Get Ready...it's The Government P6 Exam

[SoftWater]

My idea for this thread was to have useful exercises for the ป.6 or ‘P6’ government Thai language test for foreigners. The first one is in the next post, and you could skip straight to it if you only want to read the last bit of this post, which has some practical information, marked “The specific point” at the end.

Me, I’m kind of stuck here for awhile with the justifications, explanations and rationale stuff that may just save some needless discussions or confusions later on. Feel free to leave me here คนเดียว if you want, but don’t forget to come back and read what follows before posting questions that may already be answered…

First, a word about the material. I’ve seen such a wealth of great tips and learning aids on this and other sites over the years, but one thing I’ve never seen anyone else mention is the one place where I find all my best Thai language learning materials…go into a SE-ED, B2S, Chula Book centre or any other mainly Thai language bookshop; struggle your way through deciphering the various section headings (a good reading exercise in itself) till you find the Thai schoolbooks section. And behold…

Here you’ll find the stuff Thai teachers use to teach Thai to Thai kids, and if you own a good dictionary and can read basic Thai, you’ll never bother wasting hundreds of baht on that meagre, over-priced farang-targeted material again. Here you can get a 300-page book on ภาษาไทย ป.5 or ป.6 for between 60 to 90 baht. They usually come with answer keys, and some come with websites. If the exercises in this thread are too hard for you or you’re just a beginner at reading, go to the baby section (that’s where I started when my kids were born) and read the board books and bedtime stories, or find whatever level of kids stuff that you think you can handle with a challenge, and work your way up to P5 and P6 over time.

“Hah, I’m not a child, what use will that be to me?” you think. Actually lots.

I’ve found the vocab surprisingly useful, and far more likely to stimulate a decent conversation than the dried up cliché’s you find in all the farang beginner guides of ‘I am from England’ and ‘I am learning passa thai’ and the other redundant stuff that dries up what those sort of books call ‘a conversation’ in less than 30 seconds.

If you’re at the level where you feel you still need stuff with some English, further along the shelf in the same section you’ll see the books they use in Thai schools for teaching English (the locally produced stuff, not the big glossy Western publishers’ material). These books are not only cheap but more importantly cram-packed full of useful phrases in both English and Thai. The English often leaves a lot to be desired, but the Thai is as authentic as it comes, particularly useful if you’re going to do the P6, which is a written exam (one word of warning here: the English phrases may be conversational, but the Thai translation can be a bit more formal, which is great for learning vocab, grammar, and reading and writing, but you’ll have to take your chances as to conversational use).

OK, digression over, I’m just about getting to the point. The material I intend to post here is from the all-Thai language P5 and P6 school textbooks. I’m only “quoting” some small excerpts; the translations, vocab lists and exercises are all my own graft unless otherwise stated.

I also quote the source in every case and encourage you to buy it for this one, overwhelmingly good reason: in my opinion, these books are THE BEST WAY to learn written Thai – better than this thread, this website, this book or that book or any other book – because they contain structured language lessons written in Thai by Thais, and there’s no English to help you out. You are, as they say, immersed in the language, and you have to figure out not just the learning exercises but the instructions, the questions and the answer keys too. One of the major drawbacks of the farang-aimed material (and, by extension, this thread too) is that a lot of the cognitive work necessary for internalisation is done for you. Not so with the P5 and P6 Thai school textbooks, and that’s why I think they’re an ideal, albeit laborious, way to prep for the gov’t P6 exam because once you can handle these, you should basically be at P6 level.

OK, I’ve got one more issue to cover, which I’ll try to do with a bit less digression, and that is translation. There are two points here, one general, one specific.

The general one: I know some people think that word-to-word literal-style translations are more helpful than translations that parse Thai into natural English. Personally, I’m not sure about that. It’s certainly true at the beginner level that remembering that phrases like ‘red car’ will become ‘car red’ in Thai is useful, but once you get to anything more complicated than a few phrases, it’s almost impossible – at least for me – to remember the literal word order in unnatural English anyway, unless I remember the Thai first. Moreover, I think translating Thai into non-natural and rather bizarre-sounding English gives a false impression of the real meaning and of the subtlety of expression in Thai. I think you can only really learn how to say things in natural Thai if you start thinking of what you read in Thai as equivalent to natural English.

I’ll concede that this is only a theory, since my own Thai has not reached that level yet, and that there may be an academic debate worth having over this; but if that’s where your interest lies – rather than in prepping for P6 exam – please start a new thread instead of posting opinions on this one. I’ll be happy to take part, but here I only want to explain why I’ve translated in the way I have, which is basically into as natural-sounding English as I can without straying too far from what is actually written in the original.

The specific one: the specific point about translation is that you will notice the occasional insertion of *asterisks* between blocks of translated text.

*Asterisks* are WARNINGS to beginners and PLEAS FOR HELP to the more advanced!

They indicate, with increasing strength, my uncertainty in some part of the translation. Thus, a block of text enclosed with *a single asterisk* means that I am reasonably certain the main idea is right, but feel I may possibly have missed some nuance or subtlety of meaning. ** Two asterisks ** means I don’t feel justified in any of the natural English translations that I can think of, so I’ve more or less gone with a literal word-for-word translation that fits the context. *** Three asterisks *** means I know for sure there is a definite ambiguity in the translation, and normally I’ll include a note as to what I think the possible options might be.

Of course, none of this stuff about asterisks* precludes the very real possibility that I haven’t made other mistakes elsewhere in the translation, not to mention typos in the Thai, which is all hand typed, so please post comments or corrections of any mistakes for communal benefit.

Finally, if any of the ‘seniors’ on this site have taken the P6, it would be great to have your input about topics, style of questions and content of the test.

OK, I’m done. Let’s go to the first lesson. (Hurray!!!)

[SoftWater]

Step 1: Familiarise yourself with the vocab list:

คำศัพท์

โรคพิษสุนัขบ้า rabies

ไวรัส virus

ทำลาย to destroy

ประสาท nerve

ควบคุม to control

กระหาย to thirst

สัมผัส to touch, to contact

ลมหายใจ breath, respiration

ครรภ์ (/คัน/) uterus, womb, foetus, embryo

ติดเชื้อ to be infected

บาดแผล cut, wound, injury

ต่อเมื่อ only when, not until, provided that

สู่ toward, to

สันนิษฐาน (/สัน-นิต¬-ถาน/) to assume, to hypothesize, to surmise

ทดลอง experiment, test

ปรากฏ (/ปรา-กต/) to appear, to be evident that

Step 2: Read the following questions BEFORE you read the text:

a. What part of the body does the disease damage?

b. What two symptoms of the disease are mentioned?

c. What is of greatest concern to people about this issue?

d. What kind of contact with an animal is most likely to lead to infection?

e. Is there any reason to believe human foetuses can be infected with this disease? Why?/Why not?

Step 3: OK, now read the text and try to answer the questions in Step 2 as you go along.

(This text comes from the book ภาษาไทย ป.๕ ช่วงชั้นที่ ๒ by Modern Academic Press (Mac Press) Co., ltd, pages 10-11.)

Don’t forget to make a note of any other words you have to look up that aren’t in the list above.

โรคพิษสุนัขบ้า

“โรคพิษสุนัขบ้าเกิดจากเชื้อไวรัสชนิดหนึ่งที่เข้าไปเจริญในสมองสัตว์

หรือคนแล้วไวรัสชนิดนี้จะเข้าไปทำลายประสาทสมองส่วนที่ควบคุม

การกลืน ทำให้ผู้ป่วยหรือสัตว์ไม่ส่ามารถกลืนน้ำและอาหารได้สะดวก มีอาการแสดงว่ากลัวที่จะกลืนน้ำทั้งๆ ที่กระหายอยากดื่มน้ำมาก จึงเรียกชื่อโรคนี้อีกอย่างหนึ่งว่า โรคกล้วน้ำ

เรื่องที่น่าสนใจมากที่สุดของโรคพิษสุนัขบ้าก็คือมนุษย์จะติดโรคนี้ได้

อย่างไร

ปกติคนเราจะติดโรคพิษสุนัขบ้าได้ ๒ วิธีใหญ่ๆ คือ

หนึ่ง…โดยการถูกกัดหรือสัมผัสกับน้ำลายของสัตว์ที่เป็นโรคพิษสุนัขบ้า

สอง…โดยทางอื่น เช่น ทางลมหายใจ ทางอาหาร การติดเชื้อในครรภ์

คนจะติดโรคพิษสุนัขบ้าได้ก็ต่อเมื่อถูกสัตว์ที่เป็นโรคกัด ซึ่งหลายคน

อาจเข้าใจว่าสุนัขเป็นสัตว์ชนิดเดียวที่นำโรคกล้วน้ำหรือโรคพิษสุนัขบ้ามาสู่คนได้ แต่ความจริงแล้วสัตว์เลี้ยงลูกดว้ยนมทุกชนิดเป็นโรคพิษสุนัขบ้า

และนำเชื้อ โรคมาสู่คนได้ทั้งนั้น ดังนั้น แมว หนู กระรอก วัว ควาย ค้างคาว ที่เป็นโรคนี้ เมื่อมากัดคนก็เป็นโรคนี้ตามสัตว์เหล่านั้นได้เหมือนกัน การสัมผัสกับน้ำลายของสัตว์ที่เป็นโรคพิษสุนัขบ้าจะติดโรคได้ยากกว่า

การถูกกัดจนเกิดบาดแผลอย่างไรก็ตามส่วนที่สัมผัสถูกน้ำลายสัตว์ที่เป็นโรคก็อาจจะติดโรคพิษสุนัขบ้าได้

สำหรับการติดโรคพิษสุนัขบ้าทางอื่น ๆ ปกติจะมีน้อยกว่าติดโรคใน

ประเภทแรก ตามปกติอาจพบได้ในกรณีเข้าไปในถ้ำ ซึ่งมีค้างคาวเป็น

โรคพิาสุนัขบ้า ก็มีโอกาสจะติดโรคได้ ส่วนการติดเชื้อในครรภ์

เป็นการสันนิษฐานว่าเป็นไปได้จากผลการทดลองเท่านั้น และมีโอกาสเป็นไปได้เฉพาะในสัตว์แม่ลูกอ่อนที่เป็นโรคพิษสุนัขบ้า ในมนุษย์

ยังไม่ปรากฏว่าเคยมีมาก่อน”

Step 4: Have a look at the translation to check your answers to the questions:

Rabies

Rabies comes from an infectious virus that develops in the brains of animals and people. This virus damages the part of the nervous system that controls swallowing, and makes the person or animal unable to swallow water or food easily. The symptoms of this disease are both a fear of drinking water and a great thirst for it. Thus, this disease is also known as “the fear of water disease.”

The issue that is of most interest about rabies is how people can become infected. Normally, we will contract rabies in one of two ways, namely:

1. By being bitten or coming into contact with saliva from an animal that has rabies

2. By some other means such as from breath, food or an infection in the uterus

*People will get rabies if they are bitten by an infected animal, which many people may think means they can only catch rabies from dogs*. Actually though, any mammal can be rabid and pass the disease onto people. Thus, cats, mice, squirrels, cows, buffalo and bats, *when they have bitten a person, will pass on the disease just the same*. Contact with the saliva of infected animals will transmit the disease less easily than a bite that breaks the skin. However, having been in contact with saliva from an infected animal may still lead to infection.

As for catching the disease by other means, normally this will happen less often than the first way. **It is common to encounter it in the case of entering a cave where there are infected bats**, so there is the chance of being infected this way. Regarding contracting the disease in the womb, this is an hypothesis based on scientific experiments only, and only seems to be possible ***when an infected animal is nursing its young***. In human beings, it does not appear to have ever occurred before.

[translation note: ***when an infected animal is nursing its young*** comes from ในสัตว์แม่ลูกอ่อนที่เป็นโรคพิษสุนัขบ้า - it’s not clear to me whether the idea is

i. a pregnant animal with rabies that is feeding other infants could pass rabies on to her unborn offspring; or ii. a pregnant animal feeding infants, one or more of which has rabies, could pass rabies on to her unborn offspring; or simply iii. a pregnant animal with rabies could pass the disease on to her unborn offspring. I’d like to go for iii., which is the simplest scenario, and because I have a feeling if it was i. or ii. the clause would be more complicated; however, iii doesn’t quite match my dictionary definition of แม่ลูกอ่อน so I’ll have to appeal for help to the experts here. Anyone?]

Step 5: Speaking Extension

Try to use some of the vocabulary in a conversation within the next 24 hours.

A natural topic here would be to talk about swine flu, currently being referred to by Thais round my way as ไข้หวัดสองพันเก้า (flu fever 2009). You could certainly use words like ไวรัส ติดเชื้อ สัมผัส and ลมหายใจ fairly naturally here.

เช่น

ไวรัสไข้หวัดสองพันเก้าน่ากล้วนะ เราต้องระวังการติดเชื้อจาก

การสัมผัสกับลมหายใจคนอื่น

[Tod Daniels]

Unless I am greatly mistaken there is no ป.๖ proficiency exam offered for foreigners any longer.

I believe it was discontinued in favor of a different testing/grading method on thai language acquisition skills which rates your speaking, writing, and reading comprehension skills separately on a 1 to 6 scale or something of that sort.

I think there is a post about it in this forum by “withnail”.

Still your material is good, and I believe has benefit.

FWIW; most working class thais, and even some of the nurses I know, refer to swine flu colloquially as ไข้หวัดหมู.

[Gaccha]

Unless I am greatly mistaken there is no ป.๖ proficiency exam offered for foreigners any longer.

I believe it was discontinued in favor of a different testing/grading method on thai language acquisition skills which rates your speaking, writing, and reading comprehension skills separately on a 1 to 6 scale or something of that sort.

I think there is a post about it in this forum by "withnail".

The best starter post is here:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Brand-Thai-L...ne-t195594.html

It lays out all the details of the new exam.

There is another post where someone (perhaps Withnail) described his experience of the exam.

For Japanese learners there are books to prepare them for this new exam. But nothing for anyone else.

[SoftWater]

Unless I am greatly mistaken there is no ป.๖ proficiency exam offered for foreigners any longer.

I believe it was discontinued in favor of a different testing/grading method on thai language acquisition skills which rates your speaking, writing, and reading comprehension skills separately on a 1 to 6 scale or something of that sort.

I think there is a post about it in this forum by "withnail".

The best starter post is here:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Brand-Thai-L...ne-t195594.html

It lays out all the details of the new exam.

There is another post where someone (perhaps Withnail) described his experience of the exam.

For Japanese learners there are books to prepare them for this new exam. But nothing for anyone else.

Argh! I started thinknig about p6 in 2007 then got sidetracked by having kids - never occurred to me to check whether it had been scrapped or not!! I figured I'd end up going back to school in a the next monht or two and get ready for this november. Now i'm not so sure - that level test sound real tough and my weak points are actually speaking and listening. Hopefuly by now the schools are doing some courses for this, so looks like I've got a ways more studying to do.

Also, guess it makes this whole thread redundant now. Sorry for wasting anybody's time.

[withnail]

My ears were burning so I thought I'd give you my comments.

The p6 has indeed been replaced, I did it in it's final year and then took the competency test in it's first year (last December).

The p6 was harder in the sense that it contained more cultural references but easy in the sense that for most of the students it involved topics they would have practised before.

The competency test is an improvement on the old format which, as I mentioned, contained more reference to Thai culture. For years all they have really done is tested foreigners on material that p6 students would typically get in school in a fashion similar to how Thai children might be tested at school. Much of the Thai language material aimed at Thai students which you can buy reflects this. Consequently, if you buy it there will be lots of passages about the monarchy, Buddhism, and Thai life in general, Thai food, farming, etc etc

The testing used to involve a speaking section which was in part not speaking at all but reading off a page (combined with spoken questions on that info), and a listening section which wasn't listening comprehension as such but copying down a passage that you heard (therefore more of a spelling test).

Having said this many of the schools teaching Thai in Bangkok had been gearing students towards this test for years so if you attended one you would have practised a lot of these topics and skills.

The new test dropped the old dictation style listening for an actual listening comprehension test. Only one question as I recall in the contained any kind of cultural reference (you had to match a song to a picture of a Thai festival). Most of them were just everyday dialogues.

The speaking test was actually just a Q and A with 2 Thais. There was no reading anything off a page.

The reading section remained similar as was the writing although again there was less of a focus on Thai culture. This is good as it makes for a more natural language test but hard if you were expecting to write a story about Thai food/festivals as you may have practised before. The actual question was on the benefit of knowledge and also a shorter exercise based on describing a graph. kriswillems also did the test and I know he was surprised at his high scores, I got basically what I expected based on my performance in the p6. I think my scores are a closer reflection of my ability, but expect this is possibly because I didn't do as well as I could have done had I prepared more. If I had got the same scores he had got I would have echoed his sentiment that they are higher than my actual ability. Having said this, the different (less rehearsed) style of test did apparently lead to some of the students at my old school achieving low score in certain areas e.g. speaking which was probably quite accurate. So perhaps kris is better than he gives himself credit for.

The schools kind of knew what the changes in the test would be, but were unprepared for how to help get their students ready for it as for years all the material has been so similar. I'd recommend going to a school based competency test preparation class when they start as this year they probably have a better idea this time round.

The good news is that there's no failing as such but just a grading system which starts from 1.

[Groongthep]

......guess it makes this whole thread redundant now. Sorry for wasting anybody's time.

Not a waste of time SoftWater. Good on you for making the effort anyway. Go ahead and take the new test. It will give you an idea of where you stand and a set of reference points from where you can set goals to achieve the next year.

[ElZorro]

I want to thank SoftWater for preparing this very useful text for us. I'm not interested in taking the Thai language test, but I would still like to see more posts like this on this site.

Reading about the Thai test, I found this website that has on-line learning material and tests designed for Thai elementary students from p.2 to p.6.

[desi]

...but I would still like to see more posts like this on this site.

I ditto that...

[dippytart]

Someone is getting clever - just think of the extra revenue they can earn now that anyone can take the test at any level - I'd expect most people would only take the old test once their school told them they were ready (i.e. the school would level test the students); now the gov't can do that for the school. Also, i bet most people will take the test more than once as they'll want a measure of their improvement; presumably once you'd passed p6 that was it.

Not that i'm knocking the new test, got to be better for everyone. i figure i might do it to see where i stand, then take the results to a school for extra help.

[kriswillems]

I think the reason why my scores where higher than I expected are based on the fact that the questions where multiple choice. I am the kind of person that's not good a languages but I am good at mathematics and logical thinking. I found out that when doing multiple choice tests I managed to guess the correct answer although I didn't really understand the question. Probably the few words I understood were enough to guess the correct answer with a high probability.

This also showed up in my writing score, which was only 3, while my other abilities were 5. As for the speaking test, I exactly got the kind of questions I expected. I had prepared for this. So, my speaking ability is probably lower than my score.

I will not do the test again this year because almost nobody gets a 6, so I can't really see my improvement with this test. I still feel a bit disappointed with the test. I would like to get a score in percent, and not a grade based on the percentile I am in (as is done now).

The test is also rather expensive (for Thailand) and your diploma is simple printed thick paper which says it's only valid for 2 years.

Edited July 15, 2009 by kriswillems

[dippytart]

I think the reason why my scores where higher than I expected are based on the fact that the questions where multiple choice. I am the kind of person that's not good a languages but I am good at mathematics and logical thinking. I found out that when doing multiple choice tests I managed to guess the correct answer although I didn't really understand the question. Probably the few words I understood were enough to guess the correct answer with a high probability.

This also showed up in my writing score, which was only 3, while my other abilities were 5. As for the speaking test, I exactly got the kind of questions I expected. I had prepared for this. So, my speaking ability is probably lower than my score.

I will not do the test again this year because almost nobody gets a 6, so I can't really see my improvement with this test. I still feel a bit disappointed with the test. I would like to get a score in percent, and not a grade based on the percentile I am in (as is done now).

The test is also rather expensive (for Thailand) and your diploma is simple printed thick paper which says it's only valid for 2 years.

thanks for sharing that kris, it's an interesting perspective. I can see now how the test results could actually be de-motivating.

I'm sorry to hear the questions are multiple choice - i know this makes it easier for the examiners to mark, but it really does make it easy for the student - you know ONE hast got to be right, and the choices can give you clues about the meaning of the question.

Anyway, i decide to give it a crack, does anyone know how you apply? have you got to do it through a school or is there a website?/ministry office to go to?

(i looked on NIETS websiter but can't find anything related to tests for foreigners)

Edited July 15, 2009 by dippytart

[kriswillems]

I had applied via a language school. Be sure to apply on time. It's probably a good idea to take a special preparation course or a few hours of private courses. At the same time you can apply for the test.

This test will show your level of Thai if it's not too high.

If your level is a bit higher you'll just get a 5 (almost nobody gets a 6, which the highest score).

The test scores in percent are translated into levels. It works about like this (I am not sure about the exact numbers):

1% of the people will get level 6,

19% of the people will get level 5,

20% of the people will get level 4,

30% of the the people will get level 3 ,

19% of the people will get level 2

and 1%of the people will get level 1.

So, this test compares your level with others and is no absolute indication of your level. They will not let you know your real score.

Keep in mind that the level of a ป.6 native speaker is much higher than the level of a farang that gets ป.6 level on this test (= score 3).

It's probably a good idea to consider doing the test if you've been studying Thai for at least 6 months (3 to 5 hours per day, homework included).

Edited July 15, 2009 by kriswillems

[SoftWater]

The test scores in percent are translated into levels. It works about like this (I am not sure about the exact numbers):

1% of the people will get level 6,

19% of the people will get level 5,

20% of the people will get level 4,

30% of the the people will get level 3 ,

19% of the people will get level 2

and 1%of the people will get level 1.

So, this test compares your level with others and is no absolute indication of your level. They will not let you know your real score.

They do this kind of scoring in the English school where I work. It's so frustratingly stupid. This year you might take the test with 500 people who are all just not that good at Thai, and you come out a 5. Next year, your actual level could have improved, but if you take the test again with a whole load of others that are better than, perhap you only get a 4. I don't see how they can say level 3 is equivalent to P6 if they're using a ranking system. You could get a 5 and only be P6 if the other people taking the same test as you are weaker. (this may explain why your result was higher than you expected, Kris).

Now I know the test is like this, I don't think I'll bother with it. I wannt an objective test measured against (some level of) native speaker not measured against a bunch of other foreigners, what's the point of that, save for bragging rights? If they'd simply added P4, P5, M1, M2 to the old P6 test that would have been much better.

Thanks very much for the info, Kris.

Edited July 15, 2009 by SoftWater

[withnail]

The multiple choice sections were only for the reading and listening sections which is normal for testing reading and listening comprehension. There were a lot of questions so your chances of guessing a good score are low. Of course you can work some of it out, but that is true of real life communication as well and would be the same for any type of language test.

I agree with the problem of using Thai grade levels as a measurement for ability of someone learning a second language, but I think they only really leave that on there for the Thais who are potentially reading the cert. They do match these grades with a description of that level which is much less flattering and more realistic. This could be further improved for sure but I don't disagree too strongly with my scores. If you compared levels 1 - 6 with the standard levels used for assessing ability in English (Beginner, Elementary, Pre-Intermediate, Intermediate, Upper-Intermediate and Advanced) I would have been graded as Pre-Intermediate and Intermediate, which is about right.

I wasn't under the impression that they grouped the grades as kris states, though it would actually make some sense with a brand new exam. Certainly with the P6 you got exact percentages even though the cert just states pass or fail and my percentages for that were similar to my levels for the second test. I know some people at my school got lower grades than predicted and this was after studying at a school that hadn't not managed to get someone through the p6 for some time.

Personally I was impressed by the test and think that kris is being a little hard on himself. Assuming he and I are at similar levels I believe that his scores are more a reflection of the amount of preparation he had done. Testing a language is never easy to do and the same can be seen with the much better known standardized tests for English TOEFL/TOEIC etc. People all over the world study for these tests and sit them until they pass with the scores they need, there are preparation courses all over Thailand. The idea is that someone could take one without preparation because they can already use English fine, but just need to prove it. The reality though is that some of the people taking the tests are not that good at all so they prepare a lot. I know that if you translated the entire competency test into English and gave it to a pre-intermediate level Thai learner of English they would struggle with it.

Edited July 15, 2009 by withnail

[kriswillems]

It was my teacher that said that people were split into groups based on their score and that your level is actually the group you're in.

The test as such was of a very high level and it was very well prepared. There were some very difficult questions in there. If the test would be translated into English I would also think it's a difficult test. I think my level of English is about 2 or 3 "school years" better than my level of Thai.

It's just that I would like to know my real score.... I am 100% sure that my score was much lower than 5/6 = 83% for the skills I got a 5.

I would still advice to everyone to do the test. It's the only test that doesn't depend on a school. I would personally distrust schools that don't have any student that can pass the test.

My preparation was as follows:

- before I came to Thailand my Thai was on the level of a motivated tourist (phrasebook -Thai).

- I completely understood the writing system (via self-study), but I could read only extremely slowly.

- At the moment I did the test I had lived for 1.5 year in Thailand, but never spoke Thai at home or at work.

- When I arrived in Thailand I studied about 7 months with an average of 3 hours per day (without homework)

- 2 months before the test I took private courses : 6 hours per week or about 50 hours in total.

Edited July 15, 2009 by kriswillems

[withnail]

To give you an idea my scores for the p6 in 2007 were:

writing from dictation 17/20 85%

essay writing 26/35 74%

reading comprehension 21/30 70%

reading aloud and spoken skill 12/15 80%

total 76 %

I think it's more than possible that you got that score depending on how they really did the marking. Let's agree though that the system needs some fine tuning and that what defines a beginner - advanced learner/speaker could perhaps be better identified or broken down into more levels. I can believe you were in the top 20% of the people taking the test, but feel that either that there either needs to be a level 0 assuming that with the current system if you write your name and fall asleep you'll get at least that. The other possibility is that the top 5 percent might include 2 people twice as good as you 2 people better than them and one Thai kid with a white face and that their scores can't reflect this because the test would be too easy for a native speaker.

I know myself that it's common amongst intermediate learners of English that they get bored being told how good they are and don't feel they are learning anything in class even though they are very aware of their shortfalls when using language in daily life. I feel this a lot myself and as my language tends to slip without practice I'd say that at the moment I definitely don't even feel intermediate though this depends on who I'm talking to, what about and how long I've been drinking. If that's any comfort.

Edited July 15, 2009 by withnail

[SoftWater]

Thanks Kris and Withnail, all your information is extremely useful. I'm feeling a bt more encouraged to take the test from what you have said, but I will definitely have to get back to school for some brushing up first. Like Kris, I taught myself to read and write, then did a bit of study at a school (just 3hrs/week for about 6 months) a couple of years back. Thanks to that I can read pretty quickly if I know most of the vocab. Obviously, having to look up unknown words is a killer - i still don't have the ability (or perhaps confidence) to infer meaning of unknown vocab from context.

Also, like Kris, I don't get the chance to speak Thai at work and not much at home (i'm trying to encourage both my wife and kids to improve their English, so refrain as much as possible), so my speaking/listening skills are way lower than my reading ability. Now I know speaking counts as a significant part of the test, I'll definitely make more of an effort to improve this, so thanks again - this thread turned out to be helpful (at least to me!) in the end after all, albeit not the way I intended!

By the way, I'm going to ask this question on another thread where there's probably more people looking in, but does anyone have an mp3 audio for the Gethings reader? I've got the weblink, but I can only stream it not download as I don't have Quicktime Pro. Anyone got the whole lot on mp3? Much obliged in advance, and for all your advice above.

[ElZorro]

By the way, I'm going to ask this question on another thread where there's probably more people looking in, but does anyone have an mp3 audio for the Gethings reader? I've got the weblink, but I can only stream it not download as I don't have Quicktime Pro. Anyone got the whole lot on mp3? Much obliged in advance, and for all your advice above.

Can you post the link here?

[SoftWater]

Can you post the link here?

Good point, sorry! This is the link to the thai reader, with the streamed audio. You can download it if you have QuickTimePro, but I have only the freebie QT player. If anyone has, or can, download the audio I'd love to get hold of it on mp3 as I only have internet access at work, and I do most of my thai practice at home.

http://siamwestdc.com/thaireader-UH/index.htm

Edited July 16, 2009 by SoftWater

[kokesaat]

Can you post the link here?

Good point, sorry! This is the link to the thai reader, with the streamed audio. You can download it if you have QuickTimePro, but I have only the freebie QT player. If anyone has, or can, download the audio I'd love to get hold of it on mp3 as I only have internet access at work, and I do most of my thai practice at home.

http://siamwestdc.com/thaireader-UH/index.htm

I downloaded the whole set of audio files then converted them to audacity files. If you've never used audacity, I suggest giving it a try. It's free, simple to use, and seems to have more flexibility for listening/relistening to voice files. Lots of little shortcuts for easy replaying of small sections of a file. Available at audacity.sourceforge.net/

[ElZorro]

You can download it if you have QuickTimePro, but I have only the freebie QT player.

Have you tried right-clicking on the audio links and selecting "save as"? They link to mp3 files.

Edited July 16, 2009 by ElZorro

[kriswillems]

Just to get an idea of the level of the test: the text in the first post could be part of the more easy questions of the reading test. The average level is higher than that.

[kriswillems]

Concerning your question:

แม่ลูกอ่อน just refers to a "new mother" or an animal that just gave birth. Even if the mother is not nursing her babies, she would still be called แม่ลูกอ่อน. The infection happens in the womb as said before in the text.

Edited July 16, 2009 by kriswillems

[SoftWater]

Just to get an idea of the level of the test: the text in the first post could be part of the more easy questions of the reading test. The average level is higher than that.

Thanks Kris. Yeah, this text is from ป.5 as it says in the attribution up top, not ป.6. My idea was to start there and work our way up to stuff equivalent to the test...

Thanks for the meaning of แม่ลูกอ่อน

Edited July 17, 2009 by SoftWater

[SoftWater]

Have you tried right-clicking on the audio links and selecting "save as"? They link to mp3 files.

โอ้โฮ...man, what a dummy am I!! Thanks a million.