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Michel Thomas is head of the Michel
Thomas Language Centers and has been teaching languages for over fifty
years, primarily in New York, Beverly Hills and London. He is a graduate
of the Department of Philology at the University of Bordeaux, France,
and has studied psychology at the Sorbonne (Paris) and at the University
of Vienna. However, it is his remarkable life experiences that have
fueled his passion for teaching languages*.
Michel spent most of his childhood in Germany and France. With the
rise of Hitler, he began his years of escape and resistance. He spent
two brutal years in Vichy France concentration and slave labor camps,
constantly threatened by deportation to German death camps. He escaped
deportation and fought for two years in the French Resistance Secret
Army.
Michel's wartime experiences, particularly his torture by the French
Milice (Gestapo) when he discovered the ability to block out pain,
made Michel Thomas aware of the untapped potential of the human mind.
However, it was a single sentence -- a negative statement -- made
by a psychology professor at the Sorbonne, which influenced Michel
and changed his life. This statement -- "nobody knows anything
about the learning process of the human mind" -- drove him to
devote his life to probing the learning process. It is his deeply
held conviction that the biggest weapon in maintaining a free society
is education and an educated citizenry.
Michel moved to Los Angeles in 1947. Here he set up his first language
institute in Beverly Hills. Over a period of fifty years, he has developed
a unique and revolutionary teaching system that has made him the world's
leading language teacher.
To read more about Michel Thomas' life experiences,
click here:
Self Portrait
or Short Biography
*For a full account of his fascinating
life, read "Test of Courage: The Michel Thomas Story" by
Christopher Robbins, published by Free Press, a division of Simon
& Schuster. Click
here to order |
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