HELP: My Thai kids suck at Thai..

[MikeDK]

Sorry for the clickbait title. Here goes: I have two children of 7 and 8 years. Their mother is Thai, we are divorced, they stay with her half the time. I work at an international school and thus my children have access to free international education, which we make good use of. My children are therefore fluent in English and do very well in their subjects, and they enjoy school. However, their Thai language and cultural knowledge is falling behind. I will likely not be able to afford an intl university when they grow up; however, I would like to give them them the chance of international scholarships. 

 

We are now looking at how we can best boost their Thai, for which I see three options:

1. Keep them at the international school and get them a tutor for Thai on weekends. 
2. Send them to an English Programme Thai school. This is kind of the half-way option as some subjects would still be in English, but it is the one I am leaning towards as the quality of education is superior to fully Thai schools and I would still get free tuition.
3. Send them to a Thai government school. I do not like this as the education there is not particularly good and they would struggle hard in the beginning. However, the language gains might be significantly better, i don't know. 
    

Options 2 and 3 would ideally only apply until my children reach secondary; this means that my oldest child would be gone for two full years (Year 5 and 6) while my son would be gone for three (Years 4-6). 

 

I am looking for advice from parents and former intl students who have been in a similar situation; what worked for you, what did not work? Any tips and tricks, anything to avoid? 

 

Thanks!
 

[Etaoin Shrdlu]

Option 2 is likely your best bet.

 

Our children attended international schools and had outside tuition in Thai language, but this would not have been adequate preparation for a Thai university's domestic program. 

 

Some Thai schools have very good bilingual programs. I saw evidence of this when our children competed against students from Thai schools in debate competitions.

 

I would avoid the government schools.

[BKKBike09]

Does your wife speak to your kids in Thai? That is important. It doesn't matter if the kids speak back in English. Unless your wife speaks English absolutely fluently, she is not helping them. Even if her English is grammatically perfect, she should still speak to them mainly in Thai.

 

There are some good Thai-only (medium of instruction) schools - in Bangkok, Thawsi in Phrakhanong is one of them. Our daughter went there Por 1-Por 4. Then went to Int School. Her Thai however is still only okay, although she gets the cultural side of things. She reads well but her vocab is pretty basic.

 

If your kids don't want to be civil servants then Thai fluency, especially reading/writing, becomes less important.

 

 

[BritManToo]

11 hours ago, MikeDK said:

I am looking for advice from parents and former intl students who have been in a similar situation; what worked for you, what did not work? Any tips and tricks, anything to avoid? 

My 12 year old son has been in Thai government school, speaks English well but was struggling with Thai.

Last year we hired an after school Thai teacher for 3x 1hr sessions a week, not expensive and his Thai has got a lot better.

Next term he's changing to a Thai government High school with an English class of 20 students, at 8,500bht/term.

The lessons will nearly all be in English.

[bbko]

With my luk kreung son, I speak English with him and him mom speaks Thai, he attends a Thai school where he's tops in English, but in Thai he scores average grades. We stopped his Chinese course and his Thai grades improved.

Lot's of teachers offer classes after school hours to help boost the children's grades for small monthly fees. Ask around. 

[ChaiyaTH]

My son dislikes speaking Thai, he even gets angry when we try to only speak and answer in Thai with him to further improve it, and he is only 5 now.

[Callmeishmael]

Thai language as a subject has little to do with speaking Thai, it's more like studying grammar, literature and writing essays, so kids who speak Thai fluently can still struggle with Thai language as an academic subject.

 

Are your children self-motivated high achievers in their other subjects?  If so, then option 2 would probably be ok, but if they just have average grades I would keep them in your international school and hire a weekend tutor for their Thai.  Bilingual schools are a mixed bag, with some being good and others being awful.  Students who study and learn on their own can usually get a decent education out of even a mediocre school, but students that are less motivated will benefit from having good teachers and should probably stay in the international school where they should get more consistent support.

 

 

[Neeranam]

Years ago, when I worked at a Thai university, my two colleague had PhDs in Bilingual Language acquisition.

They stressed the importance of my wife(Thai) only speaking Thai to my kids and me only speaking English. 

This has worked well. One daughter is an international uni, she went to a EP government school. 

I wouldn't send them to international high schools as in my experience(Bangkok Pattana) the kids had a sense of entitlement and the mixed race ones dismissed their Thai roots. 

Thai school until M4, then EP, or International to prepare them for foreign unis.

[youreavinalaff]

2 hours ago, Neeranam said:

Years ago, when I worked at a Thai university, my two colleague had PhDs in Bilingual Language acquisition.

They stressed the importance of my wife(Thai) only speaking Thai to my kids and me only speaking English. 

This has worked well. One daughter is an international uni, she went to a EP government school. 

I wouldn't send them to international high schools as in my experience(Bangkok Pattana) the kids had a sense of entitlement and the mixed race ones dismissed their Thai roots. 

Thai school until M4, then EP, or International to prepare them for foreign unis.

I find it surprising and really quite sad that parents of mixed race kids allow one of the parental languages to be lacking.

 

Our daughter grew up quadlingual. 

 

I spoke to her only in English, my wife spoke only Thai. Grandparents spoke in Khmer and many friends of hers spoke Isaan Laos.

 

She attended Tha government school, non EP.

 

She is now working in a very good job in UK and studying further education. 

 

She is fluent in all 4 languages she was brought up with.

 

 

[GarryP]

14 minutes ago, youreavinalaff said:

I find it surprising and really quite sad that parents of mixed race kids allow one of the parental languages to be lacking.

 

Our daughter grew up quadlingual. 

 

I spoke to her only in English, my wife spoke only Thai. Grandparents spoke in Khmer and many friends of hers spoke Isaan Laos.

 

She attended Tha government school, non EP.

 

She is now working in a very good job in UK and studying further education. 

 

She is fluent in all 4 languages she was brought up with.

 

 

What language did you speak to your wife in? My wife only spoke Thai so I spoke to her in Thai. As a result, we only spoke Thai in the home. A screw up on my part but I didn't want to have to translate everything I said to my son for my wife to understand. Kicking myself now but what's done is done. 

[youreavinalaff]

16 minutes ago, GarryP said:

What language did you speak to your wife in? My wife only spoke Thai so I spoke to her in Thai. As a result, we only spoke Thai in the home. A screw up on my part but I didn't want to have to translate everything I said to my son for my wife to understand. Kicking myself now but what's done is done. 

We mixed it up. Sometimes speaking Thai sometimes English.

 

When I first met my, now, wife she didn't speak English. My Thai was OK but not great. We learnt each other's language from each other and continued learning when our daughter was born by using both languages at home. I learnt to read and write Thai at the same time as my daughter, with kids books.

 

We lived very close to my wife's family. If they were present we always spoke Thai. I think it would have been, still is when we are there, impolite to speak in English within their earshot.