Has Anyone Experience With Phasorn Thai Language School?

[silvester2]

Currently I am looking for a Thai Language School (for a group course).

Phasorn Thai Language School (Amarin Plaza) is located very convenient to my place. I wonder if anyone can recommend that school?

http://www.phasorn-thai.com/

[Tod Daniels]

Nope, sorry man; no experience with this school.

Thought I mighta scoped them out already. However in looking at their (totally lame ) website, and their downloadable (less than informative ) PDF file, you piqued my interest.

I called them and at least the person I spoke to had good engrish skills. She answered my questions without hesitation and with no hard-sell tactic other than to come and see how they teach thai. I'm scheduled to go on a 're-con mission' tomorrow.

I'll look at their material, take a free class, and basically get as much info as I can to report back some facts as far as how this school rates with other private thai language schools I've visited before.

This much I was able to glean from the conversation;

*They offer three levels of thai (Beginner, Intermediate & Advanced).

*The text books have phonetic, real thai, and english in them.

*It is a 'step method', (meaning the lessons build new vocab by using vocab learned in previous lessons).

They have no group classes running right now but they're due to start next week. I also ran into a road-block (really a language barrier) when I asked her if I could talk to current or former students. (BTW: I don't speak ANY thai when I first re-con these schools), as I want to see how they handle foreigners who are just beginners learning the thai language.

FWIW: their pricing is in line with other private thai language schools offering the 6 month and year long study programs to qualify for an ED visa .

Even their hourly rate isn't too bad, (although it doesn't say if you hafta purchase blocks of hours to get the rate they quote or not).

Like I said, I'll post on this thread tomorrow and give you my perceived 'bang-4-the-baht' regarding the school.

One last thing; There are certainly NO shortage of private thai language schools in that general area.

Edited August 30, 2010 by tod-daniels

[silvester2]

Thanks a lot so far. It doesn't sound so bad to me.

Looking forward reading your report :-)

[Tod Daniels]

Review of PhaSorn Thai Language School

SORRY THIS IS A LONG POST!!

It’s been a while since I’ve reviewed a school so forgive the haphazard way I wrote this post.

Actually, I'd never heard of this school before this post, and went to scope it out to see how it 'stacked up' in my book against other private thai language schools.

I went today and spent over an hour chatting with the principal/school owner; นงนุช.

Access; EASY, get off at the ChitLom BTS Station, walk the sky bridge to Amarin Plaza, and either use the escalators or walk to the back and take the lift to floor 5 (If you take the lift, don't get discouraged you end up in the parking garage, as the 5th floor is smaller than the preceding 4, making you exit the lift in the garage).

Overall; the school is well laid out, nice entry, reception area. The classrooms are good sized and have foreign sized chairs (not the thai student sized too small stuff). There's whiteboards in each room.

Material; they have three levels, basic, intermediate, and advanced. These are broken down further into speaking, reading, writing, so actually almost 9 levels in all (although sometimes reading and writing are the same text/work book).

The beginner book is phonetics, with the english translations (they do have these books written in thai as well if you can read already). The first book I would term 'survival thai', or high frequency thai. Vocabulary, phrases, questions, answers; that you're gonna say every day to every thai you interact with. It is fairly involved with many situational conversations; greetings, if you’re lost, in the taxi, ordering food, at the hospital, on the phone, etc. You’re exposed to the thai alphabetic system in the second book, and it gets progressively more thai only as you go along.

The second and third level books that I looked at were only in thai. I especially like the one which had short stories, with new vocab introduced before the story was read, then a question answer type of format after to gauge comprehension.

Pricing; this schools pricing is right in line for the 180 lessons for a year ED visa package offered by most schools in greater Bangkok. They also offer a 90 day and a 6 month program which can garner you an ED visa as well. Buying lessons one at a time they are Private 300baht for a 50 minute class, and semi-private (small group) 125baht for 50 minutes.

This is one motivated principal, and she's got several thai soap operas, ละครน้ำเน่า with the entire dialog written out in thai, where you watch a part of it, following along in the book, and then discuss it afterwards. She's also got some popular thai songs the same way; watch the video, read the lyrics, and then discuss it afterwards for real meaning versus literal ones etc.

Currently she's working on a book of, hmmm, how would I term it? They're not idioms per se, but short phrases, which a person speaking colloquial thai everyday would come across, yet whose meaning is not the word by word definition of the phrase. Maybe it is an idiomatic expression, dunno . I read thru most of the ones she’s compiled already and I'd recalled hearing most of them quite often. Yet some of them I'd head, I’d just discounted as I didn't know the meaning when I heard it. (I think when this book is finished it would be well worth tryin' ta get my hands on a copy )..

I'd hafta say my impression of the school and the principal too for that matter, is; their methodology isn't any different from most schools in the beginning stages, and certainly there are far worse ways a person could learn thai . The material is current, clear, and relies heavily on repetition of both words and phrases to get the pronunciation firmly planted in your mind.

Even give my great reticence in speaking thai; I did end up speaking exclusively thai to her for about 30 minutes , although sweat was tricking down my face by the time we were finished and I found myself answering her thai in english all too often.

She was quite forgiving as far as the low, middle & high toned words I said not clearly (ones which in colloquial speech I think are blurred quite a lot), however, she was NOT forgiving when I missed either a rising or falling tone, chiding me that I got the tone wrong and to try it again.

It is a well-known fact that I'm overly sensitive to ANY thai correcting my spoken thai unless it's way off the mark (as I accept shit english pronunciation and sentence constructs every day and just deal with it). However, with this being a school, and realizing their job is to teach thai, I was more open to corrections than I normally am. At no time did I feel uncomfortable with her correcting me or with her telling me to re-arrange my words in thai sentence order rather than say a sentence in thai using english word order. It was one of the most stress free thai conversations I’ve had with a thai I didn’t know beforehand . If her teachers are anything like this, I think they’ll be quite good.

I also asked her if I could find 3 or 4 other students of the thai language who were close to my level in reading comprehension and understanding spoken thai would she be willing to design a thai reading/conversation course? She was open to that idea. Something most schools were not thrilled with doing as it meant cannibalizing material from their various books to design a class around 4 or 5 peoples needs.

They offer the same paperwork every other private thai language school does to get the ED visa. The school provides you with documentation from the Ministry of Education, and you leave thailand and go to a neighboring country's thai embassy to secure your single entry 90 day ED visa, after which further documentation is provided to extend in country every 90 days.

I'd say this school offers good "bang-4-the-baht". Like I said earlier in this post, there are FAR WORSE places you could go to attempt to learn the thai language.

Even though I didn't take the 'free lesson', as I did talk to the principal for over an hour, and peruse most all of their material, I would give this school a thumbs-up overall.

BTW: unless you didn’t figure it out already, I am NOT affiliated with ANY of the private thai language schools I re-con.

I get NO financial remuneration for saying they’re good and certainly none for saying they suck. I offer my opinion, as just that, my opinion of what I think their ‘bang-4-the-baht’ would be for foreign thai language students.

Good Luck.

[Rumblecat]

Great report, thanks. Your visits and write-ups are much appreciated.

[silvester2]

Thanks a lot for your great report!

[GarryP]

Your review brightened my day. I didn't know that there were others around that are also sensitive about having their Thai corrected, something that pi&ses me off no end in most cases. Especially, when the person correcting you can barely speak any English whatsoever.

One day I may be interested in learning to write the language, as I can only speak and read it at the moment, but am in no hurry. I wonder if there is anywhere/anyone that focuses purely on teaching writing or would I have to go back to square one.

[kokesaat]

" sensitive about having their Thai corrected"

Maybe my brain is working on a misdirected circuit, but I prefer a Thai who corrects my incorrect Thai, just as I hope a Thai who speaks relatively good English appreciates my correcting their English. I prefer that to everyone telling me "พูดภาษาไทยเก่งนัก" Although I do agree there's a fine art in keeping a conversation going and trying to correct someone's Thai/English.

[GarryP]

" sensitive about having their Thai corrected"

Maybe my brain is working on a misdirected circuit, but I prefer a Thai who corrects my incorrect Thai, just as I hope a Thai who speaks relatively good English appreciates my correcting their English. I prefer that to everyone telling me "พูดภาษาไทยเก่งนัก" Although I do agree there's a fine art in keeping a conversation going and trying to correct someone's Thai/English.

That is it though, isn't it? When having a conversation with someone, do you stop them to correct them every time they make a mistake. It does not matter what language you are talking in, I believe that if you can understand what they are saying you should allow them to continue without interupting the flow. At work, many of my Thai colleagues have studied overseas and their English is very good, but not fluent. Nevertheless, I do not stop and correct them every time they make a mistake, regardless of whether they are junior or senior. The height of bad manners. Do you correct a French person's English accent when speaking to them in English? Hel_l no. So why is it any different for Thai language. Again, this is provided that what is being said is understandable. If not, then a request to repeat what they said would normally be sufficient.

Many native English speakers do not use correct grammar, screw up pronunciation, etc. Do you correct them too? If you do, you are looking to get clobbered.

It is totally different to a situation where you request others to correct your mistakes or in a class studying the language where correction is not only expected but warranted if you are to learn.

Whinge Over

Corrected spelling and grammar

Edited September 3, 2010 by GarryP

[Tod Daniels]

Sorry this is Off Topic but;

Obviously in a thai language class where your objective is to learn thai I concur, correcting bad pronunciation, and bad sentence constructs should be the norm not the exception. In fact in learning the correct way to pronounce a thai word (given SO many similarly pronounced thai words to foreign ears) this should be pounded into your heads from day one.

Perhaps I need to expound on what I meant by "being sensitive to thais correcting my spoken thai" ;

This country has about 64 million thais, but given the number of times I've been corrected for what I deem a slight mispronunciation of a thai word or a 'sketchy' sentence order, I'm almost lead to believe there're 64 MILLION frickin' thai language professors here in the glorious "Land 'O Thais" . Native speaker or not, I don't take kindly to being corrected by every "Tom, Dick, and Somchai' out on the street if it's just a casual conversation which, like most things are about nothing in particular.

Like I said before; I totally accept what passes for engrish from these people most all of the time. As long as I can understand what the meaning is, it certainly ain't my job to correct 'em. I take that back, often I am with a specific group of thais where, in addition to drinking, we are exchanging languages; 'thai for english' and 'english for thai', then I hope to be corrected, just as I correct them too.

BTW: isn't that what the plethora of foreigners teaching engrish to thais are here for? Heck given the incredible number of foreigners I've met here who are allegedly "engrish teachers"; you'd think these people would be fluent in engrish instead of 'effluent' .

So now that I've muddied the water a little (or a lot more depending on your take on things), I hope I've cleared up the fact that in any school teaching the thai language I would hope to be corrected repeatedly, as I'm there to learn. Seeing as I didn't take the 'free class' at PhaSorn Thai, I wasn't in the best "let me correct your thai" mindset, but dealt with it, as it was done very politely.

Now out on the street, if a thai can understand what I'm saying, nope, they just need to suck it up; realize I'm a foreigner, speak thai with a foreign accent, and sometimes have my words out of order.

It's not genome decoding here, just basic communication.

To the ultra politically correct foreign contingent;

I am sorry this post contained the phrase "these people" when referring to the thais.

However, as I view my existence here as a "me against them" type of life; the phrase 'these people' is not inherently denigrating, I use it as a classifier only to differentiate them from me.

I also apologize if I've offended any of the we-b-thai, sheep-like, foreign sock-puppets living here who wear color coordinated shirts and matching snazzy rubber bracelets.

NOW BACK ON TOPIC

Still I give the school a thumbs up, as it's a good one!

Edited September 3, 2010 by tod-daniels

[momijimanju]

Phasorn school in Bkk recently messed up my ed visa paperwork. now I must go to Laos to make it and school will not cover the cost. 

I recommend people use a different language school. They dont care about their customers, only taking their money.