After a one year break I want to learn more Thai. The first attempt was the two years I spent at Nisa language school in soi Yennakart, two hours two days a week. This amounted to maybe 300 hours in total.
My teacher was good but her teaching material was something of a joke. Still, it was better than some other schools, which had no teaching material at all.
The lack of a system or any pedagogic approach is something that has frustrated many Westerners who try to learn Thai. The Thai approach seems to be that since they can speak Thai any of them can sit down at a table and teach it to a foreigner.
Having looked at the Thai courses that are on the market I decided to buy “Teach yourself Thai” by David Smyth. Professor Smyth introduces the systematic approach that my farang brain craves. Phew, what a relief! Smyth teaches Thai at the University of London, School of Oriental and African studies so I guess he knows what he is talking about. The two CD and one book course set me back 2 130 baht.
Still, that is cheap considering that the one on one classes I had at Nisa were 300 baht an hour. At Nisa I learned basic Thai, enough to survive in places where nobody speaks English, but not enough for sustained conversation.
There is no easy way to learn Thai. The language is so different from any European language that my mind has as a hard time even grasping the way it sounds. This must be the reason why the course gets a mixed review on amazon.com from people who struggle to use it. The actors on the recording speak too fast, people complain. The book doesn’t explain enough, they say.
For some foreigners Thai is the first foreign language they try to learn. That must be hard. At least I have the advantage of having learned foreign languages before, even if Western languages are easier than Thai because European languages are closely related. Thai is not related to anything I know, but to Chinese and Tibetan. In any case, to become fluent in a foreign language may take 2 000 hours of study, or one year full time. This was what the Japanese salarymen at Nisa did. They devoted 12 hours a day for a year to learn Thai so they could become factory managers.
The book is fast-progressing and it would have felt intimidating if I had no previous knowledge of Thai. But it feels right for me now. It teaches reading and writing parallel with speaking. At Nisa I only had oral plus writing Thai in a Roman script.
PS. Apart from teaching me Thai the ladies at Nisa were preoccupied with which one of them should marry me. I had to shoo a couple of them away. I never told them I was gay and it was interesting to hear them say that this sort of thing was unnatural and wrong. One other farang student at the school had a Thai boyfriend, they whispered. How scandalous.
xxx
August 13th, 2006 at 10:14 am
I went to a language school soon after I came here, too…might well have been the same one.
The young women there were all filling in time before finding the job of their dreams…needless to say, none were qualified to teach.
Or to put it more fairly, they were about as qualified to teach Thai as the many farang here, who, in search of an income, hire themselves out as English teachers.
I paid for a month, but lasted just one week. The teaching materials were terrible, as you say. No one bothered to point out that Thai is a tonal language. It’s probably the most important thing for the starter to learn, but it was 12 months before I found out.
The book contained no tone charts or exercises in forming the tones…no guide on pronunciation, or how to distinguish short vowels from long ones.
As you say, people seem to think that because they are Thai, they can teach.
I have two excellent books on Thai grammar which might be of use. Email me if you would like details.
August 13th, 2006 at 12:11 pm
The lack of a systematic approach to teaching Thai is definately problematic. Amongst the methods I have come across are:
* listening only for weeks before attempting to talk or read Thai (AUA method)
* learn to speak only; forget about learning to write
* learn speaking and writing Thai script together
* learn speaking and ‘writing’ via various Roman script systems that attempt to include (or ignore) Thai tones; maybe later learn to write Thai script
* learn from a book, without hearing spoken Thai
To do a good job teaching in any of these ways, one needs a background in linguistics, including the language you are teaching (Thai) and that of your students (eg English). You will find people with these skills outside Thailand, but very few in Thailand.
And it goes without saying that you need good teaching materials.
In my on-going atemmpts to learn Thai outside Thailand, I found that in addition to formal classes, review sessions / tutorials run by the (adult) students without teachers were very useful.
One tends to assume when one goes to a language school that they know what they are doing. In Thailand, that is as risky as going to a doctor and assuming s/he knows what they are doing.
August 13th, 2006 at 4:35 pm
hi there……………..coincidence….I have just emailed several Thai Language Schools re information on short (4 weeks) courses for beginning Thai,,,speaking and listening. Reading yr entry doesn’t fill me with confidence.Any guidance as to where I should enquire would be very welcome.
Thanks
pj
August 13th, 2006 at 10:41 pm
“The Thai approach seems to be that since they can speak Thai any of them can sit down at a table and teach it to a foreigner.”
Isn’t that the same view entertained by a lot of those who teach in English in Thailand
August 14th, 2006 at 3:17 pm
I think it is great you are now learning Thai again; chok dee! Real Thailand
August 15th, 2006 at 6:48 pm
There are a few good schools in Bangkok that all use the same materials that are quite good. Classes are 3 or 4 hours a day. I’ve tried teaching myself — the David Smyth book you mentioned is good — but I have learned more in a couple of months of classes than I have in several years of self-study.
In these schools, the first two months are speaking and listening, with a lot of emphasis on tones, funky vowel sounds, and grammar. Months three and four start on reading and writing.
Check out: Union Language School (no URL?), Unity Thai Language School (http://www.utl-school.com/english/home.php) and Thai Language Achievement School (http://www.tlaschool.com/index2.html)
Good luck. It’s a challenge to learn Thai Language for sure, but I think it’s well worth it!