¿Tiene una reservación para mi para esta noche?

So a few months ago I remember the Guardian talking about Michel Thomas, a famous linguist and teacher of languages with an unorthodox - but reputably effective - method that abhors homework and note-taking and other rote learning in favour of an enjoyable, conversational style. At the time, I thought "Well, that sure is interesting, would be interesting to see that in action" for a bit before forgetting about it. That is to say, forgetting I knew it rather than actually forgetting it. Because in yesterday's Guardian, as part of the continuing drive of the UK's broadsheet newspapers to keep circulation up, there was an audio CD of part one of Michel's introductory Spanish course. And I went "oh yeah, wasn't he that one guy? Yeah, I think he was. Maybe I should listen to it."

"Forgetting I knew it rather than actually forgetting it" is of course directly related to language learning. I got A* in Spanish GCSE but rapidly forgot most of it soon afterwards because I wasn't using it. But it was still there in my brain. I know this because I did an introductory Spanish course while I was at Cambridge and it all came flooding back - sort-of automatically making me one of the class' best pupils. Of course, after the class ended, I forgot it all again because I wasn't using it.

But yeah, back to the CD, which I've just listened to. The basic format is Michel talking to two of his students, with him explaining little bits of vocabulary and then asking them to construct sentences with it - simple at first, and then building to more and more complicated stuff. The idea is that before the students say it, you - as the "third student" - pause the CD, say what you think it is, then play and listen to what the students say. The students make mistakes, which Michel corrects to reinforce how to say things correctly.

And it develops very rapidly. The first CD focuses on three main things: the large number of words that can be turned from English to Spanish with just a few pronunciation tweaks (like... well... pronunciación); a bunch of verbs, mostly either present tense "I" or "you", or the infinitive form; and all those useful conjunctions like "for me" and "like this" and but and the negation and "I'm sorry" and all that lot.

Now that's all done in a little over an hour. We spent most of our first hour of Spanish in school saying what our names were. Of course, it helps that the course is aimed at adults rather than teenagers, and people who want to learn it by definition (then again, given that Spanish was optional, we did all want to learn it, but yeah). It's also a very small class - you and these two "virtual" students. How much do I remember? Urg... well, "where do you want to eat tonight?" is "¿Donde quiere comer esta noche?". "You know you want it" ends up as "sabe lo quiere", for those of you who want to sound sultry in Spanish. Basically what you end up with is a "sentence generator" inside your own head, pulling together all the little fragments you've learnt into a sentence.

Does it help that I've learnt Spanish before? Probably, yes: the fact that each new word is jogging my memory rather than being an entirely new fact allows me to focus on the sentence stringing more than remembering each new word. But it's pretty good, and I even asked Dad to go out and get today's Observer so I could have the second CD: haven't listened to it yet, but it should be fun.

Incidentally, the title for this blog piece means "Do you have a reservation for me for tonight?" - pretty much the last phrase learnt on the first CD.