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Thai Wife learning English

Featured Replies

Her Thai teacher say sentences like.

This is its Chair.

This Chair is its.

That is Its wallet.

That wallet is its.

These are its tables. 

These tables are its.

Those are its pens.

Those pens are its.

 

 I am English and have never heard anything like this in a English sentence! Is it Legit?

Thai English teachers are often that bad, you either accept it, or look for another teacher.

Complaining or trying to correct them just gets you in trouble.

Edited by BritManToo

Its a long way from being legit. I would be looking for another teacher because once bad habits are formed it will be difficult to break the cycle.

And a tip here, better to use a native English speaker for a teacher, not a Thai and not a Fillipino either because from my experience as a teacher for many years, most Fillipinos I've worked with are not a whole lot better. If you are going to do something, better to do it right from the start.

I’m surprised you married someone who doesn’t speak English? Soon you’ll be being nagged in your own language ... ?

Well why not get your wife an English, English teacher  so that she is taught, and she can learn, correctly ? Many Thais speak a bastardised English. 

Edited by Esso49

  • Author
7 minutes ago, Esso49 said:

Well why not get your wife an English, English teacher  so that she is taught, and she can learn, correctly ? Many Thais speak a bastardised English. 

Where is any in Chiang Mai  I prefer a private tutor. American, Australian or British.

 

Edited by Duaned
add on

7 minutes ago, Esso49 said:

Well why not get your wife an English, English teacher  so that she is taught, and she can learn, correctly ? Many Thais speak a bastardised English. 

An English ex colleague changed his profession, studied and became a teacher where his first teaching job was in South Korea.

 

He had THE strongest Mancunian accent you can imagine.

27 minutes ago, Duaned said:

Where is any in Chiang Mai  I prefer a private tutor. American, Australian or British.

 

YMCA do English courses, and they're very cheap.

The English is grammatically correct though it is a stretch to attach meaning.

9 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

YMCA do English courses, and they're very cheap.

You mean this ?  ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dks2NJAVhUs

1 hour ago, Duaned said:

Her Thai teacher say sentences like.

This is its Chair.

This Chair is its.

That is Its wallet.

That wallet is its.

These are its tables. 

These tables are its.

Those are its pens.

Those pens are its.

Just a thought, was the teacher talking about a ladyboys stuff?

just to confirm, you're English and questioning whether these sentences are legitimate?

20 minutes ago, Esso49 said:

No, I learned to read and write Thai with YMCA, they do a very good job at a reasonable price.

They also run holiday activities for kids, and English courses for Thais (mainly Thai ladies from what I saw).

Just off Huey Keow road in Santitham area.

Can you not teach her yourself? 

 

I insisted my Mrs utilise a book for daily chores, things to do, we need, general planning. When out shopping if it was not in the book it did not get purchased.

 

It took a year of nagging to get her to use it. It took a year to get her to use it correctly and now she is an organisation queen. The beauty of it was her English improved dramatically. 3 years but well worth while. 

Edited by Rc2702

  • 6 months later...

my thai wife has a good start on english .. i have used the scrabble game to improve on her english 

 

using  google translate to make the connections ... 

  • 3 weeks later...

Schools often employ non native speaking teachers...they're cheaper.

 

My son who grew up in Singapore, so is totally fluent would show me the 'corrections' his English teacher would make to his work.

The words would be spelt correctly but sentence structure would be absurd.

 

The thing with English, as a German friend of mine very accurately said..

"English is an easy language to speak badly", since so long as you know vocabulary you can, string it all together and unlike many languages it's understandable, even if it's weird sentence construction.

That's why many English 'teachers' in Thailand get away with it

 

There are a ton of websites where you can get a native speaker to teach her online

  • 2 months later...
Can you not teach her yourself? 
 
I insisted my Mrs utilise a book for daily chores, things to do, we need, general planning. When out shopping if it was not in the book it did not get purchased.
 
It took a year of nagging to get her to use it. It took a year to get her to use it correctly and now she is an organisation queen. The beauty of it was her English improved dramatically. 3 years but well worth while. 
Sounds like an excellent way to learn, but requiring fairly heavy discipline. Your wife must be special to withstand that!
You've given me a positive direction for my Thai language study, thank you!

Sent from my SM-T385 using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app

Well that's how my wife speaks, but she mostly learnt from me and English is my third tongue.. But now she teaches in the local private school. The mind boggles.

Are there any decent software programmes for teaching a 7 year old English ?

Edited by NE1

  • 2 weeks later...

My wife learnt her so called English from watching western films that had subtitles in Thai. Just one small problem doing that is she liked gangster films so she has picked up some bad stuff. Things like P/ss off, F off she uses them to tell people to go away. It does sound funny said in a Thai accent, so she gets away with it. Just an idea but don't use gangster films to look at.

On 9/9/2018 at 4:29 PM, Duaned said:

never heard anything like this in a English sentence! Is it Legit?

Is what legit? The sentences? 

 

Learning English is not easy... immersion is the best way to learn any language... 

 

Can you explain this?

 

I fly

you fly

we fly

He flies

they fly... 

 

sure better to take the bus but why "flies"?? 

  • 3 weeks later...
On 7/5/2019 at 3:08 PM, kenk24 said:

Can you explain this?

 

I fly

you fly

we fly

He flies

they fly... 

 

sure better to take the bus but why "flies"?? 

To remember this students in Germany are taught: He, She, It - Das 's' muss mit

Meaning about: He, She, It - Add an 's'

This is imho one of the easy parts of English language.

 

I think one big problem of English is that for many words the only way to pronounce them correctly is to listen to somebody say it.

There are some rules like when a vowel is short or long, but for many English words you can just not tell how to pronounce it by just reading it.

This is especially difficult for people whose mother tongue allows you to pronounce a word correctly just by reading it, like for example Thai (there are a few exceptions, but for 99% of Thai words you can read it and then pronounce it correctly, without ever having heard the word)

Edited by jackdd

7 hours ago, jackdd said:

To remember this students in Germany are taught: He, She, It - Das 's' muss mit

Meaning about: He, She, It - Add an 's'

This is imho one of the easy parts of English language.

My question was not how to remember it... I was asking why there is this exception. Why add the "s" ?

On 9/9/2018 at 5:26 PM, AlexRich said:

I’m surprised you married someone who doesn’t speak English? Soon you’ll be being nagged in your own language ... ?

????One of the joys of not speaking Thai is to be able to ride on the BTS without know what rubbish is being spouted on the TV screens.

7 minutes ago, kenk24 said:

My question was not how to remember it... I was asking why there is this exception. Why add the "s" ?

Search for something like "why do we need to conjugate verbs" on Google and you find a variety of reasons and opinions.

It's just how the language has evolved. Looks like english wouldn't need it because you always add a pronoun, but other (european) languages don't always use a pronoun, so by conjugating verbs it becomes clear who is doing something. Give english a bit more time, maybe in the future the s for he/she/it will not be added anymore.

2 minutes ago, jackdd said:

Search for something like "why do we need to conjugate verbs" on Google and you find a variety of reasons and opinions.

It's just how the language has evolved. Looks like english wouldn't need it because you always add a pronoun, but other (european) languages don't always use a pronoun, so by conjugating verbs it becomes clear who is doing something. Give english a bit more time, maybe in the future the s for he/she/it will not be added anymore.

ok - thanks. I will wait. 

On 3/31/2019 at 9:06 PM, GinBoy2 said:

Schools often employ non native speaking teachers...they're cheaper.

 

My son who grew up in Singapore, so is totally fluent would show me the 'corrections' his English teacher would make to his work.

The words would be spelt correctly but sentence structure would be absurd.

 

The thing with English, as a German friend of mine very accurately said..

"English is an easy language to speak badly", since so long as you know vocabulary you can, string it all together and unlike many languages it's understandable, even if it's weird sentence construction.

That's why many English 'teachers' in Thailand get away with it

 

There are a ton of websites where you can get a native speaker to teach her online

Not really. There are online teaching companies who lie about their online teachers.

 

They're all Native English speakers, no matter where they live.

 

   Some companies make profiles of their teachers that they're all in the US, or other native speaking countries, even when Filipinos are the teachers. 

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