On-Line Learning !

[essexman]

Having lived in Thailand for 14 months now ... I still struggle with the Thai language ... I've had quite a few false starts ... Had the wife teaching me ... But I don't think that's a great way to learn ... I've invested in books and various cd's ... But nothing really stuck ... About 4f months ago I started the basic Thai Pimsleur method .. I quite liked this to start with ... 30 minute lessons ... No reading or writing ... Just listen. Must admit it is very repetitive ... But it started to work for me ... They said once you get about 80% right ... Move on to the next lesson, I just stuck with the same lesson for a week at a time ... Sometimes I'd listen to the lesson twice in the same day ... But at the end of each week I was just about 100% correct on the answers ... So I did the first 10 lessons ... Now I had bought this starter cd pack off ebay for 10 pounds ... I went on the pimsleur website and on there you can down load blocks of 5 lessons for about 650 baht. So I moved on and did the next 5 ... By then I was begining to realize that a lot of what I was learning ... I'd never use ... Plus of course the downside being you don't learn how to read or write Thai with this method. I'm not going to knock this way of learning because it did work for me ... It was quite enjoyable ... And I think that can be a big plus. But it does have limitations. So I did some research and found another course that looked quite interesting ... They gave me a trial of 5 free lessons ... Its all done on-line and they start from beginner to intermediate through to advanced ... It does seem to cover everything, including the reading and writing side .. It also has a forum ... You can download all lessons if you want to, or just click away and work at your own pace. I did the 5 free lessons and thought it was enjoyable and quite easy to grasp ... And I'm no rocket scientist ... Lol. Where I live in Chonburi there are not many English speakers ... So I'm really going to give it a go now and try and master the language ... This is the link if anybody wants to have a look. http://learn-thai-podcast.com/membersarea/signup.php?price_group=-14

They are doing an offer at the moment and I paid around 65 pounds for the whole course ... This is for over 800 lessons and what looks like a good support back up. But of course time will tell if its any good.

[depe]

The site you mentioned is quite nice, but it sure has its limitations. Leaning the alphabets (with the pictures) is really really well made - just learn few of the alphabets per day and in a month you will master them all (and the classes of consonants too). Of course then the different rules for the tones will come, and they are not that easy to master. But it is really cool when you start to be able to read simple words (even without the tone rules) even if you don't know what they mean. I think that this will help you in the general learning process a lot. You will be able to read some signs etc. and learn the words then, because you see them frequently.

Also the grammar part of this site is quite nice.

BUT in general the lessons are not that great. They are just list of things. Vocabulary lessons are just list of words repeated. There is no story or examples about how to use them. I think that this makes learning the words a bit difficult. Well, of course you can fix the situation by making your own stories or sentences of the words. Then also, if you go to listen the first listening lessons, they are really fast and impossible to understand. I would hope that listening lessons would be first easy and slow and gradually become faster and more difficult. Well, maybe the vocabulary part is not that bad, since you can hear the words and then try to repeat them - really important because the tones are so important.

Anyhow, I would advice you that start learning the alphabets in the beginning already (don't look the reading/writing lessons, but the pictures/stories of the alphabets instead). I recently learned the alphabets (and can already read - at least if the words are not too long) and now I try to learn the different tone rules. I am sure that people learn the languages in different ways. I think that I am one of those who must see/read to learn in most efficient way.

My few cents...