Just Signed Up For 60 Hours

[helicoptor]

I have just signed up for a 60 hour course with a school in Pattaya, that includes Speaking, Reading and Writing Thai. To enable me to communicate with staff at the company I work where their English is limited and also to be able to order food from the off-the-beaten-track food stalls near to where I live.

What advice would other TVers give me to best utilize this time? How many times a week? Focus on writing first or speaking? I am going to give 100%.

I am due to start after Songkhran. Any advice from people who have done such a course would be appreciated

[kriswillems]

It all depends on your goal and current knowledge of Thai language and your talent for studying languages.

Goal is being fluent in Thai:

- learn to read and write and speak

- start with reading

- you'll need more than 60 hours

Goal is basic conversation and you've no excisting knowledge:

- learn to speak only

Goal is basic conversation and you can already speak a bit Thai:

- learn to speak and spend a bit time on reading and writing too.

- you'll not be fluent in reading, but you can manage to understand some road signs.

If you've only 60 hours, the best is to leave some time between 2 schooldays. Don't stay in the school longer than 3 hours per day (you're brain will be cooked if it's a one-by-one course). If you plan to study at home, you could take a free day after every day with a course. That day you can reverse at home what you've seen in the course.

I followed a Spanish course for 240 hours and I was almost fluent in Spanish after that. I studied about 1000 hours Thai language (mainly self-study, but I am also in a course) and I am still at a beginners level. Most foreigners never get any further than a beginners level. 60 hours is really not much, but still much better than nothing.

Where did you sign up (which school)?A private course or a classroom course?

Edited April 10, 2007 by kriswillems

[helicoptor]

It all depends on your goal and current knowledge of Thai language and your talent for studying languages.

Goal is being fluent in Thai:

- learn to read and write and speak

- start with reading

- you'll need more than 60 hours

Goal is basic conversation and you've no excisting knowledge:

- learn to speak only

Goal is basic conversation and you can already speak a bit Thai:

- learn to speak and spend a bit time on reading and writing too.

- you'll not be fluent in reading, but you can manage to understand some road signs.

If you've only 60 hours, the best is to leave some time between 2 schooldays. Don't stay in the school longer than 3 hours per day (you're brain will be cooked if it's a one-by-one course). If you plan to study at home, you could take a free day after every day with a course. That day you can reverse at home what you've seen in the course.

I followed a Spanish course for 240 hours and I was almost fluent in Spanish after that. I studied about 1000 hours Thai language (mainly self-study, but I am also in a course) and I am still at a beginners level. Most foreigners never get any further than a beginners level. 60 hours is really not much, but still much better than nothing.

Where did you sign up (which school)?A private course or a classroom course?

Its a place near Tukcom off Pattaya Tai

Pattaya Universal language and computer school

they had a deal in the paper 9000 tb for 60 hours read write speak thai

we shall see how it pans out - I start after Songkhran

[helicoptor]

Well I had my first hour lesson last night and to say I am disappointed is an understatement, the guy is not a teacher by any stretch of the imagination, he had no structure and I seemed to be leading the way by asking lots of questions, ie what does ... mean in thai? how do you say ...? etc

Its all a bit knee-jerk at the moment, my 'homework' is to learn the days of the week before next wednesdays lesson, I failed to mention I already know them

I am sure I can get a lot more from this guy but he himself needs guidance on teaching, I am at a loss as what is best to learn first, can anyone give me some pointers?

[Tywais]

I am sure I can get a lot more from this guy but he himself needs guidance on teaching, I am at a loss as what is best to learn first, can anyone give me some pointers?

I would suspect going for 'survival skills' would be a good place to start. Things like shopping at the market, asking directions, reading street and store signs, etc. Here is one list of examples of survival skills (though needs modified for Thailand) > http://wilearns.state.wi.us/apps/default.asp?cid=749

However, I have a suspicion you may have them already.

[meadish_sweetball]

Sorry to hear the course was not what you expected, Helicopter.

Good teachers are scarce. If you have the chance to get up to Bangkok and study some time in the future, Unity Language School should have what you need, a structured and demanding course for serious students... with a proven track record.

I guess if you've already signed up and paid for this course, you will have to try to make the best out of the situation. Perhaps focus on learning how to read, and also to make sure your sounds and tones are correct, as your teacher is probably much better equipped to teach you this than to help you translate idiomatic English into idiomatic Thai.

The other angle would be to study conversational Thai from a Thai viewpoint, which means, you learn what Thais actually say instead of translating typical English conversations into Thai.

None of these will be of that much use in the workplace but they would provide a good start. You could get specific vocabulary and phrases for the workplace by asking here and in other forums instead.

[kriswillems]

I've ever followed a course in Pattaya and my impression was very similar to yours. The teacher taught 45 hours per week (4 students per day). She didn't prepare anything because she just didn't have any time. And she also didn't have much experience teaching. She didn't have a course books and she just didn't know where to start. I believe she worked hard and really tried to teach but she was unprepared. Classroom courses are sometimes better than private courses because the responsibility is bigger. You can't go to stand in front of a group of 10 people without any teaching experience and without preparing anything.

Next time I am planning to go to BKK (probably piammitr). I will only look for schools of which some students actually were able to pass a pratom 6 test.

I would buy the books of B.P becker (if you haven't already read them) and ask him to follow the books.

Edited April 24, 2007 by kriswillems

[soundman]

Well I had my first hour lesson last night and to say I am disappointed is an understatement, the guy is not a teacher by any stretch of the imagination, he had no structure and I seemed to be leading the way by asking lots of questions, ie what does ... mean in thai? how do you say ...? etc

Its all a bit knee-jerk at the moment, my 'homework' is to learn the days of the week before next wednesdays lesson, I failed to mention I already know them

I am sure I can get a lot more from this guy but he himself needs guidance on teaching, I am at a loss as what is best to learn first, can anyone give me some pointers?

Helicopter,

If you are serious about learning thai past the "sawat dee krup" & "korp koon krup" level, the first step, the one that will put you ahead of the pack & make learning much easier, is to take the time to learn the thai alphabet correctly. Every consonant, every vowel etc etc. You can do this at home & in your own time. Buy a self learn CD, game style thing, work on it...

This will help you so much when you are having difficulty hearing something spoken to you. Tell the person to spell it. (or write it down in thai script) Bang, correct pronuciation in a blink & much easier to put away into the memory banks upstairs.

It doesn't take that long to master, & if talking thai with your staff is what you want - this is the fast track. จริง ๆ

Cheers,

Soundman.

[SNGLIFE]

lol! I too took one of those Pattaya 60 hour courses a looong time ago. My advice is this:

- Learn vocabulary on your own and get the teacher to help with the correct pronunciation.

- Get the teacher to focus on word order and sentence structure

- NEVER rely on romanized phonetics - it's just rarely accurate because of limitations of the author's understanding of phonetics, or yours, or both

- Practice with Thais every chance you get and take note of (eaves drop) Thai-Thai conversations. You will quickly realize that NOBODY except wanna-be fluent westerners ever bother with trying to perfect tones and other such rubbish anymore than you do when speaking english (BTW, english has MANY more tones!).

[ray23]

I have been going down that road now for a lot longer then 60 hours, I would say this to you. Realize that you didn't learn your native language in 60 hours and you not going to learn Thai in 60 hours either.

I think the approach of reading, writing and speaking is the best approach. As has been pointed out use it at every opportunity. Once you start down this road continue on, if you want to be able to speak in Thai.

Tones and proper Thai, I promise you if you you use proper Thai in Issan even if you do it perfectly people around here are not going to understand you. Just like anyother language theer is the proper language and slang. But if you learn the prope language learning the slang will cone eay.

Good Luck to yuo, have as much fun with the classes as you can.

[meadish_sweetball]

- Learn vocabulary on your own and get the teacher to help with the correct pronunciation.

- Get the teacher to focus on word order and sentence structure

- NEVER rely on romanized phonetics - it's just rarely accurate because of limitations of the author's understanding of phonetics, or yours, or both

- Practice with Thais every chance you get and take note of (eaves drop) Thai-Thai conversations. You will quickly realize that NOBODY except wanna-be fluent westerners ever bother with trying to perfect tones and other such rubbish anymore than you do when speaking english (BTW, english has MANY more tones!).

Your first three points are all reasonable, but your last point about tones shows a lack of understanding.

Let's say two immigrants to the UK having a conversation, where one knows a little bit of English and the other is a recent arrival who knows almost none:

"Don't bother with learning to pronounce the difference between 'i' and 'e', 'p' and 'b', 'ch' and 's', 'd' and 't'. Listen to the locals - they cannot speak English. And Arabic has many more consonant sounds anyway."

Grown up Thais with Central Thai as their mother tongue do not mispronounce tones. However, there are patterns of tone variation in spoken Thai, and these patterns can be learned and applied - otherwise Thais would not be able to communicate with each other to a reasonable level. Remember the tones are essentially sound curve shapes, not absolute rigid pitches on a scale. The important thing to achieve is that the shape of the tone falls within the range of what is perceived as that particular tone, and that each tone maintains the right relative distance to the others. If you change the pitch of all the tones up or down in your voice register, but still maintain the right shapes you will still be understood (but it will strain your voice because we only have so large a vocal range to work with because of physical limitations).

BTW, english has MANY more tones!

English does not have phonemic tones like Thai. English has intonation, which is a different concept. In English, voice pitch modulation over entire utterances is used to indicate the distinction between statements and questions, as well as commands, and emotions. Applying this type of voice pitch modulation to Thai completely kills the system of phonemic tones that is almost essential for Thais to understand each other. To be able to pull off showing emotion in your voice in Thai, you need to learn how Thais do it. The same goes for questions, statements and commands (indicated mainly by particles). The first thing to do is to learn to say the tones correctly with a neutral voice, void of feeling. Once you can do that, then go on to do the rest, otherwise you will remain confused and confusing.

If you say 'pet' in English, it means pet, no matter what pitch shape you apply to the word. It can be construed as a question provided you modulate it right. You can also say it as if you were hopeful, annoyed, spiteful, angry etc. But no matter how much you change the intonation, you can not make it mean "moussaka" or "Bethnal Green".

Also remember a great number of Thais in Pattaya and Bangkok speak Isaan dialects, not Central Thai. So if their tones deviate from the norm when they talk to each other, it is not because they cannot speak Thai. It is because they are not speaking it. And if you keep listening, you will notice that those dialects also have their own, regular tone systems.