My message: 'Anybody can learn'

Let's adopt the teaching methods of legendary language guru Michel Thomas, a new book pleads. Anthea Lipsett finds out why


Michel Thomas: 'I didn't devise my system to teach languages quickly - I did it to change the world'.
There's a belief that languages either come naturally to a person, or they don't. But to the late Michel Thomas, the "world's greatest language master", there was no such thing as a bad student, only a bad teacher.
It's a view that grates with prevailing educational opinion. These days, children's inability to learn is often blamed on a variety of learning disabilities. If teachers are brought into the equation, it is usually by ministers either claiming the workforce is the best trained it has ever been, or declaring that inadequate teachers must be fired.

The Guardian, Tuesday September 2 2008