Looking for a convenient language course that fits your lifestyle and gets you speaking a new language in a matter of weeks, not years? The original no-books, no-homework, no-memorizing method is in tune with the way the brain prefers to receive, store and retrieve information. You'll stick with it because you'll love it.

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

How do the courses work?
'All stress inhibits true and effective learning' - Michel Thomas

During the course, you will join Michel Thomas Method teachers Helen Gilhooly and Niamh Kelly and two students in a live lesson, learning from both their successes and their mistakes to keep you motivated and involved throughout the course. You, as the learner, become the third student and participate actively in the class. Within the very first hour you will be able to construct simple phrases by listening and thinking out answers for yourself without the pressure of writing or stress of having to memorize. You will learn at your own pace, pausing and repeating where necessary, and complete the course in about 20-30 hours. By the end of the course, you will understand and have the confidence to speak basic Japanese.

The Michel Thomas Method will help you kick-start, continue, and flourish in your Japanese language learning journey. It is not intended to get you perfectly fluent, but it will get you speaking and using Japanese, with proper pronunciation, faster than most any other method. It is designed to give you a strong foundation and good working knowledge of a language from which you can expand and later 'add decoration' to. It is a rapid method for learning, but still requires effort and concentration on the part of the learner.

This new edition includes an audio review course to let you quickly revise and consolidate your learning once you've completed the full course.

Foundation Japanese includes 8 audio Course CDs and 2 audio Review CDs to continue and consolidate your knowledge. The booklet is available to download from www.michelthomas.com.

Note that the course content is the same as the previously entitled Total Japanese course, but the CD-ROM has been replaced with audio review CDs.

Intermediate Japanese follows on from the Foundation course.

About the Author: Helen Gilhooly worked for 25 years as a Japanese teacher and languages director in secondary education, and for 10 years as a teacher trainer at Nottingham University. She continues to write Japanese language teaching materials and to audio-edit Michel Thomas language courses.

Niamh Kelly is an Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics in Dublin City University, where she has taught Japanese language and translation for over 20 years. She has lived and worked in Japan.
Michel Thomas (1914-2005) had an amazing life. Born in Poland, he spent his early years in Germany and then in France, where he studied psychology at the Sorbonne in Paris. When war broke out, he fought with the Resistance and suffered imprisonment in labour camps. At the end of the war he joined the US liberation army and later settled in the US where he established his world-famous language school. Languages, being his strength and passion became the focus of the next 50 years of his life that he spent developing a method that he hoped would change the way we teach and learn - so that everyone could succeed. He developed this method 'that works with the brain'. After creating several courses of his own, he passed on his method so that other teachers might use it too.