An Intelligent Approach To Learning Thai

[RapidMethod]

I'd like to set out the 'Rapid Language Learning' approach that I've developed for what I believe to be a remarkably effective way of learning Thai. There have been many discussions about this before, but so far no one has tried to set out a practical strategy. It's all very well having great material, but most of us do not know how to go about learning a language, other than what we've experienced in our conventional schooling.

It's a long posting because, although the fundamental principles are relatively straight forward, many people are unused to anything other than a kind of 'brute force' method of learning through arduous study and sheer perseverance. After all it's still an inherent aspect of learning at even the top schools and universities.

The concepts described are very different from what you might be used to, so if you want to learn Thai (or anything else) more effectively then please keep an open mind.

A larger discussion will be posted on my website www.learnthaionline.com and you can participate in this discussion on the facebook discussion page.

Why bother?

Most of us think we're only going to be in Thailand for a short while. So we don't bother. Or we think that Thai isn't an important language compared with Chinese or Spanish or French, say. And it's true! We can easily get by in Thailand and have an enjoyable life with bilingual go-betweens, while living comfortably in secure condos or gated communities – everything we need more or less on tap…

But if you put it off then you will find yourself justifying why you never need to speak Thai and look for ways to do without. Thai is like sex in a way. If you've never experienced it then you won't really miss it. Also, if you can only fumble about in the language then you won't really enjoy it. Some people are content with that and so there really is no need to bother!

However, once you make it part of your daily routine – it's like doing just 10 minutes' push ups every day – before you know it you'll be having a lot of fun. For most people, Thai is not a priority in life – yet at some point we want to be able to communicate with Thais as equals.

Unfortunately, most approaches to learning Thai seem to focus on mountains of material requiring hundreds of hours of study. Who has the time for that!? At least not normal, busy, sociable people like you and me LOL!

The 'Rapid' approach is designed to fit into your busy lifestyle. It uses a number of Accelerated Learning techniques, mnemonics for memorization, and sports training concepts for developing fluency. But above all, it's a less-is-more approach, the idea being that you only need to master a carefully selected body of material to be reasonably conversant in everyday situations. At a more advanced level, this even applies to business and politics (because, although the vocabulary used is quite complicated, it's usually limited to a few hundred words that are used frequently).

Who are the people who learn Thai?

The majority of those who don't bother with Thai simply tailor their lives to get by in an English (or expat) enclave or bubble, with bilingual go-betweens (in the form of secretaries or girl/boyfriends) and avoid any deeper interaction with the locals. We can see this more obviously in the West, where foreigners (Spaniards, Chinese, Japanese, Turks, Pakistanis, Nigerians, etc.) will settle in the US or UK or Germany never being able to speak more than a smattering of the official language. We look down on these people and even try to kick them out of the country. (Do the Thais resent us in the same way, I wonder… especially those of us who settle here long term, buy property, run a business and/or raise a family… but still cannot speak Thai!?)

Most of us do start out enthusiastically, but then we give up when we realize how much time and effort is involved (understandably, especially how boring and arduous it is to learn the conventional way).

There are a very small number of dedicated language students who treat languages as giant intellectual jigsaw puzzles and enjoy spending hours studying vocabulary and the intricacies of the language. Their idea of bedtime reading is to study a dictionary! These are dedicated, studious people who I admire very much – but I (and I think most of us) are not like that.

The rest of us do genuinely want to communicate with local people and get to know them and the culture through their own language. But we lead busy lives work-wise and socially, and pursue other interests. We don't want to spend more than an hour or so per week, yet we'd like to be relatively fluent and be able to interact naturally with local Thai people.

So what's the Rapid Approach then…?

There are three phases. The first is the reading course: learn to recognize the letters and words, and sound them out accurately with the correct tone, without necessarily understanding what you are reading. I use quirky images and bizarre (sometimes obscene) stories to imprint the letters in your brain. But it's not just about recognizing the letters; you also need to understand how words are formed and how the tones work. And it's important to learn and practice to pronounce the sounds right, otherwise we sound like Donald Duck's Siamese twin!

It doesn't take long to learn to read with this method. I believe this is a crucial step because, without it, you can never progress without a conscious effort. Most people I've spoken to say they've tried to learn, but given up because it makes no sense and it's almost impossible to keep everything in your head when deciphering the characters. Some people say it's just a matter of repetition and perseverance (that word again). I devised the 'Rapid' system to reduce the mental and memory overload so that you can apply your efforts to speaking and understanding instead.

The key is to keep reading – whichever way you decide to learn. The 'Rapid' system is a quick and easy and temporary scaffolding that disintegrates over time. The act of reading becomes more intuitive the more you do – at the right level (just like driving or dancing: there's no point in just learning the how, you also have to do it, you have to go out in traffic and drive, or go out to dance parties and dance).

Start by paying attention to the street signs, make a point of reading the Thai portion of the menu in a restaurant, and go immediately on to the Everyday Thai for Beginners course (or something equivalent) and start reading simple texts.

Learning-while-Reading is phase two. It will be a bit laborious at first, because it feels so slow and you have to look up virtually every word in a dictionary. (But then that's what computer dictionaries are for – no need to learn the order of the alphabet and hunt around a printed dictionary – just type in the word and bob's your uncle!)

Everyday Thai for Beginners can be obtained from Kinokuniya, Asia Books or Amazon. I then supply you with an adapted Anki flashcard deck, consisting of the entire 1,200-word vocabulary, which you will easily memorize by spending 10 minutes a day.

ดินสอ "dinsoh" = pencil [a loud din is mightier than a saw]

Building up your vocabulary is an important aspect of the strategy. Words are your basic building blocks for expressing yourself and understanding others. You need them. The more you know the better, but it's important to learn the useful ones, the ones used by people in regular conversation, and that you'll come across in notices, street signs, menus and the internet. Everyday Thai includes most of the important words you need to know. Whatever anybody says about learning only 100 words, or 300 words, you can't really have even a basic conversation without at least 1,000 words. When you aim for 'fluency' in the next phase, you should learn at least 3,000 words.

Anki helps you to acquire the necessary vocabulary relatively easily. It works using a concept known as 'spaced repetition'. Each time you view a word, it gets pushed further and further back in the pile until, eventually, it's discarded. But Anki does more than that. You can decide how well you know a word. If you don't feel you know it so well then it will repeat it for you fairly soon, within days; but if you feel you know it reasonably well then it will only bring it up in a week or so. If after this time you've forgotten it then it puts it back near the top of the pile, otherwise it buries it even deeper in the pile.

I've adapted the Anki system to incorporate memory triggers. These are usually mnemonic hints based on the sound of the word. It's vitally important to spend a bit of time creating links and triggers for each word – it may be time consuming initially, but you save time later by not having to repeat the word so often. A good mnemonic link can reduce the required repetition for a word around ten times. For example, "yen" means cool in Thai. Using rote learning, you might need to repeat this several times over the course of a month to imprint this in your mind. Now think of a wealthy group of Japanese who are obsessed about eating only the freshest sushi. However, to ensure this, sushi must be kept continuously cool, which costs a lot of yen. The more bizarre and visual you make these associations the more likely they will stick.

With the Anki-trigger combination, you might only need to review a word two or three times and it's yours. Some of the more difficult, stubborn words might need to be repeated four or five times. But in a relatively little time you will know all 1,200 words, which then allows you to focus on the subtleties of communicating effectively.

This is why the 'Rapid' strategy requires so little effort and works so quickly compared with the conventional unthinking blind-repetition approach.

The Everyday course can be studied alone, but I recommend finding a Thai teacher and getting one or two private lessons a week.

If you choose to work with a Rapid-certified teacher, this will be your schedule: Work through one lesson on your own (50 minutes on day one) just to familiarize yourself with the words and basic concepts. Then work through the vocabulary for that lesson using Anki (10 minutes on day one and two) followed by an hour on day two with the Thai teacher who should explain what's going on grammatically, help you with your pronunciation and practice some simple conversations with you. You should spend the rest of the week doing 10 minutes a day of Anki.

Speech Training. This is crucial yet often overlooked aspect of learning a language – perhaps because it's just muscle training rather than a linguistic exercise. Take a few sentences and repeat them over and over again in a loud and exaggerated way (don't be shy!) until you can say them quickly and accurately without thinking. The idea is to develop strength and fine motor control so that you mouth and tongue operate automatically. Do it for one sentence until you can do it pat – like a tongue twister. Later, you can vary the pattern slightly: Can I have a cup of tea, Can I have a glass of milk, Can I have a bottle of beer, etc.… Do this 10 minutes a day, while walking, driving, showering… An excellent resource for this is Instant Thai.

It helps to spend another hour with your Thai teacher around day 5, but this time just have fun. The Rapid teacher guides the conversation carefully using only the vocabulary and concepts that you've learnt up till that point. She also diagnoses and corrects your pronunciation, using the 'speech training' method.

The following week, you then move on to the next lesson. There are 30 lessons, so that means seven months, but only spending 2 hours 'studying' (plus 1 hour doing vocab and an hour or two with speech training and conversation) per week. You get to experience several hours of language learning without realizing it, especially as you can slip a lot of into your day, while travelling or waiting or just as part of having a coffee/tea break. You'll be surprised how much you'll be able to say and understand in a few months, with so little effort.

I would also recommend getting the Pimsleur Audio Thai Language course ($120 instead of around $200 from other suppliers). It's a bit pricey and fairly dull, but is another excellent tool for speech training. To 'accelerate' it, I wouldn't just listen to it (which is the Pimsleur approach)… it's better to memorize the vocabulary as you go along (using Anki… and in fact, I will put together an Anki file for this in due course) – because then you can focus on pronunciation and understanding, without being concerned about vocabulary.

The third phase (finally) is to follow my Thai Fluency course, which is based on a Thai novel called Sydney Remember… about a Thai girl who goes to visit her cousin in Sydney. It's a great story and the writing style is straight forward and very colloquial. The course follows the same pattern as recommended for Everyday Thai. Read a lesson, understand it, internalize the vocabulary for that week, listen to the story and repeat (for ear and speech training) 15 minutes every day. After 50 lessons, one a week, and no more than 2 hours of 'study' each week, you will be pretty fluent in almost everything except academic, political or business situations.

If you prefer mountains of material and have the time to work through them then there are other useful resources to try. HighSpeedThai also uses Anki and attempts to incorporate mnemonics in the reading phase (note: it's slightly flawed) but consists of 1000 pages of material as well as a line-by-line rendering of a typical Thai movie. LearnThaiPodcast is a series of mini video lessons with subtitles that develop your understanding step by step as you watch the series (try not to look at the Romanization). The reading method is taken (stolen?) from Read Thai in 60 Minutes, but I suggest you ignore it: it's okay, but wrong in a few crucial aspects. Then there's its4thai - a useful way to practice individual phrases (make sure you switch off the Romanized script in the settings). And finally, a great way to develop your listening comprehension is to attend the AUA classes. They're cheap and cheerful. My recommendation is to attend the level one below the one they suggest to you. Their (ALG) method is based on the theory that you have to 'stretch' into understanding the language by struggling in an immersion environment. It works, but very slowly. I think it's better to just go for the sheer fun of enjoying the antics of the (two) teachers and being able to easily understand what's been said.

It's slow in one sense, but it's practical and realistic and doesn't require hundreds (or thousands!) of hours of arduous study to achieve the same result. Most of us don't have the time or the inclination to dedicate several hours every day to studying a language – especially when so little is retained and such a lot of boring and ineffectual repetition is required. The 'Rapid' approach is about studying a small amount of relevant material in an intelligent, focused manner and mastering it, so that it becomes imprinted in our minds... Before you know it – you will be communicating with native Thais like one of them.

[kikenyoy]

I think that your drawings could help a new student to learn to read faster, but what I don't understand why you would choose objects like "boat" and " "tortoise" which are the names of other letters. This will surely be confusing when the student tries to learn the correct names. Why not choose something else like "bucket" and "telescope" (with a man bent over looking through a telescope). instead? Personally, I would rather just learn the correct names from the beginning and make up my own associations, but since the need to spell a word or write down a word that's spelled doesn't happen too often then a case could be made for using your method which will get them reading faster.

[englishinsiam]

If your looking for guinea pigs let me know. I am struggling to pick up Thai the traditional way. So would make an excellent case study.

[Satcommlee]

Should this be more the NON-Intelligent way to learn Thai?

Don't mean to be rude, but you are not Gonna get that far if your base of Thai relates on mental images of someone having a p##s..

While it may help with the basics, you would still have to relearn properly if you want to get to advanced stage.

[kikenyoy]

I just had a look around your site and found this sentence under the what you will and won't learn section: ซ่วยลอดแอร์ไห้หน่อยครับ – chuay lod aeh hai noi khrab (please reduce the air conditioning)

There are 6 words in the sentence and you misspelled 3 of them... doesn't exactly instill confidence in the quality of your course.

[keo]

I just had a look around your site and found this sentence under the what you will and won't learn section: ซ่วยลอดแอร์ไห้หน่อยครับ – chuay lod aeh hai noi khrab (please reduce the air conditioning)

There are 6 words in the sentence and you misspelled 3 of them... doesn't exactly instill confidence in the quality of your course.

Perhaps he was typing a little too rapidly?!

[RapidMethod]

I don't understand why you would choose objects like "boat" and " "tortoise" which are the names of other letters. This will surely be confusing when the student tries to learn the correct names. Why not choose something else like "bucket" and "telescope"

Yes, that's a good point, it could be potentially confusing when it comes to learning the proper (Thai) names of the letters. But in practice, it isn't confusing at all. The images are a temporary scaffolding that help you to get reading quickly. You can tweak or make up your own associations, but most people prefer to have it done for them.

After a while you 'forget' how you know, you just know! And as you build up your vocabulary, you will get to learn the Thai names of the letters because you understand what they mean. But - as you say yourself - the need to spell out a word verbally hardly ever arises, so there's little need to know the names (or the order) of the letters. If you do find yourself in situations where you spell things a lot (over the phone, say, or writing down people's names) then it's very quick 'n easy to learn.

I just had a look around your site and found [that] you misspelled 3 [words]... doesn't exactly instill confidence in the quality of your course.

Thanks for pointing out the typos - on rereading the article, I found a lot more. Must have been a late night 555

[Hardie]

Low 'chanting' tone? <deleted> is 'chanting'? Again, why use pics other than the Thai standard? Seems like one more example of someone thinks he's got the perfect system, resulting in just more confusion. 3 typos in one sentence? Jeez...