Good language school near the coast?

[ANoobie]

I'm wanting to move to Thailand for six months to learn Thai and get in some good beach time. I intend to take a full time language course, but really want to be near enough to the coast that I can visit the beach a few times a week.

I found Patong Language School in Phuket and thought it looked pretty good, but then I found this thread on here giving a dire warning, saying the school is a scam.

Can anyone recommend a good language school in a beach town?

Thanks!

[AyG]

If you're serious about learning Thai, then the only decent schools are in Bangkok and Chiang Mai.

However, if you're only going to be studying for 6 months you're not going to make meaningful progress. In that time you won't be able to read fluently or write anything particularly meaningful.

[phetphet]

Have a look at Mind Your Language in Koh Samui. http://www.mindyourlanguagethailand.com

[bearpolar]

No fulltime, most school are 2 days per week and wallen is 4 days

[ANoobie]

However, if you're only going to be studying for 6 months you're not going to make meaningful progress. In that time you won't be able to read fluently or write anything particularly meaningful.

It's not possible to make "meaningful progress" in six months of intense study? The Patong Language School course is four classes a day (20 lessons a week), which is pretty intense. I'm hoping to be conversational in Thai after six months.

[AyG]

However, if you're only going to be studying for 6 months you're not going to make meaningful progress. In that time you won't be able to read fluently or write anything particularly meaningful.

It's not possible to make "meaningful progress" in six months of intense study? The Patong Language School course is four classes a day (20 lessons a week), which is pretty intense. I'm hoping to be conversational in Thai after six months.

To me "meaningful progress" means being able to read and write moderately proficiently (as I intimated in my original posting).

However, after six months (400 hours) you should be able to hold very simple conversations with a very limited vocabulary with your teacher*. However, if you're exceptionally talented and spend a lot of time interacting in Thai with native speakers you might do somewhat better.

A particular hurdle is that in the classroom Thai teachers grade their language, and speak slowly and clearly. Normal people don't. Furthermore, Thai teachers are used to hearing how their language is mangled by foreign learners and can cope with that (usually). Normal people aren't, and will greet your attempt to communicate with blank incomprehension.

Incidentally, if you want to learn to read to a reasonable level (and barely be able to write a simple sentence without mistakes), that will take up 2 of the 6 months.

* Putting things another way, diligent students can typically learn to use productively 7-9 new words per day. So in six months you'll have a basic vocabulary of around 1,000 words. To put this in context, the basic LEXiTRON Thai-English dictionary defines over 43,000 Thai words - many with multiple definition.