Walen Or Pro Language?

[poanoi]

Here is evaluation of various techniques including AUA, but it appear the directly following method

TPR is more promising, but would require a competence among the teachers that is highly uncommon in Thailand.

http://effortlessacquisition.blogspot.com/2004_10_01_archive.html

[Parvis]

poanoi

Very informative reading on the website you provided. It is my believe that not only teachers require high competence - and - personal motivation - to follow these methods - but also some School proprietors "limited horizon" lack the ability/interest to comprehend this information - let alone to possibly improve their methods and educational material.

Thank you

Edited February 11, 2012 by Parvis

[MacWalen]

poanoi

Very informative reading on the website you provided. It is my believe that not only teachers require high competence - and - personal motivation - to follow these methods - but also some School proprietors "limited horizon" lack the ability/interest to comprehend this information - let alone to possibly improve their methods and educational material.

Thank you

Hi Khun Parvis, good to see you again old friend. Anything positive to say about Walen of just negative things? By the way we have a purple party on the 6th of March in Sheraton in Soi 15. Are you coming? 490 Baht, 4 drinks, prize draw, good company, good music, dancing. You are cordially invited. I am grateful to all of our students for supporting us over the years including you Sir. Whatever happened many years ago is history now and we have made so much progress since then. New schools under construction in Chiang Rai and Ko Samui and others coming soon. Our success would not be possible without students like you who supported us over the years.

Walen School - purple party 2012 coming soon, 6th of March, Four Points by Sheraton hotel. 9pm till late, tickets only 490 baht.

[MacWalen]

I wonder if teaches from other schools can dance as well as Walen staff does. All work and no fun is totally missing the point. So on the 6th of March party with Walen!

[MacWalen]

Our Walen mascot, it is very huggable. -)

[leosmith]

is this a statement about the method or the expectations from people?

It's both. Like you said, there are always people who don't research things carefully before starting, and wind up disappointed. But I've seen many post from people who are as gung-ho as you about it quit in disgust after only a few hours.

I read it. Not one of the posting is from someone that visit AUA.

The silent period is a well known technique, and not restricted to AUA. I tried to find posts from there, but couldn't. The language learning forum has many posts of people who tried this method. I'm not good at searching it, I just remember what I read. If you are really interested, start a thread. You are welcome there.

The FSI never mentioned fluency in this document. They mentioned that 1100 hours are approximate learning expectations AT THE Foreign Service Institute. What level of fluency will you have after these hours? And also, these are the hours for talking only if i am correct. Reading and writing not included.

Although FSI uses terms like "professional proficiency" more than "fluency", you are wrong about everything else in this paragraph. I made the assumption that this level would be more or less equal to the top level at AUA in order to make a comparison. But more than likely, the FSI level will be significantly higher. FSI is perhaps the worlds finest language learning institute - I recommend you read that whole document. It's very interesting to most polyglots.

many people complain that they alway forget what they learn from one vacation to another. With the AUA method this seems not to be the case. Even without being a C2 Thai speaker.

Again, this is false. It's not the method, but the final level you reach, which will determine how much maintenance you need.

[MacWalen]

I thought this thread was about Walen or Pro.

Leosmith, you are very knowledgeable, I certainly give you that. Do you like dancing? If so come to our Walen party, you will enjoy it. 6th of March.

[leosmith]

Leosmith, you are very knowledgeable, I certainly give you that. Do you like dancing? If so come to our Walen party, you will enjoy it. 6th of March.

Sure, provided you:

1. Apologize for calling me a liar and answer all the unanswered questions I’ve asked you. I will make you a list of post numbers if you’d like.
   
2. Reinstate and apologize to everyone you had banned. There aren’t very many of them, and this would be a very good thing for the forum.
   
3. Stop having posts deleted, people banned, and other preferential treatment from the moderators. Of course things like openly abusive posts should be deleted, but posts that question your teaching methods and materials should be allowed.
   
4. Stop starting advertising threads. Your banners are sufficient.
   
5. Start teaching conversation at your schools. It’s not hard, and this is a necessity for any good language school.
   
6. Teach material that will allow students to pass the Thai proficiency test. This will actually increase your business, as many students need to pass for various institutions.
   
7. Hire only teachers who are degreed and certified. This might be a grey area in the law, but hiring such teachers will do a lot toward mending the Thai community’s opinion of your school. These people can be trained just like anyone else.
   

If you do these things you will have a better school, will be better liked, will stay in business longer, and be more profitable. I will consider it a clean slate, and gladly come to your party. I’ll even buy you a beer.

[MacWalen]

Leosmith, you are very knowledgeable, I certainly give you that. Do you like dancing? If so come to our Walen party, you will enjoy it. 6th of March.

Sure, provided you:

1. Apologize for calling me a liar and answer all the unanswered questions I’ve asked you. I will make you a list of post numbers if you’d like.
   
2. Reinstate and apologize to everyone you had banned. There aren’t very many of them, and this would be a very good thing for the forum.
   
3. Stop having posts deleted, people banned, and other preferential treatment from the moderators. Of course things like openly abusive posts should be deleted, but posts that question your teaching methods and materials should be allowed.
   
4. Stop starting advertising threads. Your banners are sufficient.
   
5. Start teaching conversation at your schools. It’s not hard, and this is a necessity for any good language school.
   
6. Teach material that will allow students to pass the Thai proficiency test. This will actually increase your business, as many students need to pass for various institutions.
   
7. Hire only teachers who are degreed and certified. This might be a grey area in the law, but hiring such teachers will do a lot toward mending the Thai community’s opinion of your school. These people can be trained just like anyone else.
   

If you do these things you will have a better school, will be better liked, will stay in business longer, and be more profitable. I will consider it a clean slate, and gladly come to your party. I’ll even buy you a beer.

Dear Leosmith, I guess we agree to disagree, hard to please everyone no matter how hard I try. We will need to do without you at the party then but you were invited. Things are not as bad as you picture them and certainly saying that I banned anyone is not true, there are rules and if people break them they are banned, I was also almost banned so it applies to everyone. I will say things are going very well so we will continue as what we do works for most students. Sure there are some who do not like Walen that much for various reasons and we will do our best to try to win them over in time. We have students who went to some other schools as some tried to discourage them from Walen but just about everyday we have students moving to our school from other schools. In the end Walen is Walen and it is worth joining our school.

Criticizing moderators is never a good thing and this is what you just did, questioning their integrity and motives.

Edited February 11, 2012 by MacWalen

[NewlyMintedThai]

Mac,

Just wondering about your own level of Thai speaking, reading, and writing. You must be near native fluency, spending most of your day at Walen as you must.

[Paangjang]

Mac,

Just wondering about your own level of Thai speaking, reading, and writing. You must be near native fluency, spending most of your day at Walen as you must.

This should be interesting.

I know the answer to this question because his staff used to talk about this a lot.

Can't wait to see the answer With respect

[MacWalen]

Mac,

Just wondering about your own level of Thai speaking, reading, and writing. You must be near native fluency, spending most of your day at Walen as you must.

This should be interesting.

I know the answer to this question because his staff used to talk about this a lot.

Can't wait to see the answer With respect

I am not fluent in Thai but I am doing ok, still learning so can relate to my students very well as I am one of them.

[NewlyMintedThai]

How long have you been at it?

[MacWalen]

How long have you been at it?

I have been learning new words for the last 10 years, and grammar of course. I can explain things related to my business, talk with construction guys and explain what I want and how I want it to be done. I can talk about most general topics. I can also teach beginner Thai classes but as we have lots of Thai teachers I don't do it, perhaps just as a demonstration. I don't feel a pressing need of passing any government exams as I am learning Thai for myself and for my business. I might do it in the future though. I am certainly at a much higher level than most of my students. There are of course people who know Thai much better than me and no matter how hard I try I may never be able to speak Thai as fluently as Thai people. I have been running my Walen school for the last 10.5 years and fluency in languages taught is not a requirement to be a successful school manager the same as football coaches do not have to play football better then their players. Managements and training skills are required for this.