On-Line Thai Language Course

[praglen]

A friend suggested there's a terrific on-line curse Thaipod101.cm and when I looked it over, it asked for my credit card and a $1 fee to cover bandwith(sounds suspicious). I'm reluctant to give them my credit card info. Does anyone have any experience, directly or indurectly, with this website? Are they legitimate?

[AyG]

They've been around for a few years now. Run by an American living in Japan who claims to have "conversational Thai".

Google "thaipod101 reviews" brings up a few links that might be of interest.

[edwardandtubs]

Brings up a lot of fake reviews clearly designed to market the website. You can get the whole thing for free. You should be able to work out in two minutes how and if you can't then I'm not going to tell you. I did all the beginner and intermediate lessons, which were OK if you already know most of the grammar and vocabulary but if you didn't you would be left very frustrated. The intermediate lessons don't provide nearly enough language to get you to intermediate level so the advanced lessons would be far too difficult. There are also translation errors, such as with the word บ้าง (baang). This is constantly mistranslated as 'all' along the lines of 'What do you all want?' whereas in fact it could be loosely translated as 'some' as in 'What are some things you want?'. It's one of those difficult to translate things but they totally mistranslate it. If they screw up something basic like that, how can you have any faith in the rest of the course?

[jamhar]

I registered there a while back. Elected not to sign up for the paid service. Since then I've been hit with spam from them on a daily basis. The Google spam filter works very well but my spam folder is 75% from Thaipod101.

I found a few free classes from them in Youtube. Suggest you try that before paying out bucks and setting yourself up for daily emails from them.

Just a suggestion. Link is below

youtube link for thaipod101

[Scott]

A post advocating possibly illegal activity has been deleted.

[asiaexpat]

I used their free basic courses for several years before purchasing the premium course for my kids. They are legitimate and offer Word of the Day email and other stuff free. I still use them for review and vocabulary reference and my kids are at the advanced stage after a little over a year of study (other web based program are used also.) By the way, I am not affiliated with any company teaching Thai, just an avid student of Thai culture.

[desi]

thaipod101.com is run by Innovative Languages (not some guy in Japan - he's pleasant). Innovative Languages is a highly aggressive company. If you do sign up with them be prepared for spam. They also have many apps on iTunes (again, prepare to be spammed with ads). I got fed up with them ages ago. They are not a pleasant experience at all.

[asiaexpat]

ThaiPod101.com is offered by Innovative Languages (a huge operation with course for many languages.) As far as aggressive marketing I guess that depends on ones tolerance for a few emails selling their products per month. I get as much from other schools including brick and mortar ones. I do find the sales pitch at the end of each audio lesson annoying so I just shut it off before that starts. Like any software based language program, error do creep in, but they have not prevented my kids from learning. As I stated before I used the free service for several years and it is still available. I cards also use LearnThaipod.com,and while it also has errors, I find the video format is more enjoyable than just audio. However, it lacks voice recording and flash cards that are in ThaiPod101. YouTube offers a sample of each program as well as many individuals teaching basic Thai. Enjoy the learning what ever you choose.

[asiaexpat]

I must stand corrected: it is end of the years and ThaiPod101.com is spamming me daily (2 or more times.) This is aggravating.

[zolo]

Maybe I'm a bit late with this answer, but may help for others.

I have tried thaipod101 for free and for payed member also.

- In the beginning I had some problem with them (don't remember already what was it) and had to wait few days for the answer, but finally they helpt me, gave me some extra also and after I get usually fast response from them when I was needed.

- The 2000 english/thai words with audio they have on their page is useful (however the 2000 word audio which could buy is terrible, I could'nt really see how could that use. )

- lessons are really interesting, words even told in slow way, but as beginner I can't really feel them so much useful. 1 topic is about 1 lesson, in one lesson they randomly pick 1-2 sentence and they teach 5 words. This is really nice for learning phrases, but not really for build up a word based knowledge. The examples are useless as for beginner you really don't know which english word which thai word in the sentence, and words mostly not covered in previous lessons also. And in examples all words in sentence written together as thai usually do, but this way as a beginner, you won't able to figure out the words much.
They have started video lessons about thai alphabet (can access video freely, maybe some problem with 6th lesson only, but with some logic you could access that also, or as paying member - you should able to access that also) which seems really great.

- As topics almost randomly picked, using 5 words to teach, I don't really feel I'm moving from A to B.

I would like to highly recommend learn-thai-podcast.com. They have really fantastic lessons with covering 4000 words, covering grammar rules, they teaching thai as ppl speaking it really, covering dialects also (only few lessons for each dialect, but still really great idea). Only negative thing I could bring up is the beginner modules seems a bit dry as you can't see for a while how your learnt words (10 words / lesson) could use in sentences. But after few lessons this will change. However they created a new, pre-beginner part where you could learn the first 300 words. (have some more module also). There I could see clearly the words I learnt in vocabulary lesson how I can use them in sentences, teaching the simple grammar rules also for deeper understanding and able to create your sentences easier.

The site teaches throught real life conversations, news reports. Has separate video lessons for reading and writing thai.

You could check the top300 words lessons here for free: http://learn-thai-podcast.com/300words/category/all-top-300-thai-words-lessons/

If you like it and planning to learn thai language, I highly recommend them.