Aua Thai Course

[Wentworth]

I don't live close enough to cities that use the AUA teaching methods. I have a Thai teacher and heard that the AUA course books are good. I'm a 'lapsed Beginner' and have fairly basic books. I haven't seen the AUA course books but wondering if they would be any good for just a One-to-One basis with my teacher? If so, then I'd be interested to know how many books AUA have available - and would I be able to buy a set.

[sarahsbloke]

The books are muddled and useless IMHO.

Even the AUA teachers don't appear to use them.

"Teach Yourself Thai" by David Smyth is one of the best I have seen.

It teachs Thai script right from the start, which is really important

ISBN 0-340-86857-0

If you are beyond this stage, one on one with a Thai teacher and reading Thai childrens books would be much more useful then anyting AUA could produce.

Edited November 5, 2010 by sarahsbloke

[Rikker]

Whoever recommended the AUA books was probably referring to the old ones. I'm not sure if you can readily find those in Thailand. Has anyone seen them anywhere recently?

The old AUA books are completely different from current AUA teaching methods, and I don't think they distribute the books anymore. Several years back AUA abandoned those books in favor of its current "listening-only" method. For what it's worth, you can watch a couple dozen sample videos on their website, if you want to see their new method: http://www.auathai.com/videos

Anyway, the old AUA books were written by Marvin Brown between the 70s and 90s. There were 7 books, but I only know of 5 that are still in print, now published by Cornell University.

The books:

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3

Reading Workbook

Writing Workbook

Small Talk [Dialogue Book A]

Getting Help [Dialogue Book B]

See also the accompany tapes/CDs.

Sorry that doesn't help you much in getting your hands on the actual books, but that's what I know about them.

[akravitz]

They still use these books and methodology at the AUA in Chiang Mai. They focus on patterns/sentence structures, grammatical explanations, and useful vocab (though the dialogues are a bit funny since they're out of date -- you will be "bargaining" taxis down to 8 baht). Especially at the beginning, I really liked learning from this kind of structured, progressive course rather than a hodge podge of books and materials. In any case, you can certainly find the AUA books for sale there, should you make it to Chiang Mai.

Edited November 5, 2010 by akravitz

[AyG]

I believe that all the AUA books, except "Getting Help", which has long been out of print, are still available at AUA Rajdamri.

I started to learn Thai with these books and a tutor. It got me started, but even after completing them it took another 15 months of full-time study for me to become semi-fluent and to read/write the language reasonably well. Of course, I might just be a bad learner.

[Groongthep]

As of a couple years ago the first 5 books listed in Rikker's post were still available at the Rachadamri Center. Unfortunately, the tapes that go with them were not available there and IMHO any beginning Thai self-study course must have recordings (or a trained tutor) included to be of any value whatsoever. Without recordings or better yet a live trained native speaker correctly pronouncing the material, the learner will almost certainly end up speaking Thai like the guy in klon's post Heavy Farang Accent who in my opinion speaks with a really heavy and probably incomprehensible accent to most Thais. The tapes and the "Small Talk" book are still available from the Cornell University Publishing House but are quite expensive.

I still have all the AUA and FSI books and tapes which I bought for a small fortune about 20 years ago. Except for the reading and writing books they are no longer used at the Bangkok AUA center as they now only teach using the listen only method as Rikker described. I still think they're quite good but I know different people have different learning styles so others like sarahsbloke may disagree and have a perfectly legitimate argument.

The "Teach Yourself Thai" by David Smyth book is good but extremely basic and won't get you past anything but the simplest conversations. It's a good starting point though.

[CaptHaddock]

 The tapes/cds for Marvin Brown's AUA Thai books are available here:

http://lrc.cornell.edu/sales/links/thai

[Tod Daniels]

(Apologies this is a long post. ..)

I just went and dug the 4 previously mentioned AUA books outta my closet. Books 1, 2, 3, and that Small Talk one, all have thai on one page and the karaoke thai on the facing page, so a thai could work you thru the book. That is once you both understood the substitution drills which the books use. I personally didn't find them of particularly high value, but they're cheap enough to be worth having. I'd imagine once you get thru all three you'd certainly have at least a grasp of vocab and thai sentence structure.

I did find their Reading and Writing books good, once you got past the squirrelly handwritten type of thai font they use. It does help you start to recognize what thais look for in different fonts to discern letters and has helped me recognize much more thai written in stylized fonts.

If you can read ANY thai at all I'd also suggest a book called "Everyday Thai For Beginners" by Wiworn Kesavatana-Dohrs. I passed this book over time and again at the Kinokuniya Bookstore just based on the title, until I opened it and looked inside.

The reason I mentioned the "if you can read any thai' is the books have no 'karaoke thai' (thai written with a combination of engrish letters and funky symbols), it's only in thai with the english translation.

It has a pretty good audio C/D, and MANY exercises in each section so you can gauge your understanding. It more a situational based learning type of book.

Here's a list of the sections;

Unit 1: Getting to Know Each Other

Unit 2: Family and Relatives

Unit 3: Everyday Life

Unit 4: Time

Unit 5: Food

Unit 6: Getting Around Town

Unit 7: Running Errands.

Each unit is broken down into manageable lessons with vocab, drills and sample sentences. There are 30 different ‘lessons’ in all. They are set up like this;

Lesson 1: What is This Called?

Grammar; นี่คืออะไร, S + V + O, English loan words, Classroom expressions

Lesson 2: Hellos and Goodbyes

Grammar; อะไร, ไหม, หรือ, ใช่ไหม, ไม่ได้, แล้ว...ก็, มาก, ไม่...เลย

Lesson 3: Where Are You From?

Grammar: กับ, ไหน, นี้/นั้น/โน้น, ที่ไหน, ที่นี่/ที่นั่น/ที่โน่น

It also has TONZ of structural examples. i.e.

possessive = (Noun + ของ + Noun or Pronoun)

more than = (S + V (VP) + มากกว่า + Noun or Pronoun)

the most = (S + V (VP) + มากที่สุด)

As it's written in thai with english translations ANY thai can read the samples along with you without having them first learn to read what ever method of karaoke thai a book uses.

I think it's a great learning aid, well worth the 695 baht price tag. I still refer to it for sentence structure on words I don't use frequently.

Good luck. ..