ThaiPod101: dissapointing

[JackGats]

While learning with LTP I have also been testing ThaiPod101. I didn't expect the latter to be so massively inferior to the former.

 

ThaiPod have those bilingual sessions where a Thai woman discusses aspects of the language with an English speaking guy. Instead of each sticking to their respective mother tongues as they should, the Thai woman prattles on in English half the time. You emerge from such a ThaiPod discussion with zero learning gain, only with your head resonating with statements in Thai-accented English.

 

Do the core audio lessons make this course worthwhile? First off from what I could discern a non-native reads out lines in both the absolute beginner and the beginner series. I didn't test whether this went on in the more advanced series. Diction by non-natives is a no-no in any language programme. In a country of 70 million natives, couldn't one be paid to do the job?

 

The audio lessons are not only uninspired, they seem to follow no plan as to progression and vocab. Dialogues are followed by a short vocabulary list with translations. This vocab list has the vexing habit of omitting the most difficult terms that crop up in the dialogue. In a five-line dialogue about directions, "chai" (meaning yes) will be listed and translated, but "traffic lights" will be left for you to guess and search on the web. In a 4-line dialogue about Thai islands you will be left struggling with "shipping costs" etc. This is very irritating given that such short audio lessons would be expected to be self-contained at least as far as vocab is concerned.

 

These and other shortcomings is why I will probably not subscribe to ThaiPod although I had been planning to subscribe to it alongside LTP just for the sake of variety. 

 

I emailed ThaiPod to ask them about non-card payment but they haven't replied. Their mail bot has been sending me 3 sales pitch mails a day though.