Read/Writing Exercise Book?

[HalfSquat]

I'm trying to learn to read and hopefully one day write Thai.

I'm memorising the characters/vowels but find it hard to get them to stick in my memory as I'm not really using them apart from trying to learn them.

Are there any exercise books in English for Thai reading / writing language learners with (very simple) reading writing tasks in?

I think doing something practical with it might help me remember more.

I do try reading signs and things I see but its hard when you don't actually know what it is supposed to say so cannot correct / check your answers.

Thanks.

[bkksteviejai]

You could do worse than Benjawan Poomsan Becker's "Thai for Beginners". I liked the short reading / writing exercises in it, certainly helped me.

[endure]

You can get books designed for children with faint outlines of all the Thai alphabet which you can trace over to get into the habit of writing the Thai characters. Should be available in any bookshop.

[Tod Daniels]

I agree, those inexpensive thai kids books are the way to go as far as getting a handle on writing thai characters.

There is a two set workbook from AUA called "Reading & Writing Thai" which is pretty good too. Personally I didnt like the squirrelly transcription they used for thai sounds in engrish, but they do teach you to read and write, with plenty of practice exercises.

They also teach you to write thai like a normal thai would write it (in very small script), as opposed to the thai childrens books where youre tracing letters over a centimeter high. Still those cheap kids books do a good job training your hand to make the thai characters when you're starting out.

AFAIK; the AUA work books are still for sale at book store in the main branch of AUA on Ratchadamri. Heres the website for their thai language section;

AUA Thai Language Program

They can tell you when the bookstore is open and give you the direct number to it too. ..

Good Luck . ..

Good, I could still edit this; There’s also a quite a good book out called aptly; Reading and Writing Thai. It’s by Somsonge Burusphat (สมทรง บุรุษพัฒน์) and it’s about 350baht. Well worth what you get for the price.

Edited January 31, 2011 by tod-daniels

[HalfSquat]

Thanks for the replies.

Tod, do they sell that second book you mentioned in B2S or Kinokonyia?

I'm not really after the handwriting practice books at the moment.

[wolf5370]

If its just reading practise you want, then go into a Thai book store and go for the pre-readers books - not the trace a letter thingies, but the ones that have a small half page passage under a big bright picture - with things like "My uncle is at the farm - my uncle sees a crab - my grandfather sees the crabs eye" etc - all in Thai script. All in shortish 3 to 5 letter words with short sentances and spaces between words. Meant for teaching 4-5 y/o kids - it will help with your recognising the letters and reading faster. The books get a little more difficult as they go on, but repeat the same words (with new ones and longer/more complex sentences). I found them great and they cost just a few baht (20 baht or less often).

They are not exactly a rivetting read, but they are a help. I read and translated them into English a sentence at a time - this helped me absorb the words, recognise them and read (and cross check) faster - also helped with alphabet order with the dictionary (no English help in those books - which is actaully good news as it makes you remember).

Move on from there to small books for young kids, or even those little comics at 7-11 (although the script can sometimes be hard - and they are full of slang and "sounds").

Edited February 6, 2011 by wolf5370

[Tod Daniels]

The second book I mentioned in my earlier post has a LOT of those type of sentence constructs (although they don't space out the words). I do believe the book is available at Kinokuniya & maybe Asia Books too, but I haven't seen it at B2S. I couldn’t find it by using the ISBN at either Kino or Asia, but it came up at Chula books, and they deliver too!

The constructs they use in the beginning are like the Manee Reader series and the children's books mentioned in the above post;

อาตีกา - Father's younger brother hits a crow

ตาปาอีกา - Mother's father throws at a crow

อาตาดี - Father's younger brother has good eyes

อีกาเจอตา - A crow meets mother's father

อีกาตาดี - A crow has good eyes

ตาตีปู - Mother's father hits a crab

ปูดูตา - A crab looks at mother's father.

I bought some of those comicbooks a 7/11; the ones that are written a little ทะลึ่ง. That "handwritten" style of the font they're printed in just gives me fits to read.

Then again, I only now got to where I can read that super stylized font they use in most advertisements and billboards without having to work out the words. Although how ร morphed into an English "S", and how ว turned into a backwards "C" seems to be stretching things a little.

While this might be off-topic, I taught myself to read Thai via a website created by the Department of Non-Formal Education, by the Ministry of Education. I think it was designed for children of Thai nationals stationed abroad to learn Thai. It's taught in English, and it uses a talking "book", a "writing brush", and a girl Malee, to explain everything. It has examples, exercises, tests etc. Granted, it's written for children, but still, I'da NEVER learned to read without that website.

It's here;

Thai Language e-Learning

You hafta make a user name to log in, but after that it's totally free. I think I spent over 85+ hours on there listening to the lessons, taking notes, reviewing the extra vocab, taking sample exams. For a free resource it's pretty good.

If anything, I found learning to read Thai gave me a real appreciation of just how hard it is for a non-native speaker to learn English given English’s hodge-podge of dissimilar pronunciations, whacky rules and the like.

[HalfSquat]

Thanks Tod. Will sign up today!

The problem with buying the kids books is they don't have the words in English or transliteration so I don't if I'm saying it right. I guess I could translate them though.