High Speed Thai Course - Update

[belg]

hi there,

just spend way to much time reading a previous post about this, dated a year or 2 ago

i would like to know: are the bugs removed that has been discussed ?

was there an update to make everything smoother ?

or is it just the same and the only thing that went up was the price ?

if this is such a great product, why no free sample lessons available ?

why not sell it in Asia Books or other book stores ?

why other thai learning books / cd's in that shop are at a more reasonable price ?

macro econimics : sell your product at a lower price and sell more of them to make more profit ...

testimonials on the authors own website : sure i will believe, same as i believe all those other (spam)adverts with miracle solutions and 75% discounts if i just sign up in the next 10 minutes

[Rsquared]

Go to the source.........get your answers from"the horse's mouth".

Vincent is the creator of HST and is very helpful with any queries.

See vincentv.

Sorry I don't know how to direct you to another thread here in TV, maybe some other member will help you.

[somchaimaidai]

I bought the course mid last month and have to say, so far it is neither good nor bad. It is adequate and besides the addition of the voice viewer (which you can get for free at the slice of Thai site) it is of a similar standard to most other courses out there. I have tried most of the courses and to be honest whilst tihis one is ok I am getting towards the stage where I will request a refund, because to be honest it jsut simply does not warrant 6000THB.

Course content 6/10

Integration (as a package) 5/10

Value for money 3/10

[mania]

This is just my opinion but many products like to try to claim,SPEED

But in the end it is down to you & how hard your willing to or able to work for it.

I also think in the end standard courses available at the universities are the best bang for the buck.

Many come in at less than 135THB per hour.

For that you get a structured course with a logical progression.

I know many would like a magic bullet that will switch on a light bulb & click you now speak, read & write Thai.

But it just does not work that way. It takes time, effort & commitment to learn.

If I could give one & only one piece of advice it would be to start learning to read & write asap.

Rather than learn all the wrong romanized spellings of Thai words. Because they do stick with you & make it harder later

to forget & to spell correctly.

[edwardandtubs]

If I could give one & only one piece of advice it would be to start learning to read & write asap.

Rather than learn all the wrong romanized spellings of Thai words. Because they do stick with you & make it harder later

to forget & to spell correctly.

I don't think this is the Holy Grail that many make it out to be. Everyone learns to speak their mother tongue before learning to read and write. It would be totally demoralising to spend months learning the Thai alphabet without being able to have a simple conversation. I would say learn basic speaking first and only learn to read and write for its own sake.

[mania]

If I could give one & only one piece of advice it would be to start learning to read & write asap.

Rather than learn all the wrong romanized spellings of Thai words. Because they do stick with you & make it harder later

to forget & to spell correctly.

I don't think this is the Holy Grail that many make it out to be. Everyone learns to speak their mother tongue before learning to read and write. It would be totally demoralising to spend months learning the Thai alphabet without being able to have a simple conversation. I would say learn basic speaking first and only learn to read and write for its own sake.

I see your point but, In the case of Thai we already speak our mother tongue.

So most who do go the route you suggest learn via text in that mother tongue which translates as best they can, the word into that tongue. There are not the correct sounds in other languages to properly write the word. So they will likely start wrong.

Later when you progress & if your goal is longer term it will include reading & writing. At that time you will find you have miss pronounced many words because of that initial transliteration. This will haunt your spelling of Thai words & understanding while reading Thai words for quite some time. But learning the consonants & vowels at least gives you the sounds you need.

You can still use a dictionary in your mother tongue to find words...But then you can look at the Thai spelling & pronounce it correctly.

Which is why I suggest getting to it asap. Of course it is only a suggestion.

Having gone the way you mention & later learning reading & writing I know it caused me much confusion that I could have sidestepped by learning Thai as written, read & spoken by Thai's

A great benefit of reading aside from pronunciation is the tone marks & learning the consonant classes/tones etc. & how they change when used in various words along side other consonants.

Edited August 7, 2012 by mania

[edwardandtubs]

Later when you progress & if your goal is longer term it will include reading & writing. At that time you will find you have miss pronounced many words because of that initial transliteration. This will haunt your spelling of Thai words & understanding while reading Thai words for quite some time. But learning the consonants & vowels at least gives you the sounds you need.

You can still use a dictionary in your mother tongue to find words...But then you can look at the Thai spelling & pronounce it correctly.

That would only be true if you read out the transliteration exactly as it would be pronounced in your mother tongue, which of course would sound like complete nonsense to a Thai speaker. You can learn perfect Thai pronunciation even if you use a transliteration system - you just have to use it correctly. Even people who learn the Thai alphabet from the beginning will associate certain Thai letters with equivalents in their own language so the problem with mispronunciation is still there. The only "pure" way to learn Thai would be never to look at or think of any transliteration system. Never think of ก as being at all related to g or k or anything else. This is impossible. Everyone learns a new language by associating it with their mother tongue to a certain extent. I think the best way to learn Thai is to choose a textbook with a transliteration system you're comfortable with (my favourites are the one used by James Higbie in Essential Thai and Thai Reference Grammar and the one used on the thai-language.com website) but to get as much exposure to the spoken word as possible. Imitating native speakers is the only way to get perfect pronunciation. I don't think learning the Thai alphabet would help with pronunciation at all. You should only learn to read and write Thai if and when you need those skills for their own sake.

Edited August 7, 2012 by edwardandtubs

[mania]

You should only learn to read and write Thai if and when you need those skills for their own sake.

I can only speak from my own experience.

In which case I wish I had started sooner with the reading & writing but glad I did.

As for needing those skills....I found I needed them as soon as I moved full time to Thailand.

While visiting a few months a year yes I only spoke & that was fine....sort of

Once I did learn to read & write I found many mistakes previously unknown.

Also a side benefit from learning consonants & vowels right from the start is tones.

Not all Thai words have tone marks even in written Thai. But learning the consonants & their classes

you know what the tone associated with it should be. You also learn the rules to let you know when that tone changes

if mixed with certain vowels or final consonants that are dead or live etc.

All these things contributed to a better understanding of pronunciation

All mentioned just in my opinion & experiences.

YMMV & everyone learns in which ever way is comfortable for them at their current time.

[canuckamuck]

Reading Thai is the easy part, so why not learn it and get a leg up on the pronunciation. When people say a word i don't know in Thai i often ask them to spell it in Thai. That way I get the sound right. Otherwise I often learn new words wrong and get discouraged when i try to use them and people can't make out what I am saying.

[studioform]

0 Edited August 14, 2012 by studioform

[davo01]

I bought High Speed Thai about a year ago and finished the course in about 6 months. I regularly review the mp3's which keep it all in my long term memory. If your willing to sit down and study for atleast an hour a day I would recomend It, but if you have a short attention span, I wouldnt waste your time. It's not the most stimulating course out there but It has excellent content. Its not very well presented so you need to figure out where everything is. It's layout is PDF's with links to ANKI flash cards and MP3 reviews. This course will give you solid foundation in reading writing and about 1500 of the most used words, dont expect to be fluent after, that would be impossible. Best thing I found is that it gives you the ability to further study yourself. Once you can read there are tons of vocab and flash card sites to beef up your vocabulary.

[vincentv]

I will attempt to answer this with as little bias as possible considering I am the maker of this program.

i would like to know: are the bugs removed that has been discussed ?

Not sure if what you are referring would be called a bug. But what you will find in old posts is complaints about the files not being linked. Back a year or so ago you had to open the audio files manually. There was no link in the content directly to the sound or execises. This is because this feature was not part of PDF files now it is. So now you just click the blue links to open the audio file or exercise.

The other thing that people may mention is that you will have 2 or more programs open. If you have been using a computer for more than a couple months you should understand how to manage more than one application. I mention that the user should set his media player so it floats on top always. There are instructions on how to do this. When you open an exercise this pops up right in front of you and when you are finished you close it and will be back at the PDF. If you want to reference the PDF while you are doing an exercise you will just need to switch to the PDF in the task bare or with alt+tab or click it if it is still visible in the background. These are basic computer skills. If you do not know how to manage more than one open application do not buy the program. It is amazing how many people do not know that their computer can open more than one application at a time..

was there an update to make everything smoother ?

Yes links were added to the PDF so now you just click the link and you do not have to open the file.

or is it just the same and the only thing that went up was the price ?

A number of innovative sections have been added that you will not find in any other language program anywhere. I do not publizies these so that the copy cats come up with their own ideas.

if this is such a great product, why no free sample lessons available ?

The program is made up of many sections that do totally different things. Some of the sections are, pronunciation, tones, alphabet, beginner vocab, advanced vocab. Now you can not just skip and trial out the alphabet lessons if you have not completed the tones and the pronunciation section. And you can not do the vocab lessons if you can not read Thai. So this is why it is impossible to trial the program. You could trial the very first lesson which is the pronunciation lesson, but this would not give you a very good taste of the program.

On top of that, when you are starting you will spend about 45 minutes learning about how the program is structured and why and you will also get familiar with how to use the program. You will be using the program for 300+ hours.

And moreover there are so many ways to review the vocab lessons, that it would not be practical to go though all of this in a short demo.

There are a couple of videos that demonstrate a few of the concepts used on my website. But these are very simple and do not explain all the techniques used.

Why not sell it in Asia Books or other book stores ?

Why sell it though another party when I can sell it directly and control everything? I have no interest in getting middle men involved.

why other thai learning books / cd's in that shop are at a more reasonable price ?

Feel free to go to your local book store and buy some. I could have made something similar in a month or less without much thought and sold it though these channels. But that was not what I wanted. I wanted to create a system that would get a person to a functional level without the need to purchase anything else. The program is about 10GB with around 100 hours of audio along with 1400 pages of content.

macro econimics : sell your product at a lower price and sell more of them to make more profit ...

I could have cut the program into smaller sections and sold them for more per section. But as I stated, I wanted to create a program that would get someone to a functional level. This is a big task and that is why the program is so large. I would not consider selling a program that taught less than what is taught in the HST program. By the time you finish the program you will have a very good understanding of the language and you will be able to put thousands of sentences together. The program was designed to teach you those things you MUST know to speak even basic Thai. It does not teach more technical vocab that you need for more in-depth conversation, I am working on a system to do that now.

testimonials on the authors own website : sure i will believe, same as i believe all those other (spam)adverts with miracle solutions and 75% discounts if i just sign up in the next 10 minutes

I am not a liar, now I have a folder of hundreds of pieces of feedback I have but I have no place to put them. You can find LOTS of detailed feedback here directly from users. Obviously only 1 in 100 is going to bothered making a new post about their experiences with HST. I recommend that you pay most attention to reviews from users who have completed large sections of the program. They understand how the program works and how effective it is. Most people have some preconceived ideas about how to teach a language and when a user reviews the program without completing the program they are just describing how the program does not match their preconceived ideas. As you can see right here in his thread there is a big debate about learning to read Thai......

Obviously a product can not be perfect for everyone but the program has been prove over and over. Put in the time and the outcome is predictable. By the time you finish, you will understand what is happening around you and you will be able to put sentences together with ease. You will get practice forming over 12,000 sentences.

Hope that helps, most of these questions have already been answered on my website, in my newsletter or in posts here.

If you need more info, search around here on ThaiVisa and speak to those who are using the program.

Again take note of feedback from users who have completed the program not the guys that open it take a look do a couple of lessons and then state their opinions. As explained above, there are many sections. So feedback from a user that has completed a couple sections is really not that useful when compared to a review from a users that has completed the whole program, or at least half of it. You can see from the post on this page the user says he started last month. You can not offer a proper review of the whole program in 1 month. 6 months would be a minimum if the user was working on it every day.

I am busy working on the next program so hope there are not to many errors in this post.

Thanks

Edited August 16, 2012 by vincentv

[LuckyMisfit]

In my opinion High Speed Thai is as excellent course and I highly recommended it. I originally purchased this course as it had been recommended to me by a friend. The course is designed to bring a complete beginner from a foundation level to being functional. No other course I seen is anywhere near as comprehensive. As a previous poster pointed out you have a 30 day money back guarantee and High Speed Thai is reputable company so you really have nothing to lose if you feel it is not right for you (I also read somewhere of people negotiating an extended trial)

In my opinion everybody learns in a different ways. HST suits the logical learner (I'm a professional accountant :-) ) . As can be seen from Vincent's post he also tackles problems in a logical manner and he sets his course out as such. Each lesson builds on the last - starting with pronunciation, tones before progressing to reading and writing.

I want to comment on Vincent’s comment “Put in the time and the outcome is predictable”. My level pre and post High speed Thai are as follows.

Pre High Speed Thai

I usually travel to Thailand for about a month each year. I picked up bit of Thai from the locals and decided to give learning the language a go by completing both Pimslur and Rosetta Stone Thai. At this point I enjoyed the experience, I knew a few word, but after saying hello and how are you I was lost. I wanted to take learning the language seriously and after a bit of research and testing quite a few products on trial (Learn Thai Podcast, Thai for Beginners, Teach Yourself Thai) I settled on High Speed Thai as my learning tool.

Post High Speed Thai

From a foundation learner using High Speed Thai (now approximately 75% complete) for almost a year

- I can read and wright Thai with ease (I still have problems with some fonts)

- I am functional in everyday situations including bartering at the markets, ordering at restaurants etc.

- I can have basic conversations with my friends and others I meet (functional but improving)

- I have a firm grasp of conversations going on around me

- I have been complimented on several occasions over my tones and pronunciation

- I can assimilate new words and phrases from a variety of sources because people can write thing down for me.

I also want to highlight that while other courses may boast that they teach thousands of words (I believe HST teaches about 1800), HST teaches how to uses the words in a variety of situations, using reading, speaking and conversation techniques. I can make up my own sentences with ease because I understand the words, not just a phrase that I pre learned. Also other courses take a passive approach to learning (watch this video and you will magically learn!), I enjoy the active approach the HST takes. I also enjoy the significant use of Anki lesson that this course uses.

I have had no problems at all navigating the course. Also the resources are linked from the PDF. I like to print off every lesson as I go so I tend navigate myself using the raw data files. Again I have had no issues and everything is well labeled. There is certainly the odd typo here and there but nothing that would impact the learning process (For example “therefore” was typed as “the” in one of the 13 pages of reading lessons as part of chapter 10)

Finally I want to emphasis what value is. While 6000 baht may be steep, finding a course that works and suit you is invaluable (This can be any course not just HST). If you want a complete course which teaches Thai in a logical manner HST is the course for you. If you want to learn a few phrases for you two week holiday each year, look elsewhere. For your money you get 1000 page + manual, 35+ hours of audio lesson, video lessons and anki interactive drill lessons. For me it has been value for money because I use the material.

I can confirm that additional lessons have been included, circa about 12 hours of additional audio lessons as part of the revised course.

All the material in the course appears to be relatively recent and up to date.

Finally I want to thank Vincent for the excellent course he has put together. His High Speed Thai course has worked for me has been an invaluable learning tool.

Edited August 26, 2012 by LuckyMisfit