open doors into the language...and into reading" have now been opened for learners.
Although shorter than the Foundation Course, the Advanced version manages to cover more ground - primarily because his two present guests are considerably more knowledgeable than his earlier learners. However it's obvious that this is a grammar course when you realize that there are some things which haven't been mentioned before in either Foundation or Advanced courses - especially vocabulary and some verbs. Clearly you'll need access to a dictionary, at the very least for spelling.
Unlike the previous course Michel Thomas is a lot less indulgent with variable usage on the part of his two guests. For example there he tolerated the placement of the word 'bald' (rendered as 'soon' in English); now he's a lot more insistent that such "time elements" usually come earlier within a sentence. For me this got rid of most of my earlier frustration, which was also exacerbated by the distracting sighs of his male student.
Although using non-native speakers definitely makes this course accessible, listening to other courses such as those produced by Pimsler makes it evident that things are quite different in real time. However if you've also had a negative cultural experience with high-school German in this country - in my case in south London - you'll not be bothered, especially if you're seeking rapid acquisition of some basics of the spoken language and more confidence with the written form.


Great fun and it works, 27 Jan 2007
Finally, a language course that doesn't feel like a chore. I've listened to this several times and just ordered the full 8-CD course.
I don't see how you can criticise a 2-hour course for not including certain things, since in two hours it's bound to miss out almost everything. So don't expect to be able to chat to a German at the end of it.
This is about structure, so it would be easy enough to get a vocabulary book and apply what you learn to other words.
But I feel like I've gone from knowing nothing about German to the start of having a real feel for it. And in no time at all, with no pain.
The best thing to do is to stick it on your iPod, remembering not to say things out loud when you're on a train of course. With your iPod in one hand, it's dead easy to pause like MT suggests. Initially you get a beep to tell you when, but soon there's no beep and it's up to you.
I also think it's a good idea on the second or third listening to NOT pause. In real conversation you don't have three minutes to work out what to say so it's a good habit to get into to work out your answer fast. There's a small pause before the 'students' start speaking that should give you enough time.
I think the students are helpful, because you start to hear when they're wrong and work out what they should be saying. Perhaps they are annoying at times, especially when they just can't pronounce 'Ich' properly time after time (I keep expecting Michel Thomas to slap them or something).
Michel Thomas himself is simply entertaining, and sounds like a cross between Peter Ustinov and Victor Borge.
I can't wait to do the full course.

I thought it was great until..., 03 Sep 2005
What I really liked about this course was that it taught the language without any rote learning and seemed to do so very effectively. I had considered myself a linguistic lost cause previously and was delighted to learn anything at all. However, after completing the 8 lessons I discovered that I couldn't really understand anything said at normal speed, nor construct phrases without having to think really hard first. It would be useful if MT taught you the italian for hello, goodbye, telling the time or even any numbers beyond 3 for that matter, even if pleasantries and vocab aren't the focus of his course. A lot of MT cannot really be applied with an italian in italy- when you don't have that throaty voice telling you what to say, you are suddenly at sea. In my opinion he exaggerates how comprehensive his course is.

Also, idiosyncrasies in both his english and his italian pronunciation are a problem. Two examples: In english he pronounces "want" and "won't" the same when asking for translations- this produces "incorrect" answers from any student (including those on the tape) which he does not realise are his fault even though the same thing recurrs repeatedly (why did nobody tell him?). I found the long, slow, incorrect explanations that "want and won't are different in italian even though they are the same in english" irritating. In Italian he pronounces "Io" as one syllable Yo. It only ever sounds like this in very fast speech in italian.

The other problem is that you have to pause the cd to answer out loud (this is the constant method of instruction). This is a problem because it is very often not obvious whether MT has finished asking the question or not- it is very frustrating when the female student butts in straight away without giving you time to pause and think for yourself. With all the pausing required, MT's courses take much longer than the length of their recordings suggest (if you follow his instructions) and I was never sure where would be a good place to stop.
Neither of the students are really the ideal choice. In addition to the female student's bull in a china shop approach- really unhelpful in the "think- answer" method of MT- the male student makes very simple mistakes repeatedly. (That said, his pronunciation is often better than MT when he gets the words right!) It would be useful if the mistakes made by the students were not always quite so obvious- it is a waste of time listening to people giving very obvious wrong answers.

Impressed as I was at the time, however, I decided to continue.
The next stage, his "vocabulary builder" is, strangely, rote learning, parrot fashion. As well as being extremely boring, it is not very useful because the individual phrases are not explained in any detail- you don't know the meaning as you did in the 8 lesson course (the depth of understanding being one of its good points). The advanced course doesn't follow straight on from the 8 lesson course so you can't skip the vocab builder.

This was the point at which I changed to Pimsleur- which, in in my opinion is everything that MT should be! Pimsleur uses a similar method but in a much less haphazard fashion. All of the speakers are native. Pauses are on the cd, you learn to think and answer quickly and confidently in Italian and you also know exactly how long the lesson will last (each one is half and hour). There is a smooth progression from beginning to end. 5 lessons away from the end of Pimsleur (90 lessons in total), I have gone long way beyond what MT teaches (in all areas) and am a lot more comfortable using it. It gives you more vocab (including all the numbers you could ever want in part 1) than MT without ever resorting to rote learning. Like MT, all of the language learning is on the cd's, but Pimsleur does provide lessons in reading- so you know how to pronounce Italian from writing. In addition I found the grammar and word-order much less confusing. I think that completing part IA (15 lessons) of Pimsleur would be more useful than MT- although it does not cover as many verbs or tenses as MT, you would get by more easily in Italy and improvise more effectively with what you had.
I would say MT got me speaking Italian like an Austrian, Pimsleur like an Italian. I regret spending money on MT.

You can't buy comprehensive Pimsleur on Amazon UK and it is very expensive- quite a few public libraries have it though.

Amazing how quick you learn, 20 Aug 2004
I got this two cd course yesterday. I listened to the first cd yesterday and could formulate long sentences and questions on my own by the end of it. The second one expands on this and also brings in some grammatical help as well in formulating tenses and verbs etc. I was amazed that I could say what I wanted to say quickly. If you need to learn a language well and in a hurry I would recommend this course.
I have now ordered the full 8 hour course and can't wait for it.

However, there are some minor drawbacks with the course. Whilst the feeling is that you are in a classroom (there are two other students learning at the same time as you) which helps you to compare your progress and feel confident in your answers, the students do get irritating after a while. I felt like shouting the answer at them. Also, you have to use the pause button all the time. To use the cd properly you have to give yourself as much time as you need to formulate the answer. This can be very helpful and I liked this, but it means you can't listen on the move or whilst your washing up. Finally, there are so many other things I want to be able to say now which are not covered. However, as I know how to formulate verbs, using a dictionary can help with this.

All in all, it is the fastest language I have ever learned. I only wish he spoke Greek as well. (use bbc greek language and people for that one).

Michel Thomas is Brilliant, 28 Apr 2004
The methodology of Michel Thomas as he strives to teach you Italian isincredible. I have purchased the introductory set to his whole course andI am more than satisfied. I would reccomend this with no hesitation ordoubt. :) enjoy!

Language by questions, 23 Apr 2001
Its like being in the ring with a benavolent tiger, this guy knows his stuff. At first the pace seems slow but he introduces a word, then makes a phrase, then a sentence, then makes it negative and so on. Its not static like lots of other by rote courses.

Excellent follow on to the 8 hr course , 14 Aug 2006
Michel continues on from the first course and it's pretty seamless -no sudden jump. He moves onto the subjunctive which is advanced stuff and towards the end he counts up the tenses he has covered and it is around 15. The only reason I don't give it five stars is that it doesn't do much grammar - you would never know that there was life beyond der (ie den,des,dem). I've been using Lisa Kahlen's German Grammar Made Easy for that. I'd love to know how this course compares with Linguaphone Advanced German and Hugo's Advanced German.

Advanced German made easy, 07 Oct 2004
As with the original 8-CD set, this new, 4-CD, 5-hour course is an astonishingly rapid and easy route to confidence in German. As before, there is no textbook or writing, just listening and repeating. Superficially, Michel seems more schoolmasterly and demanding than the teachers I remember from my schooldays but his method is so imaginative and fluid that I was able to easily and confidently construct sentences with several verbs in all sorts of tenses without ever having to realise what "imperfect subjunctive" and "future indicative" mean. German can be a challenging language to learn, but this course gives an instinctive, natural grasp of language without the formality of grammatical rules but with all the linguistic skill you will need. As with the original course, you will get a natural grasp of the structures of German, to a level beyond two years of evening classes. Of course, there is much more to learn in terms of vocabulary and verbs not covered in the course, but once you have the instinctive grasp of structure that Michel gives, it's easy to add new words onto the framework you have learnt. I have several German books and CDs, but the Michel Thomas courses are outstanding in giving speedy confidence whilst feeling natural and easy. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend his courses to anyone learning German.

Fills out some gaps once you're more fluent, 11 Dec 2007
I commented on a previous review, then realised I hadn't reviewed this myself, despite giving 5 stars to both the Advanced course and 4 to the Foundation course. The reason I forgot was that I DID look over this BEFORE I used the Advanced course, having bought them together, and this being shorter. Wait, in my opinion. This Language Builder is where Thomas goes over many useful and common words and phrases VERY quickly, so there's a lot in the 2 hours. Using the booklet helps a lot, as you can read what you're hearing and visualise it.

A problem I'm seeing in some reviews is that some seem to have missed the Advanced course, which does cover past and future tenses very well. The lack of emphasis on 'tu' against 'vous' is due to the method here, in that Thomas tries to get you to hear similarities in spoken French for simplicity, and points out how the 'tu' form almost always follows the sound of the third person, so can be quickly deduced for speaking. For better grammar/ written French, you DO need more.

I decided to wait until I finished the Advanced course, then gain more from this once I had more confidence. If you're not confident enough, the speed will overwhelm you, and it needs to be paused and revised well, in sensible chunks. NEVER try it all at one sitting!

5 stars again, since I just think Thomas had the best method for efficiently mastering spoken language. Pity he's no longer with us to further his material! A great man and a genius - I must read the story of his life in the French Resistance. See my other reviews on the other courses.

Ça vaut la peine de le faire, mais...., 24 Apr 2007
This language building CD is great as long as you are not under the delusion that you will attain anything other than some very useful expressions. These tools are only effective as an aid to more conventional teaching / speaking environments, they are obviously not sufficient on their own. One problem I have with Michel Thomas is that he only gives you the formal 'Vous' structures, which is fine if you are taking to strangers but less useful when talking in informal contexts - in which case you would have to find out how to conjugate into the second person as it is not given here. I am currently living in France, with my bilingual fiancée, and she has expressed doubt at some of the expressions given which she feels are a little old-fashioned and not idiomatic enough. Therefore you may find in France that although these CDs give you some good structures to start a conversation, you will be baffled by the responses. Thomas touches some of the collocations in speech but nothing will prepare you for the speed of modern spoken French. Absolute immersion is obviously the key but it depends on what level you want to attain. For adding to your repertoire of vocabulary and expressions this is a fantastic tool although I would second a former reviewer's criticism that this doesn't begin to tackle the past tense.

Michel is Marvellous, 05 Jan 2006
I have just read a review from one of your customers who does not rate the Michel Thomas Language Builder as very good at all. I think it is just the opposite and has helped me enormously. I have lived in France now for just over one year, am in my 60s, and all my French friends tell me that I have improved enormously over the past few months - due, I believe, to the Michel Thomas Language Builder which has built on my previous knowledge of the language. To me he is like Alistair Cooke the "Letter from America" genius explaining everything very slowly and succinctly so that it makes good sense to idiots like me !! Thank you.

WARNING!!, 09 Jul 2004
Firstly, let me say I am a huge fan of the Michel Thomas method, and found his 8-hr French course an absolute joy. This Language Builder, however, is not what you might be expecting. The 8-hr course is lacking in two basic things - simple vocabulary (bread, apple, up, down, one, two, etc) and the past tense. It is touched on very swiftly towards the end of the final tape, but only with can/could, want/wanted and must/had to. I was hoping that the Language Builder would continue with more of the same teaching method and fill in these two missing areas. Unfortunately not - it is simply Michel reading out a phrase book, and very quickly at that. Without your finger on the pause button, it is very difficult to follow - which makes it impossible to use doing the housework, or driving the car. Michel's method in the 8-hr course is completely ignored, there is no variety of examples, and you need to listen over and over, doing exactly what you are not supposed to - memorising and learning by rote. I'm not saying it's a bad course - but it's nothing like the 8-hr tapes. If you think it's going to be, be prepared for a disappointment.

worked for me, 11 Jun 2004
The bloke's a genius. This is a fast and furious follow up to the 8 cd course which refreshes and adds to what you've done so far. I then went to france and impressed all my french friends and relatives with my new found language skills!!! Don't hesitate to get this.

Wonderful product, in my opinion way ahead of the many other language courses that I have tried., 27 Aug 2007
This is an excellent follow-on course to the Michel Thomas Spanish Foundation Course (also highly recommended). I bought it a little less than a year after buying and becoming fairly proficient with the content of the Foundation Course. For me, proficiency in the Foundation Course took a lot longer than the 6 weeks or so that the publishers suggested. Perhaps that is because I am very bad at learning a new language - but I don't think so. I think I am about average and that the publishers claims are unrealistic.

My warning to all beginners like me, is - don't be depressed by slow progress - learning a new language is tough, but we'll get there in the end, and let's enjoy ourselves while doing it. And the Michel Thomas Language Builder is a very enjoyable way of making real progress.

The format is a little different to the Foundation course or the Advanced course. There are no students; we are one-on-one with Michel and things move along very briskly, resulting in a lot of very useful and conversationally relevant content being included. You need to listen to this course initially with your finger on the pause button, but in time you will be able to answer all the prompts without pressing the pause button once. That took me about three months, listening for at least one hour per day, 6 days a week. So don't expect instant results. That just does not happen to us normal people.

After the language builder my advice is to go for the quite superb Advanced Course. Not so advanced as to demand any special skills from us, but really important towards allowing us to "think your way through the language" , as the great man, Michel, put it.

Michel Thomas has given us a wonderful and innovative learning method, in my opinion way ahead of the many other language courses that I have tried.



Excellent follow on from the 8 hour course, 23 May 2006
This is the perfect follow up to the introductory course. Without the students present, the pace is faster than the 8-hour course.This means you do have to be ready with the pause button, as there are not the predictable pauses. However, there is a lot of new language, and I think it is taking me longer to digest it than the 8-hour course. I wholly disagree with a previous reviewer who says it goes over the same old ground. There is some revision, but always something else added to it, to build up your language. In short, it does what it says on the tin!

Omit this one!, 10 May 2006
I enjoyed and learnt a lot from the Michel Thomas 8-hour course that preceded this one, and from the Advanced course that followed it, and I'd recommend them both with enthusiasm. (Don't copy Thomas's accent, though, especially the way he stretches out stressed vowels! Every native speaker of Spanish that I've heard makes them short and sharp.)

But avoid this 'Language Builder'. It mostly goes over the same ground as the 8-hour course, adding only a few words and phrases. And it's much more clumsily presented. With no students to slow Thomas down, the speed with which he answers his own questions, often before you realise they are questions, makes it almost impossible to do as he asks and use the pause button to give your own responses first.

Good but fast pace at first, 27 Jul 2005
This language builder is excellent for those who have completed the 8 hour course or who are already rusty intermediate speakers of Spanish. I found the pace a bit frightening to begin with and also it is a bit annoying that Michel doesn't leave much time between what he is asking and his reply. You have to be quick off the mark with the pause button!

Otherwise, I have found this course to be very usefully in consolidating my knowledge of Spanish and practicing more structures. Some reviewers complain abou the course being dry, I don't think this is the case. You shouldn't try and do it all at once. Just do 10 to 15 minute bursts over a couple of days and you will pick it up. Infact if you look at what he is doing here it is very clever. He is repeating vocabulary that you know and then introducing just one or two new words at a time so that you don't feel bombarded with new stuff- I felt a constant sense of accomplishment as I went through the course.

We have waited a year since the release of the first course for this next installment, which one feels could have been done at a more leisurely pace than the two hours it has been allocated. Is there any more to come? and if so let's hope we don't have to wait another year! (Since writing this review an Advanced Course has been published, which will be the last course as Michel died in January 2005)

Also for those who already have the complete course, the style of this 'language builder' is different, there are no students to listen to, it is just Michel Thomas and you 'one to one', which I personally prefer. As Michel spent his formative years in Germany he does have a strong German accent. By all means use this course to gain the knowledge but then listen to authentic Spanish and practice to gain a good accent.

Overall a recommendation to buy if you have the grounding. If not, buy the complete course first and then buy this when you have finished, otherwise it might seem a little intimidating. A real improvement on the first course is that it comes with a little brochure with all the phrases in so you can see how each is written down- I found this very useful.

Michel Thomas Spanish Language Builder, 12 Feb 2004
I was put off after reading a couple of other reviews and then after taking the plunge felt that it did seem to be just a recording of Michel reading through a list of words. But I must say that I was wrong! This is equally as good as the first 8 hour course but runs at a much quicker pace and you need to be ready with the pause button. A lot of the ground covered is from the other course but this is good for consolidating what you have already learned. I paid £16 for this course and learnt more in the time spent with this than £80 for a 15 week, 2hour per week collecge course!

Moving to more complex conversation, 31 Oct 2008
The advanced course is a direct extension of the Foundation course using exactly the same question-and-answer format which focuses on grammatical building blocks and even uses the same two learners. Hard to say how it would work as stand-alone package. I've studied German off and on for years, and most of the grammar-based teaching was dreadful. This is to me a more natural way of dealing with more complex areas. The first of the four CDs is relatively undemanding and revises some of the first course. Midway through CD2, though the complexity goes up a notch with mind-bending phrases of the variety "You could have come with us". This is the sort of construction you do have to learn in natural conversation, but I suspect it will take quite a few listens before it clicks. After this challenge the course settles down and a whole range of helpful grammar snippets are covered, including quite a bit of sneaked in subjunctive. I'm not sure about Michael's bold claim that you know all the major structures of the language by the end - gender, adjectives, cases, prepositions and so on are not really covered. I believe MT works best as a supplement to traditional courses and doubt it fits with modern 'theory' but it is undoubtedly effective in what it tries to do.

How NOT to teach German , 10 Apr 2008
I would like to write something positive about this curious recording.
Based on old sociolinguistics circa: 1960ties theories of teaching language, long forgotten as ineffective, M.Thomas perseveries.

THE pronunciation of "students" is appalling, and not improved at all;
from CD1 to CD 4 ( for example: the course's favorite word: zurueck, pronounced with Z instead of correct pronunciation: ts) is just an example. Many mistakes are uncorrected by M.Thomas. The bizarre terms he uses "handle" "divingboard" do nothing-at all- to explain simple grammar points (auxiliary verbs, and past participle respectively).
Avoid, (or buy for your German friends have a good laugh).


The grass is greener on the other side., 01 Aug 2007
What immediately struck me about this course following on from the Foundation Course was the sound quality. It's not that it's bad in any way, but my initial reaction was that Michel Thomas and his two guests were sitting some distance back from the mike.
The format of the course remains the same: Michel Thomas provides a series of explanations and an example sentence, followed by prompts when he expects the two learners to ideally answer correctly - if not he'll provide further elaboration. He makes no secret that grammar is the fundamental essence of the audio tracks, and he hints at this again on the fourth (of the five) discs, when he states that "all the open doors into the language...and into reading" have now been opened for learners.
Although shorter than the Foundation Course, the Advanced version manages to cover more ground - primarily because his two present guests are considerably more knowledgeable than his earlier learners. However it's obvious that this is a grammar course when you realize that there are some things which haven't been mentioned before in either Foundation or Advanced courses - especially vocabulary and some verbs. Clearly you'll need access to a dictionary, at the very least for spelling.
Unlike the previous course Michel Thomas is a lot less indulgent with variable usage on the part of his two guests. For example there he tolerated the placement of the word 'bald' (rendered as 'soon' in English); now he's a lot more insistent that such "time elements" usually come earlier within a sentence. For me this got rid of most of my earlier frustration, which was also exacerbated by the distracting sighs of his male student.
Although using non-native speakers definitely makes this course accessible, listening to other courses such as those produced by Pimsler makes it evident that things are quite different in real time. However if you've also had a negative cultural experience with high-school German in this country - in my case in south London - you'll not be bothered, especially if you're seeking rapid acquisition of some basics of the spoken language and more confidence with the written form.


Great fun and it works, 27 Jan 2007
Finally, a language course that doesn't feel like a chore. I've listened to this several times and just ordered the full 8-CD course.
I don't see how you can criticise a 2-hour course for not including certain things, since in two hours it's bound to miss out almost everything. So don't expect to be able to chat to a German at the end of it.
This is about structure, so it would be easy enough to get a vocabulary book and apply what you learn to other words.
But I feel like I've gone from knowing nothing about German to the start of having a real feel for it. And in no time at all, with no pain.
The best thing to do is to stick it on your iPod, remembering not to say things out loud when you're on a tr