vincentv

I will attempt to answer this with as little bias as possible considering I am the maker of this program.

i would like to know: are the bugs removed that has been discussed ?

Not sure if what you are referring would be called a bug. But what you will find in old posts is complaints about the files not being linked. Back a year or so ago you had to open the audio files manually. There was no link in the content directly to the sound or execises. This is because this feature was not part of PDF files now it is. So now you just click the blue links to open the audio file or exercise.

The other thing that people may mention is that you will have 2 or more programs open. If you have been using a computer for more than a couple months you should understand how to manage more than one application. I mention that the user should set his media player so it floats on top always. There are instructions on how to do this. When you open an exercise this pops up right in front of you and when you are finished you close it and will be back at the PDF. If you want to reference the PDF while you are doing an exercise you will just need to switch to the PDF in the task bare or with alt+tab or click it if it is still visible in the background. These are basic computer skills. If you do not know how to manage more than one open application do not buy the program. It is amazing how many people do not know that their computer can open more than one application at a time..

was there an update to make everything smoother ?

Yes links were added to the PDF so now you just click the link and you do not have to open the file.

or is it just the same and the only thing that went up was the price ?

A number of innovative sections have been added that you will not find in any other language program anywhere. I do not publizies these so that the copy cats come up with their own ideas.

if this is such a great product, why no free sample lessons available ?

The program is made up of many sections that do totally different things. Some of the sections are, pronunciation, tones, alphabet, beginner vocab, advanced vocab. Now you can not just skip and trial out the alphabet lessons if you have not completed the tones and the pronunciation section. And you can not do the vocab lessons if you can not read Thai. So this is why it is impossible to trial the program. You could trial the very first lesson which is the pronunciation lesson, but this would not give you a very good taste of the program.

On top of that, when you are starting you will spend about 45 minutes learning about how the program is structured and why and you will also get familiar with how to use the program. You will be using the program for 300+ hours.

And moreover there are so many ways to review the vocab lessons, that it would not be practical to go though all of this in a short demo.

There are a couple of videos that demonstrate a few of the concepts used on my website. But these are very simple and do not explain all the techniques used.

Why not sell it in Asia Books or other book stores ?

Why sell it though another party when I can sell it directly and control everything? I have no interest in getting middle men involved.

why other thai learning books / cd's in that shop are at a more reasonable price ?

Feel free to go to your local book store and buy some. I could have made something similar in a month or less without much thought and sold it though these channels. But that was not what I wanted. I wanted to create a system that would get a person to a functional level without the need to purchase anything else. The program is about 10GB with around 100 hours of audio along with 1400 pages of content.

macro econimics : sell your product at a lower price and sell more of them to make more profit ...

I could have cut the program into smaller sections and sold them for more per section. But as I stated, I wanted to create a program that would get someone to a functional level. This is a big task and that is why the program is so large. I would not consider selling a program that taught less than what is taught in the HST program. By the time you finish the program you will have a very good understanding of the language and you will be able to put thousands of sentences together. The program was designed to teach you those things you MUST know to speak even basic Thai. It does not teach more technical vocab that you need for more in-depth conversation, I am working on a system to do that now.

testimonials on the authors own website : sure i will believe, same as i believe all those other (spam)adverts with miracle solutions and 75% discounts if i just sign up in the next 10 minutes

I am not a liar, now I have a folder of hundreds of pieces of feedback I have but I have no place to put them. You can find LOTS of detailed feedback here directly from users. Obviously only 1 in 100 is going to bothered making a new post about their experiences with HST. I recommend that you pay most attention to reviews from users who have completed large sections of the program. They understand how the program works and how effective it is. Most people have some preconceived ideas about how to teach a language and when a user reviews the program without completing the program they are just describing how the program does not match their preconceived ideas. As you can see right here in his thread there is a big debate about learning to read Thai......

Obviously a product can not be perfect for everyone but the program has been prove over and over. Put in the time and the outcome is predictable. By the time you finish, you will understand what is happening around you and you will be able to put sentences together with ease. You will get practice forming over 12,000 sentences.

Hope that helps, most of these questions have already been answered on my website, in my newsletter or in posts here.

If you need more info, search around here on ThaiVisa and speak to those who are using the program.

Again take note of feedback from users who have completed the program not the guys that open it take a look do a couple of lessons and then state their opinions. As explained above, there are many sections. So feedback from a user that has completed a couple sections is really not that useful when compared to a review from a users that has completed the whole program, or at least half of it. You can see from the post on this page the user says he started last month. You can not offer a proper review of the whole program in 1 month. 6 months would be a minimum if the user was working on it every day.

I am busy working on the next program so hope there are not to many errors in this post.

Thanks

I have been speaking to cyrilmadrid. He has made it to vocab lesson 1 and is about half way though it, there are 47 vocab lessons. Vocab lessons make up the bulk of the program. cyrilmadrid is on page 150 of 1110. In total their are about 1400 pages of content(in multiple pdf files). So his feedback is only referring to a fraction of the program.

He mentions that he uses the HST program to practice. I would say that is because the HST program offers a very efficient way to practice the alphabet. It is very important to practice to fluency at every step, I find that if you half-learn something and do not practice it extensively then go onto learn something else you tend to forget everything. Practicing to fluency really allows you to lock new info into your memory. So with language learning practicing to fluency is an essential step, without it your progress may be slow and frustrating.

cyrilmadrid states that he is happy with both systems and will use them both. He will continue on with he studies and hopefully come back and provide some detailed feedback on how he is going once he has completed more significant portions of the programs.

On these forums some people like to offer their opinion on things they have never used. There was another thread on HST and one guy who was selling a competing product shared his opinion about the HST program, even though he had never used it?? I am not going to make any comments on LearnThaiPodcast even though I reviewed it many years ago. I am also not in a position to effectively evaluate other systems as I am no long in the beginners shoes. The best reviews come from users who have spent tens or hundreds of hours using a program. You will find some reviews like this right here on ThaiVisa.

No two language programs are going to teach exactly the same thing. They will use different methods and teach different content. Every program will provide at least some value. The HighSpeedThai program aims to teach common, high value words which you will find in most day-to-day conversations. Obviously there are some fill-in words that are taught too in order to create realistic dialogs. Another program may aim to teach you more situational less frequently used vocab that is still very useful.

My apologies if the website did not accept your credit card details. You have to understand that these payment processing companies must be very weary of fraud. Sometimes when a foreign credit card is being used on the internet from a Thai I.P address they classify the transaction as suspicious. Usually if you enter your correct billing address and all other information that matches the card it goes though fine. If not, other arrangement's can be made.

I do not know why you do not trust Paypal, I am not a huge fan of Paypal, but I have made many purchases and sales through them without problems.

Your comments seem somewhat distrustful, pessimistic and negative even before you have tried the program, I would prefer that you do not purchase the HighSpeedThai system.

I am thankful that stargazer has posted here. He has given me the opportunity to answer some questions and present the facts.

First of all let me talk about the guarantee, I stand by the guarantee and never once told this user he was not going to be refunded. I simply did not state at any stage I was not going to honor his guarantee.

Let us all have a look at the conversation that took place between me and stargazer to see what actually happened.

(Online Chat Log)

This dialog began on 19/07/2011 1:31:41 PM

101.109.134.146 joins the channel.

vincent says:

[13:31:44] Hello

101.109.134.146 says:

[13:32:16] Hey Vincent. This is Carl Bethell. I need to complete the cancellation.

vincent says:

[13:32:26] Hi Carl,

[13:32:29] Thanks for your time

101.109.134.146 says:

[13:33:08] What must be done in order to receive my refund

vincent says

[13:33:29] Ok, so you purchased the program not so long ago.

[13:34:10] And you had some problems completing the lessons. You mentioned you were unable to retain the info. And that it was information overload.

101.109.134.146 says:

[13:34:45] That is correct. Problem with short term memory.

vincent says:

[13:35:17] Which part of the program made you feel this. You mention that you completed 3 lessons. Was it these lessons that made you feel that? Which lessons were they?

101.109.134.146 says:

[13:36:35] I was never able to complete any lessons. I tried doing the first three lessons wityhout any results. I really just need to end this.

vincent says:

[13:37:15] Which lessons did you try?

101.109.134.146 says:

[13:37:53] I don't wish to pursue this line of questioning. Please refund my monies to me.

vincent says:

[13:38:09] I am trying to be fair and understand your situation<br style="">

Now something here is very strange. He states that he did the first 3 lessons but was unable to retain any information. The thing is the first lessons are pronunciation lessons, they basically explain how certain sounds are pronounced have you listen to some audio files but you do not have to commit any symbols, characters or vocab to memory. This is the first thing that did not add up.

[13:39:26] Yes I have your explanation up here in front of me stating that you waded though 3 lessons without much progress

[13:40:38] That is why I asked which lessons, to understand your viewpoint, what happened and where I can improve the product so this never happens again. I would like every customer to really enjoy the program.

101.109.134.146 says:

[13:42:57] I assume you could not improve your product without getting rid of the copy protection devices. In the format that it is in, I am unable to retain what I have read. At 70 years of age it is a problem.

vincent says:

[13:44:08] Yes the copy production features are a slight annoyance but they must be present

[13:44:49] Ok so for the record could I know exactly what you have done with the program.

101.109.134.146 says:

[13:47:36] I simply spent time trying to assimilate some of the information in the first 3 leassons and failed miserably. My first chat with you indicated that I was not happy with the format in which I received the course. I felt it was not as promoted in the video tha caught my interest. I was able to retain the characters in that video and was impressed. Not so with the information that I received.

vincent says:

[13:48:42] Ok, thanks for that, which lessons were they?

101.109.134.146 says:

[13:49:09] 1,2, & 3.

vincent says:

[13:49:24] From which section?

101.109.134.146 says:

[13:49:43] reading - *This is strange because there are over 7 lessons to do before you do the reading lessons.

vincent says:

[13:50:31] Did you access the lessons via the ebook?

101.109.134.146 says:

[13:50:42] yes

vincent says:

[13:53:40] ok thanks, could you please email me the 4 files that are located in the Anki tutorial folder in the highspeedthai files folder along with the 3 anki files in the Reading Lesson Files\Reading Lesson 1 Files to [email protected]

101.109.134.146 says:

[13:56:25] Where are these files.

vincent says:

[13:56:38] On the desktop there is HighSpeedThai Files folder

[13:57:33] Please send the four files in the Anki Tutorial folder and the 3 anki files in the Reading Lesson Files/Reading Lesson 1 files folder

101.109.134.146 says:

[14:05:42] This is very frustrating. Your guarantee states "If you are not happy for any reason, please send your product back within 30 days of the date of purchase and we will happily refund all your money and all postage costs.". Please honor this. No more nonesense.

vincent says:

[14:07:26] I am sure you can understand that this program took thousands of man hours to make, I honestly have never been asked for a refund based on content. I give the program basically free for people to trial. Anyone could purchase the program and then ask for there money back and use the program for free.

[14:08:32] On to of that for genuine people who do not like the program, there is no use in me just giving their money back without further amending the product or website so this situation never happens again.

101.109.134.146 says:

[14:12:29] Yes I have that email

[14:12:45] Is there a problem sending me those small files which are about 1 MB in size?

101.109.134.146 says:

[14:13:19] Be a gentleman and honor you word and make the refund Vincent.

vincent says:

[14:13:29] I did not say I was not going to

[14:13:44] I just asked you to email me 7 small files

101.109.134.146 says:

[14:14:03] No more hoops thankyou.

vincent says:

[14:14:30] You can not email me 7 files?

[14:15:09] You could have sent them to me by now it should only take 1 minute

101.109.134.146 says:

[14:15:38] I have spent almost a month in doing additional items for you. It is quite clear that these are just stall tacttics. Enough is enough.

vincent says:

[14:16:17] I am not sure what you mean, I have not stated I am not refunding your money

[14:16:23] As I said

[14:17:37] This program is basicaly free for any one to try, anyone can download it. Then ask for their money back because they do not want to pay for it. It is for this reason I need to establish the reality of the situation

[14:17:59] In order to ensure this never happens again and refund the money. I think this is very fair.

[14:18:28] I am not in the business of cheating any one. I have been selling this program for years, and get great feedback many times a week from users.

[14:18:44] Your experience differs, hence our conversation.

101.109.134.146 says:

[14:20:12] What would be fair is to simply honor your word. My other choices are to make comments on all Thailand forums, every reipoff report on the internet and local Thai authorities if you are to persist in this tact.

vincent says:

[14:20:35] I would say that would be unfair

[14:20:47] Totally unfair

[14:20:52] And unreasonable

101.109.134.146 says:

[14:20:58] "If you are not happy for any reason, please send your product back within 30 days of the date of purchase and we will happily refund all your money and all postage costs."

vincent says:

[14:21:25] And I am not sure why you are even mentioning it because I have just asked for you to email me 7 files.

101.109.134.146 says:

[14:23:10] We both know that I cannot send you back any downloaded files. I can copy and paste etc. but that does not remove any files. Once I have received my refund, I will delete all files concerning "Highspeedthai".

vincent says:

[14:23:57] Yes I am just asking you to email me those 7files

[14:24:17] You can copy and paste them to a new email

[14:24:21] and send them to me

[14:24:34] It is a one minute task

101.109.134.146 says:

[14:25:03] Thank you Vincent. 2 days from now I will spend much of my time dealing with you in my preferred way.

vincent says:

[14:25:37] I do not understand, are you saying that you will not send these files?

101.109.134.146 left the channel.

This dialog ended on 19/07/2011 2:25:46 PM<br style=""> <br style="">

At this point stargazer has left the chat. I was concerned about this whole situation, so I sent him an email almost immediately.

Tue 19/07/2011 2:49 PM

Hello Carl,

I still do not understand what is happening.

Could you please be clear, I have asked you to send me 7 small files. From what I can see you do not want to take the minute or so to do this.

I never said I was not going to refund your money.

Perhaps you have not completed any lessons. I do not mind, I just need to understand the situation. Obviously you can appreciate why I am curious to gain a greater understanding of your experience with the product as I am always trying to improve the program and without an understanding of your experience I have little hope to improve anything.

You can also understand that, anyone is free to purchase the program, and then ask for their money back regardless of if they plan to keep using the program.

I am trying to be as reasonable and logical as I can be here.

So please be clear with me, I am a genuine person and am not in business to scam or rip any one off. If I was doing this, I would be out of business a long time ago. My primary goal is to create the best learning programs around.

Thank you

This is the reply I got from him:

Do you have a work permit. Paid taxes on sales made. Licensed to do business in Thailand.

Here is my reply to this seemingly threatening email.

Hello,

I reside in Australia.

I spend some time each year in Thailand and in other countries, about 6 months. I do pay my tax in Australia.

Why do you ask?

As I said I am trying to be reasonable here, I put my time into helping people learn and making better products. Not just in Thai but other languages too.

Basically you have thousands of hours of my work there that does what it says it does. I have about 130 genuine testimonials from very happy users who attest to how well they learn when using the program.

If one does put the time in, he will learn. Maybe if they have serious memory or hearing issues then learning a language is not for them. This could be you, but if you learnt from the videos you should be able to learn from the program. As the video is just based on a couple of the techniques used in the program. I am just trying to determine where you got stuck, am I being unreasonable?

Could you tell me what a reasonable way would be to verify that all refunds are genuine? The best way I can think is for me to understand exactly what they are having troubles with, refund the money, remove their license and the improve the product so it does not happen again.

Thanks

From here I received no reply. I have been waiting for him to post here so I can answer in full with the facts. I never said I was not going to give him a refund at any stage. From the start when the customer said he was unable to retain what was in the first 3 lessons did not make any sense as there is really nothing to retain in the first 3 lessons.

As now the product is being offered for download and there is no physical product I have to be a little careful that my generous guarantee is not exploited.. I think it is pretty unreasonable for someone to just purchase the product and say, ok give me my money now and I do not want to answer any questions. In these situations there is no way for me to verify that there was an actually a problem.

On top of this, if there is a real problem, I really want to know about it in order to resolve it and ensure that no one else experiences this same issue.

As you can see it is extremely unlikely that this user has actually completed any lessons. It is more likely that he just opened it up, clicked around randomly without reading any instructions and got lost. The program is structured in a very specific way, there are explanations for why the program is in such an order and why it is very important that one completes the program in the order laid out.

I usually do not like to announce new updates to the program as I prefer to keep any new innovations a little secret. But there are some very exciting updates being completed at the moment that will be integrated into the program very shortly. HST part 2 is also on the way.

If you are looking for real feedback on the program make sure you look at the posts from users who have actually been using the program.

"Interesting point...given you give a 30-day period of grace to return it. So by the time I've fully figured out how it works...too late. Hmm..."

You can learn a lot in 30 days, and you should see great benefit in the program in just a few days. My point is that you will not be able to assess the whole program in 30 days. There are many different lesson types, the program is huge and is specifically designed to completed from front to back. You can not skip sections. The skills you learn in the earlier lessons are necessary to complete the later lessons. For example, you should not learn to read if you do not have a good idea about how to pronounce, you should not learn to read if you do not have a handle on the tones. You will not be able to complete the vocab lessons until you have finished the reading lessons, and you will not be able to do the advanced vocab lessons before you complete the regular vocab lessons.

In response to this comment.

"After a quick trip to Thailand I found out that the Vocabulary and grammar words have stayed in my memory but the speaking part didn't come out so easily,

before my trip I bought Pimsleur Thai which I think is a nice tool to complement HST, the Pimsleur Thai repetition method works very good, some people thought that I could speak Thai fluently because of the grammar and vocabulary from HST and the way that I spoke the phrases from Pimsleur Thai.

So now I've finished the Pimsleur Thai Level 1 (30 audio lessons of 25-30minutes each) which has help me, now when studying HST I can go through the Learning, Voc, and Speaking lessons a lot faster.

With HST you'll be able to learn Vocabulary,writing and reading and if you are lucky enough to live in Thailand I am sure that the speaking part will come much easier compare to someone that is living outside Thailand. "

First of all, Pimsuler is extremely small compared to the HighSpeedThai program. It teaches between 200 and 300 words and some basic sentence structure. HST teaches 1600 words and the amount of ideas that you can express increases somewhat exponentially to the amount of words you know. In terms of size and structure, these programs are in totally different categories. Pimsuler is 15 hours of audio where you will learn some vocab and basic sentence structure. The HST program with teach you how to pronounce correctly, help you hear and pronounce the tones, teach you to read and express yourself with exposure to 10,000+ sentences and practice forming over 7,000 sentences. The HST program includes about 80 hours of audio and 1200 pages of text.

I do not mind Pimsuler but if you were to complete the whole HighSpeedThai system and then complete Pimsuler you would probably learn nothing new, perhaps a few low frequency words. In terms of overall content, I would say Pimsuler is about one twentieth the size of the HST program.

Now, if you only have a vocab of a few hundred words, do not expect to be able to express your mind in Thai. It is simply impossible with such a small vocabulary. You are much better of spending your time acquiring the basic vocabulary that you need to have day-to-day conversations. This is what the HighSpeedThai program will help you with, by the time you are finished with the program you will be able to understand and take part in these day-to-day conversations. It will be also useful to have a dictionary on hand, you can download dictionary applications for free on the iPhone or Androd phones.

Thank you for the feedback.

Can you send me an email and I will send you the latest version which will addresses some of these things.

Here are my comments on the points you have made.

2. I am also working on a second speaking section. The second speaking section is Thai only, the speaker will ask you questions in Thai and you will respond in Thai. The new exercises are a really great way to practice comprehending and using the vocab you have used.

3. If you notice a problem with a specific learning section, please let me know and I will take a look at it. The latest version of the program now includes both a female and male speaker narrating the Reading section at normal pace. Listening to this is a very good way to get exposure to Thai at its native pace. It also allows you to expose yourself to more vocab and grammar structures in less time. The "Extra Speaking Exercises - From Definitions - Lessons 1 to 40.anki" and "Sentences - From Definitions - Lessons 1 to 40.m3u" are also recorded at a fast pace to help give you listening practice.

You can also increase the pace of existing audios with a plug-in for Winamp called Pacemaker.

4. Due to the size of the program it is a mammoth size task to just check over the program one time. I have spent hundreds of hours reviewing the audios and cards, and am pretty sure I have ironed out any inconsistencies. If you find any, please let me know and I will fix them up. Either way these should very small issues and should not impact learning. In regards to words being pronounced 2 ways, the narrator is a native speaker so she reads them how they should be read. If she reads a word in two ways it is likely that the word can be pronounced in two ways. There should not be many words like this, maybe 10 in the whole program. On most occasions this will be explicitly explained.

5. Some of the earlier audios may have a bit of background noise. The noise should be very minimal and should not have any impact on learning, as you rightly said, any noise is background noise and should not interfere with the foreground speaking. In a real life situation you are always going to have background noise anyway. I actually asked one user if he thinks it would be worthwhile to rerecord these audios he felt that doing this would be a waste of time as there would be no benefit in doing this. All of the newer audios have been recorded in much stricter conditions.

6. The newer version recommends that you use voice-viewer with a microphone from time to time to compare your tones to the native speaker. The newer version also recommends you use the Anki recording plug in to do a side by side comparison of your voice against the native speaker’s voice.

7. Yes, the pdf is locked and it must be that way. Please let me know what you would like to copy from the PDF. Most of the content is also in the vocab cards and you can copy and paste from there. But please let me know what you would like to copy and paste and why. Perhaps this could lead me to creating a new set of exercises.

8. The latest version makes the vocab “clickable”. A selection of the example sentences are included in the files mentioned in point 3. When you open the Anki file in point 3, you can record yourself and compare this to the native speaker. When a user is reading through the vocab section he should know how to pronounce all of the words as the new words are pronounced aloud. All other words used to create these example sentences are taken from earlier lessons, so if you have done the earlier lessons you will be able to pronounce these words accurately.

In regards to the price, others have given the program much higher marks. I hope that a user would over look any aesthetics and mark the program on how well it works and the results one is getting. In the end this is the most important thing. The newer version also has many updates that further improve the programs efficiency, please email me for this.

I would not worry too much about speaking at the moment. The program teaches very important words that are almost essential for basic conversation right up to the last lesson. So your goal should be to finish off the program and then practice as much as you can. By the time you have finished your Thai will be better than 90+% of foreigners that have been living here for years or decades. In fact, I just got an email from one guy who has studied for over 140 hours in classes, he can hardly read or put a basic sentence together. Your current level at lesson 30 would be at least 10 times better than his, not to mention that you would have spent a fraction of what he has.

In some time I will be releasing another program that helps students further develop their vocab up to 5000 words or so

<br style=""> <br style="">

In response to the original poster, it seems I did not get or missed his email. I check my emails a few times each day. My website also has my Skype details and a phone number, so it is not hard to get a hold of me.

You can do a search on this forum and you will find detailed feedback from ThaiVisa users who have spent lots of time with the program. You will find that anyone who has actually put time into the program really likes it. The only way to assess the program is to use it.

The program is so big that it will take someone at least a couple of months to be able to fully assess the program to a degree where they can give a fairly accurate view of how it works.

In regards to this quote:

"Based on the "tasters' (this one in particular) [this is the one you mentioned that teaches the 3 Thai characters] I took the plunge and bought the program. I was disappointed to find that the program did not contain this or similar videos since the one on the website was well done and allowed me to quickly learn what was presented in it. If there had been similar videos done for all the alphabet

Videos are not the best way to learn because they progress at a fixed rate, they do not allow you to focus in on what you are having troubles with, there is no way for a video to adjust itself according to how well you are progressing. It is also much easier for students to read detailed explanations along with examples as text at their own pace. I have specifically chosen not to teach with videos because it is not the best way to learn. The video on the site demonstrates the some of the techniques used in the program.

In regards to this “I found that is was ok but definitely overpriced for what you get” I honestly have never heard anything like this. The people that have spent time with the program almost always say the opposite. The HST program can get you from knowing nothing about the language to being quite functional. The program will keep a student busy for up to a year if he studies almost every day. Thousands of hours have been put into the program to make learning easier for you. The result is that you will save hundreds of hours of time that would otherwise be wasted studying ineffectively.

The program contains hundreds of exercises, more than 80 hours of audio, more than 1000 pages of content. But again, the media is not something that should be taken into consideration when purchasing a program, of course the most important factor is what results you get from the program when you use it. Again, please refer to the other posts from users who have completed large sections of the program.

It is a little bit tricky to provide this as a downloadable update as there are changes in the file system and encrypted/watermarked PDF. I will see what I can do, it may require new DVDs to be sent out.

If you are interested please send me an email.

Thank you

Thanks to the latest version of Acrobat I have been able to include the links to the external files within the PDF, so now you simply click within the PDF to open the audio files and exercises.

If you have any questions, let me know.

Thanks

This should be completed in the next 2 weeks. Thank you.

Still doing some testing at the moment. Will post a note in here regarding updating when I am done. Thank you.

bmore99: The audios that you mention are not “iffy” they have been extracted directly from a movie. The sounds are as they are in the movie. These audios are paired with the advanced lessons. The aim of these audios is to give the user exposure to more realistic Thai. When one learns from these movie lessons, he goes though the movie sentence by sentence, the learner is able to replay each sentence as many times as he likes and the audio is also paired with the script from the movie.

Your comments show that you have never actually used the system so your comparison of the program to others is fairly worthless. Only the people who have actually completed the lessons will be able to provide worthwhile feedback on the program. And as you can see, a number of these people have posted extensive feedback on this thread.

Thank you for sharing the books that you used to help you learn the language, no one book is ever going to get you to fluency. The HST program aims to give learners a very solid grounding in the language. Many thousands of hours have been spend on the program and I doubt you are ever going to find something equivalent for free. Learning any language is indeed a large task, quality materials are worth their weight in gold as they will save you hundreds of hours of wasted study time. Oh, and you wrote “แล้อแต่” I assume this is a mistake and you meant “แล้วแต่”.

I would have linked the PDF directly to the files if it was possible but up until now there has been many problems doing this. Thankfully the latest version of Acrobat offers a more flexible way to link PDFs to external files. I am testing this at the moment and hope that within the next few weeks the PDF will be fully linked to the files.

Thank you for your input. The user contacted me in regards to the program layout. Not requesting a refund. The problem that the user was having should have not stopped him from using or learning from the system.

In fact, recently I have set my website to email a note to users explaining that they can extend their guarantee by requesting an extension. This is useful because some people may be too busy in the initial 30 days to give the program a good go.

All users get a full 30 days to trial out the program, if they feel it is not for them in this time all they have to do is send the program back to me.

Hi there,

This is Vincent here.

I would like to add my comments.

As you can see here, there are many people who are very happy with the program. The people who are reporting great results are the ones that have actually completed significant parts of the program. The ones that have not so positive feedback do not state which lessons they have actually completed.

Students do need to expect to spend a few hours learning how the program works and getting familiar with the tools that come with the program. It is very hard for one to assess the program without actually completing the lessons. Even if someone was to complete the first couple of lessons and give up it would be unfair for them to comment on all of the other lesson types in the program, as each type of lesson has a different structure and there are many different lesson types. The program is designed to be completed in a sequential manner as you will need to learn how to pronounce and distinguish the tones before you move onto the reading lessons. You will need to be able to read before you can do the vocab lessons and you will need to know the intermediate vocabulary before you move onto the advanced vocabulary lessons.

Every single file that is included in the program has its place in the learning process. Saying that the program is a bunch of unlinked files could not be further from the truth.

Protecting the program from piracy is obviously and important factor and sometimes this results in small changes that may have a very minimal impact on usability. The system is not programmed in any language. The program is made up of text which is in a PDF file, audio which are mp3s and wmas along with Anki files which are opened in the program Anki. The program does also include images and videos.

Text, audio and imagery are very powerful mediums and if used effectively can teach a language very effectively.

I would like to briefly talk about the user named “yvancg”.

On October 7 2010 he stated that he had stopped on page 48 of 1000 because the eBook was too large to print, the eBook should be in a horizontal format and there are too many files and folders. I offered my help here. I know that hundreds of people have completed these lessons and I have watch people complete the lessons first hand so I know the process well.

While the program is obviously not perfect like anything in this word, if one follows the instructions and completes the lessons he will get very good results, as you can see from the feedback that other users have provided.

The user suggested embedding the audio into the pdf, I thanked him for his feedback and noted it down as I keep all feedback from all users. Prior to his email I had researched doing just this but there were many problems doing it with Acrobat 9. Thankfully now Acrobat 10 offers more options to link pdfs to external files.

After the user’s trial period expired he sent me an email stating he would like a refund. Well it is clearly stated on the website that the guarantee lasts for 30 days after the program arrives in the mail. I again offered to help him get going with the program as I know there are so many people using the program with great results I was sure that I could help him get started. He then mentions that he is really on page 38 of 1000 doing the pronunciation lessons. These are the first lessons in the program.

Anyway, as I was generous enough to make a deal with him even though he was outside his guarantee period. The deal was made on the 16^th of November 2010. The deal we made was that he was to complete up to Vocab lesson 10. If he still did not like the program after completing up to this lesson I would refund his money even though his guarantee had expired. This deal meant that he had to complete 26 lessons. I would estimate a student would spend at least 60 hours completing these lessons.

On the 30^th of November I received an email from yvancg saying that he had completed the lessons. I was surprised. When making the deal I was expecting to hear from him after a couple of months as I know how long it takes students to complete these lessons. I then emailed back asking him approximately how many hours a day he studied. He said “I try to learn everyday for around one hour, sometimes more, sometimes less”. This made me even more surprised as I know that it is impossible to complete these 26 lessons in 14 hours. Many of the lessons would require more than 2 hours to complete. Maybe yvancg is a really smart chap with a computer like memory, so I asked him to send some of his files to me, this would have allowed me to see that he had actually had performed this momentous feat. Conveniently he told me that he had already deleted all of the files. He stated that his girlfriend has been helping him with the language and that he was already familiar with some of the sections in the program.

I then proceeded to ask him a few more questions about what lessons he had done so I could verify he had done what he said he had. He refused to answer my questions and told me to keep the money.

A couple days later he sent me an email that he is going to post his experience on a number of forums because I am not a man of my word???? At this stage I replied saying there is one easy way for us to verify that you have completed what you have said you have done and that is for me to give you a five minute call on Skype. This way I would be able to ask him a few very simple questions about the lessons he had done. Here is what I said.

“I am not saying anyone is a cheater or a liar. I was generous enough to give you a deal, I assume that you would be happy to demonstrate that you have completed your part.

Unfortunately you have deleted your files. Perhaps the best way to finish this off is for me to give you a call and ask you a few simple questions on the material that you have completed. I guess this would not take more than 5 minutes. I assume you are on Skype, we can do this over Skype.”

Yvanyc stated that he had enough and he was going to post on some forums. I sent this reply

“Hi Again,

I think my responses are fare, reasonable and only to be expected. As I have said, out of my own generosity I gave you this deal. I have hardly done the wrong thing.

If you do not want to spend a few minutes on the phone answering a few very basic questions that you would be able to answer quickly and easily that is your choice.

Now in regards to you problem: It is concerning that you feel you are unable to complete the lessons due to the layout. The reason it is concerning is that there are hundreds of people using the program without this problem. In the program I invite the user to send his feedback many times. And I have directly asked a number of users, "do they find the files hard to locate?" they have stated they are having no problems finding files or doing the lessons.

I agree it would be better to link the PDF to the files, but I have experimented with this and there are many problems doing this. I have contacted Adobe about this too.

The other option would be to convert the pdf to a HTML file, but even with html files there are still problems. Some browsers ask the use to download and save the file before they open it. Then there is the issue of piracy, there is no protection in HTML files. These days piracy protection measures are an unfortunate necessity.

So with the program the way it is now, the user has the eBook on his screen, reads through the content, the content will state which file to open. He simply clicks the audio or Anki file and listens to the audio or completes the exercise in Anki. The files are organized in a logical fashion which is explained in the eBook.

The pronunciation lessons state that it may be beneficial if one records himself, I am thinking of getting rid of this as some users may find opening an external audio recording problematic if they are not so good on the computer. I should be able to transform these exercises into Anki exercises. Anki has an inbuilt recording function.

As you are a Mac user, perhaps there is something on the Mac which is making doing what is instructed difficult. Do you think you could tell me what this is? Only about 7% of users are using a Mac. I want the program to work well on a Mac too.

I have been thinking more about what you have said. I think I will make a short video on how the user should use the program. This way they can watch the video before they start, this will give them a good idea of how to use the program easily and efficiently. This will also help them see if something on there computer is prohibiting them from using the program as they will be able to see how it should work correctly.

Thanks”

Before receiving this email yvanc posted his view on every thread about HighSpeedThai he could find.

The moral of the story is that this user had the program to try out free and if he did not like it he could send it back within 30 days. He did not do this. I was generous enough to make a special deal with him. He stated that he completed his part of the deal in what seems to be an unrealistic time. Upon asking to spend 5 minutes on Skype with the user verifying he had done what he had said he declined and posted negative feedback about me and the program.

Who knows really how much of the program yvancg completed? He said he was on the first couple of lessons when he stopped. He was never willing to prove he had completed any of the program on request so I guess we will never know for sure.

If you want to get a real idea of what the program is like youu should pay attention to those reviews by people who have completed significant parts of the program. And as you can see there are many of them and they are reporting great progress. A number of them go into great detail.

Perhaps the program did not meet yvancgs strict standards, perhaps something on his computer was prohibiting him from using the program as directed, perhaps he was too busy to put time into the program. It is hard to say.

Here is a video showing how the program is used: http://www.highspeedthai.com/HowToUse.avi

Ratsima: Users are told they can upgrade Anki once they know the basics. The course should work fine with the latest Anki. The program does not come with the latest version as they seem to release a new update every week. I am not able to re-write the instructions and verify the thousands of files work with the new version every time they release a new version. I will update the version of Anki that comes with the program over the next month.

One user asks why the program hasn’t been published through a mainstream publisher. Well this will never happen and it is the last thing I want. The HST program will constantly be improved and updated, it is not the type of product that will be sold in bookshops due to its size and price. It is almost impossible to protect books sold in stores from piracy and in the end the publisher’s fee will be around %80.

I would like to thank those that have posted or emailed their feedback. I am always working on improving the program and most of the updates are as a result of users feedback.

If you have any questions feel free to email me.

Hi there,

Have not tried wave surfer as yet. Will downland it and take a look.

The latest version of the program comes with voice viewer which allows you to view your voice as a spectograph. I find this very useful in helping people get a handle on the tones. The HST program now recommends that students keep this program open when doing the tone lessons.

It is best to have some kind of external microphone and external speakers, this way you can place the microphone between the speakers so that you can see the tones of the native speaker and also your own tones when speaking aloud.

Not sure which version of the program canuckamuck is running but the newer tone lessons have many more exercises with a new speaker that speaks at a faster pace. Your success with the tone lessons also depends significantly upon your hearing and natrual sense of pitch. Some may be able to fly through them in an hour others will need to spend a number of days and possibly come back to review them later.

Keeping this program open at all times when starting out is a great way to improve your tones quickly. You can conveniently minimize it to a very small size and best of all it's free.

http://slice-of-thai.com/voice-viewer/

Hi there,

Please see the attached image.

This is how your screen should be laid out when working with the program. Once you set it up once it will stay that way.

What you can see in this image:

In the top right hand corner we have Media player which plays the audio files. It is important to re-size this so it doesn't clog your screen. Make sure Media Player is using the 'Corporate' skin as this allows you to make it really small as you see in the image.

Below Microsoft Media Player we have the appropriate folder open for the lesson are working on. In this case, we are working with the Speaking exercises in the Tones section. As you can see all of the audio files we need for this section are listed here. You will notice that these files directly correspond to the files mentioned in the PDF, to open them, simply double click on them.

In the bottom right we have voice viewer. This free application allows you to see your tones on the screen which realy helps when refining your pronunciation. The program recommends to keep this application open when you are performing the tone exercises.

In Adobe you can see that the Bookmarks section has been expanded this allows you to quickly browse though the program and go straight to where you left off.

Some of these features are new additions so if you don't have them let me know.

When the screen is setup as below you should be able to open files quickly, browse between sections in seconds and the length of the PDF file won't have any impact what so ever on your studies.

If you have any questions send me a PM.

Regards

.

Hi there,

10,000 words is an approximation of a 5 year old child's receptive vocabulary. I read many books on language acquisition. Please see 'The Vocabulary Book: Learning and instruction" by Michael F.Graves. You could also have a look at "Teaching Vocabulary" By I.S.P Nation.

The Bare Naked Lexis lists 2700 common head words that make up around 19 out of 20 words used in spoken English and about 9 out of 10 words used in academic texts. 2700 head words translates to around 10,000 individual words.

When I say 30 word an hour, that is leaving room for some spaced repetition. Perhaps 7 repeats over a 6 month period. Of course it will be good if you actually use these words in the real word. I find it useful to play comprehensible audio in the background. For me I save movies as mp3s and play them when I am working. Using this method I can review many thousands of words every day. While this is a form of receptive review I do feel that it helps with building the ability to productively use the vocab. With that being said, I feel that it is very important to practice using the words you are learning in a productive manner, as this is what you are going to be doing when you are conversing. This is why I have ensured that every lesson in the HighSpeedThai program has a speaking section where you productively use the vocab that you learn. At the moment I am adding more exercises, ultimately one will get practice forming at least 5 sentences using each word that he learns.

The HighSpeedThai program teaches 1600 words, one can't expect to be fluent when he finishes it, but he will have a very good footing. He should understand the gist of most spoken Thai.

I am in the process of creating a program that teaches a further 5,000 to 10,000 words, but this is no small task. So I better get back to it.

The Thai language is not one of the easier languages to learn. It does take time to learn. If one wants to get to a basic level where he could communicate he should expect to spend at least 1000 hours learning the language in a fairly effective manner. Ultimately, learning a language can be broken down into a number of tasks:

Learning to pronounce the sounds – You can’t get far without this.

Learning to read – It is very hard to learn the amount of vocab required to communicate without being able to read. Unless you are a blabber mouth and can go and talk to anyone about anything, you simply won’t get enough ear time with the language. Being able allows you to get input on almost any topic.

Learning vocab – You will need to be able to not only listen to and understand words but you will need the ability to construct sentences with the vocab that you learn. In the west a kid at the age of 5 – 6 knows around 10,000 words(receptively), but will probably use a lot less in day to day speech.

The most common 2000 words make up about 90-95% of spoken conversation. So how long does it take to learn 2,000 words? The first words are always the hardest, once you get familiar with the common sounds and patterns it gets much easy. So we will say 10 words an hour. So that gives us about 200 hours to learn 2000 words. So once you add learning to read and learning to pronounce onto that you have around 250 hours.

Armed with a vocab of 2000 words, good pronunciation and the ability to read you still won’t be able to talk about rocket science. You will need to find a way to slowly and steadily increase the size of both you receptive and productive vocabulary, if you are aiming to become fluent in the language. I believe using the right methods. One could learn up to 30 words an hour. This is pretty good, generally as a child goes through school he learns around 10 new words a day. This learning goes on from when he starts school to when he finishes university. So, it would be nice to “learn Thai in 7 days” but it is simply not possible.

If one wants to learn the language, he needs to set aside some time every week or every day if possible. Doing this, using well designed materials you WILL make progress.

Of course, if you have some kind of hearing problems. It may be a struggle for you to learn the language, but this does not apply to most of us. So far from Ratsima is the first one to have these issues, one American guy learn to read Thai in 2 weeks using the system.

As Ratsima righty states, learning a language does require one to remember a large amount of vocab and other facts. The good side of this is that it is a very good work out for your brain, I am quite sure there a number of studies out there showing that learning a language can slow mental decline and improve memory.

Now if Ratsima did not have these problems with hearing the tones, and started learning Thai from the day he landed in Thailand, suppose he spent 7 hours a week studying he would have spent a total of 5110 hours learning the language. If was using somewhat efficient material he should be at a level where he could watch any TV show with ease. He would be able to converse about anything he wanted. He would make small mistakes here and there but ultimately he would be fluent.

So the name of the game is to find good materials that allow you to progress at a good speed and stick to it. I wasted many hundreds of hours using ineffective materials, learning a language is quite a large task, the last thing you want to do is to waste time when doing it.

That is my 2 cents.

Vincent

Hi There,

Here are the answers to the questions.

"I tried to buy it with PayPal, but I got a message from PayPal saying:"

If you pay via PayPal. Just send me an email saying that you want it shipped to an alternate address.

"abut 150 US but for me it is too much... i just want to speak it not learn grammer rules etc. i have bought it but havent really attempted it yet as its a Rolls Royce and I want a mini"

The program does not really teach the rules - It explains a rule and has you practice using that rule. The first section explain the basics about how Thai sentences are structured so one has a good idea of the concepts before starts learning the vocab. The section is only about 10 pages long and is just an overview it does not attempt to teach anything. The program does not focus on teaching you complex grammar rules as I believe this is an ineffective way to learn.

In terms of not wanting a Rolls Royce. The program aims to teach one the fundamentals of the Language. That includes getting one to a point where he can pronounce words correctly and form sentences to communicate in a basic manner.

If one was to want a "Mini", he could go out and purchase a phrasebook. The problem is that it is unlikely he will be understood when reading words from the phrase book. As Thai is a tonal language one needs to try to get a handle on this before he learns vocab. One also needs to ensure he pronounces the vowels and consonants in the correct manner.

"So, do the lessons with full audio using ANKI only run on Windows?"

The system works on both Mac and Win.

"I wrote the author of the system (Vincent?) an e-mail asking the same question, but never got a reply."

I am not sure where that message went, I process emails twice a day. Sometimes I am not accessible on the weekends. My skype is listed on the website. Feel free to add me.

"Exactly... why they have not inserted hyperlinks I do not know - the index is plain text - they should have indexed more thoroughly"

Good point. I have just updated the system. It now uses bookmarks so one can easily browse though the program. In terms of opening files. Please see the attached imaged. This is how your screen should be set out. This way you will find it quick and easy to browse though the files and play them while you have the e-book open. The reason why earlier versions did not have this is because the compilation and watermarking tool did not support it. I have now figured out a work around.

The program is designed to be completed from front to back. This ensures you develop the skills you will need for the next section. For the average learner he should start and the beginning and slowly work his way to the end. He should not need to skip sections.

The updates will be available on the website in the next few weeks I hope. I still have to create an online application which re-compiles the ebooks to watermark them. This is proving to be a time consuming task.

I try to follow as many people as I can through the program. Some people who have done short Thai courses and have been exposed to some spoken Thai pick the tones almost straight away. For others they need to spend a bit more time listening to all the syllables in the listening and speaking sections of the tone lessons as well as during the reading section. As you have been studying the language for so long but are still having troubles, perhaps it may be an idea to see an audiologist. I am sure they would be able to quickly identify where your problems lie and what (if anything) you can do to fix it. Please keep me updated.

This is Vincent from HighSpeedThai.

Some people find it easier than others to hear the tones. I have followed many people through the pronunciation, tone and reading lessons. Most people pick it up quite easily. If you have listened to the tone listening exercises extensively, you can also use the speaking exercises for listening practice. As you rightly mention, the reading exercises will give you a large amount practice listening to the tones. After you have learnt to read you will go on to listen to 75+ hours of clearly spoken Thai which will further improve you ability to hear the tones.

Developing the ability to hear the tones can take longer for some, you mention that you have been studying Thai for 13 years and still are unable to determine the tones. I have never across someone in the same situation as you. You situation does not reflect the average users experience with the HighSpeedThai program.

Could you report back to me after you have completed 10 vocab lessons?

I am creating some more tone exercises for the tones section for those that need it.

Couple more posts from TV users : http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Highspeedthaicom-t322009.html

There are a few posts about it from other ThaiVisa users here

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/High-Speed-Thai-t309537.html

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Walen-School...5&p=3001549 post by cmjantje towards the top of the page

Chiang Mai is great, very cheap and has eveything you could want

You are correct. The video is a very very very simple demonstration of the basics. It only attempts to give one a quick idea of how learning to read Thai does not have to be hard.

The actual material goes it to much greater depth and explains everything in great detail. You will also find that the reading section is made up of hundreds of small clips in which you will hear every possible ending sound being utilized. And importantly a native speaker narrates the text.

The audio clips are presented in Anki, a spaced repetition testing tool that allows you to very effectively practice concepts that you learn. After you have learnt to read you will then go on to listen to 70hrs + of audio spoken by a native Thai speaker which will further help you to get a feeling of the sounds in the Thai language.

Rather than trying to match Thai sounds with English sounds it is always better to listen to the pronunciation of a Thai native speaker. The system tries to encourage one to use his ears, this is why so much audio has been included in the system.