What does your fluency roadmap look like?

[chawbdurian]

To those more advanced in Thai, could you summarize your journey until now?

 

I feel like I'm stuck in a weird intermediate stage where I'm not making any progress and would love to read other people's stories.

[KhunLA]

ถนนลูกรัง ... a gravel road 

[DezLez]

9 minutes ago, KhunLA said:

ถนนลูกรัง ... a gravel road 

One of your least helpful responses on a serious subject!

[pimmmm]

1 hour ago, chawbdurian said:

To those more advanced in Thai, could you summarize your journey until now?

 

I feel like I'm stuck in a weird intermediate stage where I'm not making any progress and would love to read other people's stories.

You're making progress if you're practicing, but progress from the intermediate to advanced levels takes ages in languages, especially Thai.  Reflect on progress every 200 hours or so of practice. 

If you've not done it yet, improve your pronunciation through good teaching and serious practice.  When in doubt, read and listen a lot to build your vocabulary.  

[KhunLA]

1 hour ago, DezLez said:

One of your least helpful responses on a serious subject!

Actually kind of factual, considering the thread title 😎

[proton]

Same dead end as when started 31 years ago 🙃

[Ralf001]

conversational - Zero.

technical stuff at work - 100%

[Cameroni]

45 minutes a day. 

 

30 new words a day.

 

Easy.

[Equatorial]

6 hours ago, Cameroni said:

45 minutes a day. 

 

30 new words a day.

 

Easy.

 

@Cameroni, in your experience, what is the most productive way to spend those 45 minutes a day? How do you pick the 30 new words? 

 

I am asking because I feel the same way as the OP. I am past the beginner stage, have gone through many of the Becker type of books, and I not sure what is the best way to move forward.   

[RAZZELL]

6 hours ago, Cameroni said:

45 minutes a day. 

 

30 new words a day.

 

Easy.

 

100 days and with 3000 words...doubtful.

[Equatorial]

5 hours ago, RAZZELL said:

100 days and with 3000 words...doubtful.

 

Actually, it's not unrealistic.

 

You can learn 30 words a day... of course you won't retain all, but with a learning process like that in place maybe you will add 1,000 words to your vocabulary in 100 days. Or even 500 or 300... no matter how small, steady progress is always better than no progress. 

[KhunLA]

With any language, if you don't use, you will lose.   Was fluent is Spanish @ 18 yrs old, and was fairly useless 20 yrs later when I when to Mexico.

 

I could probably easily pick it up again, as when I watch and movie with Mexican & Spanish, I catch about half of it.  6 months of living in Mexico, and I'd probably be fluent again.

 

I lost a lot of Thai with present wife and moving out of the village, as no longer talked with daughters grandparents or Uncles.  Actually needed some Thai when playing single parent.   Present wife took over as translator, so back to just the very basic Thai.

 

Too lazy to care, as nobody really to talk to anyway, since moving away from Udon Thani & Nong Bu LamPhu, as the only place I really used it.

[Cameroni]

6 hours ago, Equatorial said:

 in your experience, what is the most productive way to spend those 45 minutes a day? How do you pick the 30 new words? 

 

Any way you like, as long as you are learning new words in Thai. There is really no secret, and no special strategy for learning a new language. It comes down to two main things: 1) Learn new vocabulary 2) Learn the grammar. In Thai there is in addition the alphabet and tonality, but whilst I very much will and want to learn the alphabet, that's down the line. First is to become conversationally confident.

 

I'm tri-lingual and speak several languages fluently, I have taught languages to others, and this method works. What I do is leverage Youtube, there are tons of new vocabulary videos. You pick one and do your time. Will you remember everything, obviously not unless you have a special memory abilities, however, you will remember enough to make progress and learn the language. This is an issue of time.  The more time you sacrifice the faster it will be.

 

25 minutes ago, KhunLA said:

With any language, if you don't use, you will lose. 

 

Very true that.

[pimmmm]

6 hours ago, Equatorial said:

 

@Cameroni, in your experience, what is the most productive way to spend those 45 minutes a day? How do you pick the 30 new words? 

 

I am asking because I feel the same way as the OP. I am past the beginner stage, have gone through many of the Becker type of books, and I not sure what is the best way to move forward.   

For you, try advanced beginner or early intermediate material like the comprehensible thai channel, pickup Thai podcast, self-study- thai.com, maybe คำนี้ดี podcast, it teaches English to Thai people, so it is easier to understand.

This can build your vocabulary, improve your reading fluency and listening comprehension, and assume you know how to read; this is a priority.  Learn to read properly, too, so you can accurately pronounce the written words (tone rules).

Do a class with a good teacher who will correct your pronunciation, and avoid the "it's ok, I can understand you" thing you need some correction.

Of course, keep using it in day-to-day life,  read everything you see in the world around you, ask Thai friends/partner to explain words, etc..  

If you want to cram vocabulary like someone suggested, spaced repetition software like Anki is the most efficient, but a bit of a boring slog. 


 

[Will B Good]

 

So far, so good......

 

Took the wife two weeks to teach me how to say stupid.

[ColeBOzbourne]

Sometimes, when learning a language, I feel like I hit a 'glass ceiling' and am not making progress as I was before. At that point I like to change my study routine, or add something more intensive to it. For me, I often hire a one-on-one teacher until I feel like I've been bumped up to that next level. 

[Cameroni]

I like to walk 50 minutes in the morning. When I: do I listen to a Thai language podcast that teaches vocabulary. Two birds with one stone.

[NorthernRyland]

1 hour ago, pimmmm said:

For you, try advanced beginner or early intermediate material like the comprehensible thai channel, pickup Thai podcast, self-study- thai.com, maybe คำนี้ดี podcast, it teaches English to Thai people, so it is easier to understand.

 

This is the correct answer. You feel stuck? Then go try to watch something Thai on YouTube. Do you not understand it? Great, now you have something to work on. 

[NorthernRyland]

10 hours ago, Equatorial said:

 

@Cameroni, in your experience, what is the most productive way to spend those 45 minutes a day? How do you pick the 30 new words? 

 

I am asking because I feel the same way as the OP. I am past the beginner stage, have gone through many of the Becker type of books, and I not sure what is the best way to move forward.   

 

Search for any Thai text to read and when you hit the first word you don't know then learn it. That's a really good filter. Scan through Thai peoples facebook is good for common words but it's also quite hard because of all the  slang and expressions they use, and honestly you probably won't be speaking that naturally. News sites are another good source if you keep away from politics which have government agency names etc... which you don't really need.

 

If you can't read then you should do that first before anything else. Then you can try some social media content like YouTube and when you hear a word you don't understand ask a Thai person what it means or if you can manage to spell it then you can search yourself. I'm not nearly good enough to spell out Thai words I hear so I would ask my wife.

[pimmmm]

21 hours ago, NorthernRyland said:

 

Search for any Thai text to read and when you hit the first word you don't know then learn it. That's a really good filter. Scan through Thai peoples facebook is good for common words but it's also quite hard because of all the  slang and expressions they use, and honestly you probably won't be speaking that naturally. News sites are another good source if you keep away from politics which have government agency names etc... which you don't really need.

 

If you can't read then you should do that first before anything else. Then you can try some social media content like YouTube and when you hear a word you don't understand ask a Thai person what it means or if you can manage to spell it then you can search yourself. I'm not nearly good enough to spell out Thai words I hear so I would ask my wife.

This is good advice.  It's helpful to focus on the most important areas to you too, like content about your work, or daily life stuff, whatever.  I was recently shopping for a car so I watched and read lots of Thai car content. you see the same words repeated so it helps you remember them. 

Nowadays, there are a lot of subtitles on YouTube too, so you can look up words you don't know easily. 

I like the Language Reactor Chrome extension, it lets you auto-pause after each subtitled line, and replay.  You can hide and show the subs too, so you can practice listening and/or reading alone. 

It has an included dictionary feature as well think it's based on Google Translate so far from perfect but it can help. 

[NorthernRyland]

5 hours ago, pimmmm said:

Nowadays, there are a lot of subtitles on YouTube too, so you can look up words you don't know easily. 

 

CC on YouTube works with Thai too.

 

I found some channels on YouTube with Thai women who moved on abroad and share stories. It's like the Thailand expat circles but inverted 180 degrees. 🙂 This woman speaks very clearly and is entertaining. If you don't understand turn on CC or ask a Thai person. It's mostly all basic vocab anyone should know.

 

 

Another one I like is this guy because it's DIY building content and educational in a very practical way. If you needed to do building work you could learn all the words you needed here.

 

 

[chawbdurian]

On 7/9/2025 at 5:27 AM, pimmmm said:

This is good advice.  It's helpful to focus on the most important areas to you too, like content about your work, or daily life stuff, whatever.  I was recently shopping for a car so I watched and read lots of Thai car content. you see the same words repeated so it helps you remember them. 

Nowadays, there are a lot of subtitles on YouTube too, so you can look up words you don't know easily. 

I like the Language Reactor Chrome extension, it lets you auto-pause after each subtitled line, and replay.  You can hide and show the subs too, so you can practice listening and/or reading alone. 

It has an included dictionary feature as well think it's based on Google Translate so far from perfect but it can help. 

Language Reactor is an absolute game changer! Thanks for the rec

 

Lots of great advice in this thread 

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