Good Thai language courses for genuine learners

[jackoholly]

I am in Bangkok now looking for a school. I do understand that a lot of these Thai schools are basically visa farms as a way of getting around the immigration thing but I am genuinely wanting to obtain an ED visa and learn Thai to a good standard.

Does anybody have any recommendations for a good school?

Thank you

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[jackoholly]

Apologies, I'm holding a British passport and I am currently in my first week of a 3 entry (6 month) tourist visa.

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[SlyAnimal]

The Chula Intensive Thai course is meant to be the best course available, I'm hoping to start there during their July intake.

Their website is below:

http://www.arts.chula.ac.th/~asc/

Goto the "Thai for foreigners" section at the top. It's quite a bit more expensive than many of the courses and has a significant amount of homework on top of the coursework (From what I've been told, it's 3h per day in class + 3-5h of mandatory homework Mon-Fri). The course runs for 6 weeks per level, then has a 2 week break before the next level, with 9 levels in total.

AUA also has a quite good reputation, and I've been to a few of their classes, however the learning style isn't your traditional style. As it's basically learning via listening, and so you just listen to two Thai teachers talking, and then learn words from their body language and the context of what they're saying etc. This is a very relaxed style, but ultimately quite good, although I think it'd be difficult to see your progress, as it would be slow.

Meant to be quite a few other schools around, although I don't have any personal experience with them. I would recommend learning to read Thai quite early on in your studies, as it helps a lot with improving your pronunciation, and then every time you go somewhere, you're constantly reading Thai and thus learning more Thai every time you walk out your front door.

Any of the schools which you sign up for, should be able to assist you with obtaining a visa. Although I don't know if they'll necessarily do it for you, but will rather just provide the documents you need from them, the rest is then your responsibility.

[jackoholly]

Your reply was literally 3 hours too late! I have just signed up to Walen yesterday afternoon.

Really appreciate the reply. Very helpful but bad timing for me

Jack

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[SlyAnimal]

Walen also has a pretty good reputation, I have their mobile app on my phone and found it pretty good, although that's the only thing I really know about them, as I've never personally studied with them or looked into their course much.