ED Visa - 25 hours / week

[Mario2008]

troll post removed

[bertty]

Troll post removed.

Troll thread remains.

[deepcell]

a month ago, I asked one school in Bangkok about the Thai Language course and the woman replied to me

... "We are pleased to inform you that 23,000 Baht is the price offered for 180 hours Thai class with 1-year ED visa arrangement."

also I was told that needs a minimum of 4 hours per week (2 days a week or 4 hours on saturday), but this would be 192 hours per year and not 180 hours as she told me..

well it was a month ago, now I do not know ... better you call the school and ask for updated information about ED visa.

[Mario2008]

Post discussing moderation removed.

 

 

There are very strong indicators that the hour requirement will (and in the case of BKK has) be raised to 8 per week. A 25 hour requirement is not very likely, unless it includes self study.

[smedly]

anyone got a rough estimate of how long it actually takes the average person (in hours) to learn Thai and at what point an individual should just give up if they are not getting anywhere - there's bound to be a limit of what is acceptable

 

You can't keep going to classes for months/years and still only spurt out sabai dee mai

[overherebc]

 

 

My school still thinks I don't need to leave the country until next year haha, but if this is true, 5 hours a day 5 days a week, goodbye Thailand. That is overkill, 8 hours spread across 2 days is fine, I am already at a point where I don't even speak English anymore but that amount of time is ridiculous.

Personally. ..i think it is a joke.!
I would like to see this fellow (who will decide to put something so stupid ..in life)to spend 5 hoirs a day learning English hehehe.
I can bet that he will need mental institution after 6 month of learning.
I just refuse to believe in such nonsense.
Even in schools around the world student should not be spending more then 90 min. in the same subject because thus start to work backward. ..
Yes...it is not just ridiculous. ..It is stupid.
Of course it can be another excuse to say to us goodbye.

 

 

I forget the study now and probably cannot source it, but there is a clear cut off point on average where there is a huge drop off in a persons attention span and thus information not being stored.
 

 

 

I can remember reading somewhere that the old OK system of 40 minute periods in school was based on learning drop off after 15 minutes.

5 minutes prep then 15 minutes on the subject a short break to talk about something else, perhaps related to the main subject then 15 minutes on the subject with the last minutes on wind down and reminder of the next study period.

 

Like you I can't quote a source, just memory.

[mataleo]

Nothing is confirmed. Either 8h or 25

Its all rumors.

Its all by old rules still.

Period.

[smotherb]

It's easy, really, stay out of Thailand until you are old enough and have enough money--how old and how much money will, of course, change periodically.

[belg]

if you have to be in school for 25 hours per week, better find a job :)

 

if that are the options of staying in the country -50 and/or not married

[monk213]

 

 

 

My school still thinks I don't need to leave the country until next year haha, but if this is true, 5 hours a day 5 days a week, goodbye Thailand. That is overkill, 8 hours spread across 2 days is fine, I am already at a point where I don't even speak English anymore but that amount of time is ridiculous.

Personally. ..i think it is a joke.!
I would like to see this fellow (who will decide to put something so stupid ..in life)to spend 5 hoirs a day learning English hehehe.
I can bet that he will need mental institution after 6 month of learning.
I just refuse to believe in such nonsense.
Even in schools around the world student should not be spending more then 90 min. in the same subject because thus start to work backward. ..
Yes...it is not just ridiculous. ..It is stupid.
Of course it can be another excuse to say to us goodbye.

 

 

I forget the study now and probably cannot source it, but there is a clear cut off point on average where there is a huge drop off in a persons attention span and thus information not being stored.
 

 

 

I can remember reading somewhere that the old OK system of 40 minute periods in school was based on learning drop off after 15 minutes.

5 minutes prep then 15 minutes on the subject a short break to talk about something else, perhaps related to the main subject then 15 minutes on the subject with the last minutes on wind down and reminder of the next study period.

 

Like you I can't quote a source, just memory.

 

 

In my school we have 2 hour lessons but a 10-15 minute break in between that which seems to do the trick.
 

[monk213]

It's easy, really, stay out of Thailand until you are old enough and have enough money--how old and how much money will, of course, change periodically.

 

So you are telling me that there are no foreigners who have ever come to this Kingdom with little resources and managed to make something for themselves? Think again, trust me

[smotherb]

 

It's easy, really, stay out of Thailand until you are old enough and have enough money--how old and how much money will, of course, change periodically.

 

So you are telling me that there are no foreigners who have ever come to this Kingdom with little resources and managed to make something for themselves? Think again, trust me

 

No, I believe it was very clear, I am trying to dissuade all young men from coming here.

[SABloke]

It's obviously bs information - don't worry guys. Just think about it: ED visa's don't only cover "people trying to find a way to stay" It covers real students that study at Thai universities...the last time I checked (my cousin) - she attends 21 hours a week at her Uni for her post-grad. If 25hrs was a real requirement - they'd either A) Have to kick out all legitimate foreign students or B) Demand that all uni's ammended their course strucutures.

[yoslim]

There are actually legit students on ED visas?

[bertty]

There are actually legit students on ED visas?

Dang that's like retirement visa for 50 year olds or marriage visas for guys 50 years older than their brides.... where will it all end ?

[smedly]

There are actually legit students on ED visas?

 

my friend is learning Thai but he has a work permit

 

 

 

I notice that nobody on this thread answered my question about how many hours it should take to learn Thai or give up - that sort of answers it for me and most know what I mean by that

 

but if you can get away with it then that is your business and may it continue - just make sure you can write read and speak thai when you go for your extension - sabai dee lol

[monk213]

 

There are actually legit students on ED visas?

 

my friend is learning Thai but he has a work permit

 

 

 

I notice that nobody on this thread answered my question about how many hours it should take to learn Thai or give up - that sort of answers it for me and most know what I mean by that

 

but if you can get away with it then that is your business and may it continue - just make sure you can write read and speak thai when you go for your extension - sabai dee lol

 

 

Depends what you mean by 'learn Thai' - fluently speaking? getting by? In between the 2, reading and writing as well, it's a bit of a broad statement don't you think. It took me around a year before I could confidently have a conversation outside with a Thai, these days I speak Thai without even thinking about what I am saying as I don't speak English in my house or anywhere, only on the internet
 

[BlueEasySleep]

I study at a university and my in class requirement is only 6 hours a week. Edited August 15, 2014 by BlueEasySleep

[aarontendo]

 

There are actually legit students on ED visas?

Dang that's like retirement visa for 50 year olds or marriage visas for guys 50 years older than their brides.... where will it all end ?

 

 

Heh, yeah there does seem to be a whole crew of those fellas who are way to happy about everyone elses visas getting more problematic...let's hope they share some of the pain soon.

[charliebadenhop]

In regard to how many hours it would take to learn Thai, before deciding to give up…

 

Perhaps you (sorry but I don't know your name) didn’t get any answers because there seems to be several beliefs built into your question, that would need to be addressed.

 

Maybe one of those beliefs is “Thai is difficult to learn."

 

As I am sure we have all noticed, Thais do an excellent job of learning Thai.

I haven’t met a Thai person yet that is not fully fluent. :-)

 

So why not you and I as well?!

 

I lived in Japan for 30 years and I do know that learning a very different language system can be a challenge.

But here is a very interesting example-

A person needs to learn about 3,500 kanji characters to be able to read the newspaper. 

Most foreigners give up long before reaching that plateau. 

 

But there is a well known foreigner that was able to read the newspaper after studying for three months!!

An amazing achievement.

 

And then he went ahead and put his system into a book, so others could duplicate what he did. 

 

I think the only reason to give up learning Thai, is if one never comes up with the proper system for studying.

When I say “proper” I mean some form of mnemonic system to make what you learn “stick”. If you have a mnemonic system in place that works for you, most words you learn, you will only have to see and hear once or twice before you have them in short term memory. And then after the info is in short term memory, a bit of light repetition helps to shift the info into long term memory.

[smedly]

still no real answer to my question

 

Lets say you are Thai and you work for immigration or the Education Authority and you had to decide what is a reasonable time period to grant a foreigner to learn Thai - I suppose the answer would have to be in hours rather than weeks or months 

 

Once you have the above answer there are obvious limitations and controls that need to be put in place like how many hours a week you must be in class otherwise someone could drag a course out for years by only doing 1 hour a week

 

I'm asking the question because I don't actually know the answer as I've never studied Thai before, there are people on this thread that have and should have a rough idea of what is reasonable - the Thai authorities are obviously doing this also because lets face it - you can't expect to be on an ED visa in Thailand for the next 5 years learning Thai - I'm pretty sure they have already worked out what is reasonable i.e. xx hours per day - xx days per week with a maximum term of 1 or 2 years and if you still haven't got the education you came for after that then it's time to move on as it's not going to happen, and of course there are those that have already been on ED visa to learn Thai for the last 2 years and have never been in a classroom which I guess is why the authorities are going to test people when you want an extension, I'm certainly not being critical of those that have used the system to stay here but at the end of the day the Thai authorities are not really being unreasonable

[Mario2008]

What the ministry of education does is asses the course a school offers. Some courses have more than 1 level and the number of levels a course has determines for how long you can study at the school, for example 3 years or 5 years.

 

If the hour requirement goes up, the time duration one needs to complete a course will go down. Now it is based on 4 hours a week.

[phirho]

anyone got a rough estimate of how long it actually takes the average person (in hours) to learn Thai and at what point an individual should just give up if they are not getting anywhere - there's bound to be a limit of what is acceptable

 

You can't keep going to classes for months/years and still only spurt out sabai dee mai

 

Foreign Service Institute of the US Department of State has released data on how difficult it is to learn different languages for native English speakers: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Language_Learning_Difficulty_for_English_Speakers

 

Thai language belongs to Category 2 and requires on average 1100 class hours to achieve General Professional Proficiency in Speaking (S3) and General Professional Proficiency in Reading (S3)

 

A person at this level is described as follows:

• able to speak the language with sufficient structural accuracy and vocabulary to participate effectively in most conversations on practical, social, and professional topics
• can discuss particular interests and special fields of competence with reasonable ease
• has comprehension which is quite complete for a normal rate of speech
• has a general vocabulary which is broad enough that he or she rarely has to grope for a word
• has an accent which may be obviously foreign; has a good control of grammar; and whose errors virtually never interfere with understanding and rarely disturb the native speaker.

[jucel]

When I first moved here I paid for 80 hours of lessons. 5 days a week, 2 hours a day. It was one to one & after an hour of each lesson I could feel myself switching off! I can't imagine 5 hours a day. That's a heck of a lot of prep for the teachers too!

Also after the 80 hours, I had learnt/been provided with all the necessary info & then it was just a matter of building up the vocab. The structure, grammar & punctuation of Thai is very simple indeed. Once you get over the alphabet it is pretty easy. The hardest part for me was the fact everything is in blocks of letters/words (no spaces), with no punctuation etc, so if you can't read one word, you have to move onto the next and then go back.

[itsuptome]

If the hour requirement goes up, the time duration one needs to complete a course will go down. Now it is based on 4 hours a week.

 

This isn't necessarily true.

 

The schools will have to design new curriculum to support an 8 hour per week requirement (if, in fact, that requirement comes into effect, according to my school it hasn't, but may in the future). They'll also have to get their curriculum approved by the MoE. At that point it's up to the school whether they provide enough material, for instance, for 3 years of study at the new requirement, vs. 1.5.

 

Some schools may create enough material that they can still provide 3 years. Some schools may even draft more material while they're at it.

 

All of this is likely to take some time.

 

My guess would be that if the MoE gives them time (and they don't seem to be rushing my school at all, from what I'm told), most schools will provide enough curriculum so that students can study for the same number of years as they could have originally.

Edited August 15, 2014 by itsuptome

[yoslim]

What about people who are hopeless with tones and have trouble pronouncing words outside of their native tongue?  Hell I still have trouble with quite a few English words (wrap, through...)