Rapid Read Thai Bootcamp August 22-27 (Chiang Mai)

[RapidMethod]

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Stop!

Are you still illiterate? You can't really speak clearly and accurately unless you can read. The quickest and most effective way to learn to speak and understand Thai is through reading because you are then also able to absorb Thai continuously from your environment - just by reading the menus and the signs...

If you cannot read Thai or are still struggling to read and you would like to speak Thai distinctly with naturally-sounding tones then this course is for you. By the end of the six days, you will be able to read Thai - albeit slowly and without necessarily understanding what you are reading - and pronounce each word accurately with the correct tones.

What if you just want to learn to speak and understand Thai? Although it seems counter-intuitive, the most effective way to do this is to speak-through-reading. See the details below about the follow-on conversational courses.

You'll absorb Thai from your environment if you can read these signs.

If you are already fluent in Thai then please tell your "illiterate" farang friends to come and get it done, once and for all! ช่วยแนะนำเพื่อนฝรั่งผู้ไม่รู้หนังสือมาเรียนด้วยครับ

When August 22-27, Monday to Saturday, 8am-5pm

Where Chiang Mai

Cost ฿35,000 (฿38,000 for Bangkok courses)

Includes

- delicious buffet lunches and all-day refreshments,
- comprehensive workbook,
- lifetime access to the online "video workshop" course,

- the "Anki" spaced-repetition flashcard files comprising the 500-odd words from the workshop (takes a month to memorize).

And me with my whips and chains to make sure you can read Thai by the end of the week!

What is the Rapid Method?

It's an integrated system based on a less-is-more philosophy that incorporates mnemonics, pictures, risqué songs (where possible!) and stories for easy memorization, as well as a structure for developing good speaking habits, building up your vocabulary and training your ear - that fits into your busy/lazy lifestyle. Instead of studying mountains of academic or "linguistic" material, the minimalist Rapid Method focuses on a small body of essential & relevant vocabulary, sentence patterns and colloquial idioms that you master by studying gradually over time for no more than 10-15 minutes per day, plus two one-hour sessions per week with a teacher (online or face-to-face).

If you can't make it to the workshop then you can follow the Video Workshop Series and learn to read Thai by yourself online.

Workshop Schedule

Monday is about learning all the basic consonants (which you should already know pretty well already from the preparation); and understanding exactly how to pronounce them. We introduce the first few vowels and practice reading simple words.

Tuesday is about learning all the (simple) vowels. There are a lot of them. And practicing how to pronounce them. The vowels are the hardest thing to pronounce because you have to get the shape of your mouth just right.

On Wednesday, we introduce the tones, learn the less common consonants and the more complicated (‘combination’) vowels. Now we can start to read real Thai – and we practice reading a few songs, such as:

We complete the tones on Thursday, add in a few more not-so-common consonants and start to practice reading whole sentences without spaces. (In Thai, we don’t need spaces!) By now, you will remember nearly all the letters because of the stories and reading practicing that we do every day.

Friday and Saturday are mostly consolidation and more practice, and I throw in the obscure consonants as a kind of free bonus. These letters are not so important, but they do appear in about a hundred common words – so you do need to know them. But if you forget then you can quickly look them up by yourself when you come across them in a word.

Click here for more details and to book online

Follow-on Conversational Program

After you can read, I recommend you focus on speaking-through-reading; and the course I recommend is Everyday Thai for Beginners. I’ve adapted it so that it can be used interactively as a self-study system, along with a Thai tutor who you meet for an hour’s session twice a week online via Skype. It’s a 30 week course (and only in Thai script). After about 4-5 months, you will be able to speak and understand basic everyday Thai very well.

This Everyday Thai course comes with another Anki file, consisting of 1100 words to learn. If you work through these flashcards about 5 minutes every day then you will know all these words within six months.

The Everyday Thai course isn’t terribly exciting, but it’s very logical and well-designed. It takes you step by step through each situation you will find yourself in when you speak to Thai people, starting with getting to know people and their families, their interests and hobbies and moving on to buying things, ordering food at a restaurant or at the market and getting around in a bus, train or taxi.

Another great advantage of the Everyday Thai course is that you will be practicing to read Thai all the time, so that by the time you finish the course, you will be able to read Thai fluently! (Well, as fluently as a 12-year-old, say… You need to read a few books and build up your vocabulary even more to become really fluent.)

To be able to really speak fluently and understand what people are saying, I then recommend studying a romance novel called Sydney Remember. (You can study any romance novel, but I’ve turned this one into an interactive audiobook, with notes and an accompanying Anki file.) It’s a lovely story about a Thai girl from Bangkok going to live with her cousin in Sydney. It’s our story in reverse. She sorts out her visa, gets a job at a Thai restaurant owned by a Japanese man, makes friends, etc. Nothing much actually happens in the story, but it’s written in a plain, colloquial style with lots of everyday slang; and it’s about everyday life. So after you’ve read and understand the book, you can join in the conversations with your Thai friends. It takes about a year to complete this course (two one-hour sessions per week with your Thai teacher; and 5-10 minutes per day working on Anki and practising speaking standard phrases and sentences out loud to develop your mouth muscles).

What did the participants say?

Listen to what the previous participants said after they finished the course.
[Click on the image above or watch the

.]
More video interviews can be found on the workshop page.

Youtube and email comments

If you're serious about learning Thai then just do the course. Richard Krause

I am trying to learn Thai language but I was scared to attempt to read it. This course has inspired me to try now with your mnemonic based approach. Thank you so much. Graham Jones

I have been living in Thailand for just over two years now and I have tried all sorts of methods to learn to speak and read Thai. I've tried books, CDs, classes etc, but nothing has helped. By watching your videos I have learned a whole lot more Thai than any of the above mentioned. Richard Grant

I instantly learned how to read thai (in time for my first time visit in Thailand). I didn't think it would be this easy! Marié Park

For me, it was realizing that it's not Thai that is difficult but the way it is taught that matters. Brent Warren

This is extraordinarily creative and hilarious Tyler P

Congratulations on the fabulous material. All languages should be taught this way. I started on the YouTube videos the night before and was astonished the next morning I had retained all the consonants covered after less than three hours study. This has never happened before with any subject I have studied. Lhinn Paadmottara

I was blown away by the fact I learnt the 25 consonants in the lesson in two viewings, when I've been trying for a couple of weeks to do learn the Thai letters without a great deal of success. Alex Cannon

Hey Gary! Brilliant, as usual I've still retained 99% of my reading skills from way back then, believe it or not. Dmitri Eroshenko

Something that really impresses me about your online workshop is that not only is it entertaining and fun - but it is also well structured so that you really learn something! A rare combination indeed. Annette Larke

It was like taking down the shutters from the windows and being able to see out for the first time. Colette Baily

I asked my Thai teacher today if she thought it possible for someone with no prior knowledge to learn to read Thai in two days. She said no. When I read some Thai to her she said, "It's a miracle!" Simon Gunn, Managing Director, Channah Thailand

I learnt and retained more information [in one day] than I had in the previous three months by conventional teaching methods. Mark Pirie, Triumph Motorcycles

I've lived here for 14 years and couldn't read or understand my own children. Now I'm making real progress. Tom Atkins, Bangkok

This course was fantastic – exactly what I needed in my quest to learn to read Thai. I must admit I was a little skeptical at first, but the course exceeded my expectations by miles. We were really reading Thai script by the end of the week and I am continuing to learn more every day with the online resources and follow on suggestions from the instructor. I’ve tried other methods of learning the Thai alphabet but Gary’s pictures are just what I needed to help me remember. I highly recommend this course. Cheron Gelber, Seattle

I've just finished the four half-day course learning the Thai script almost effortlessly and now I can read Thai. I am not often sure what the word means but I can read it in Thai. The course is based on associating each letter with a drawn character, sometimes funny, sometimes rude and always memorable. After a couple of lessons you can read some of the signs in the street and by the end of the course you are fluent in the Thai alphabet. This painless way of mastering the alphabet gives a sense of achievement and learning the language itself becomes less daunting, more interesting and great fun. Paul Sullivan, author, Chiang Mai

Read the articles in Bangkok Post, Bangkok Trader and 1stoppattaya: "The progress we made in our class was incredible, with everyone able to read basic words after just the first [half of the] day".

Please write back to me or click here for more details and to book online.

[Oxx]

You can't really speak clearly and accurately unless you can read.

Ludicrous assertion on so many levels.

(1) Young Thai children can't read, but can speak Thai perfectly well.

(2) Immigrants from neighbouring countries can speak Thai, but can neither read nor write. In fact, some are employed by the police as interpreters for Burmese prisoners here their Thai is so good.

(3) The Thai script isn't the only way of representing Thai. For example, Mary Haas's system is actually far better than Thai script at representing the language, with absolutely no ambiguities. Plus it's much easier to learn.

That said, learning to read/write Thai is a good thing. However, a six day course isn't going to get you anywhere past "I can decode the words very slowly, and even then I don't know how they're pronounced". It takes many, many months of practice to achieve anything like proficiency because (i) the rules (particularly tone rules) are complex, (ii) there are so many irregularities.

[RapidMethod]

Ludicrous assertion on so many levels.

(1) Young Thai children can't read, but can speak Thai perfectly well.

(2) Immigrants from neighbouring countries can speak Thai, but can neither read nor write.

(3) The Thai script isn't the only way of representing Thai. For example, Mary Haas's system is actually far better than Thai script at representing the language, with absolutely no ambiguities. Plus it's much easier to learn.

That said, learning to read/write Thai is a good thing. However, a six day course isn't going to get you anywhere past "I can decode the words very slowly, and even then I don't know how they're pronounced". It takes many, many months of practice to achieve anything like proficiency because (i) the rules (particularly tone rules) are complex, (ii) there are so many irregularities.

Hi Oxx, yes my assertion is contentious but not ludicrous. Your response is the typical knee-jerk reaction I get, so it's worth teasing out your rebuffs:

1 Children pronounce their mother tongue superbly, but it takes about 8-10 years of continuous muscle and intellectual training throughout the day to have reasonably topical conversations. We as adults don't have the time. With the Rapid Method, using adult learning strategies, one can speak at about the same level as a 12-year old after two years of fairly leisurely study. Another year to speak & understand about as well as a Sophomore in the USA or Key Stage 4 in the UK...

2. The people from neighbouring countries speak a somewhat similar language to Thai, it's like Spanish to our English. Their way of learning Thai is very different from ours (as Westerners who speak Romance or Saxon-based languages).

3. There are at least a dozen different ways of representing Thai, the most accurate being the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet). Mary Haas's system is consistent (but hardly accurate, unless you have the 'ear' or can get the proper speech training to match up the sounds correctly). It's not at all easy to learn. (Firstly, why learn an extra alphabet that only exists in text books? Secondly, when you can read Thai, you can continuously absorb Thai directly from your environment without being limited to just those occasions when you happen to be studying a text book or sitting in a language class.)

The danger of any transliteration scheme, no matter how technically accurate it is, is that we as Westerners each have our unique way of interpreting the system. We hear what we think we hear ("hair" is pronounced like "her" in northern England, for instance, and they hear the sound "her" as the word "hair"). So ear training won't really help (except for a few rare individuals who can mimic sounds accurately). Most people who learn to speak using a transliteration scheme end up with a mangled way of speaking Thai, and they tend to sound like a sick opera singer... or Dory speaking Whale. Any transliteration scheme is a total waste of time and will lead you to a dead end. Books, newspapers, signs and menus out there in the real world are all written in Thai script, of course.

My workshop does something that I think no other reading course does: by the end of the week you will be able to decode words (albeit very slowly) and pronounce them accurately with the correct tones. The course is not just a reading course. Indeed, the entire focus in the Rapid Method is to be able to speak (and later understand) Thai clearly and fluently. It just so happens that learning to read (using the 'Rapid' approach) is the best foundation for acquiring spoken, colloquial Thai independently, continuously and effectively. And, wherever possible, I deliberately avoid anything that you won't come across in colloquial conversation.

The so-called tone rules are actually so simple (I've rewritten the rules) that in the online version of the course, there's no need to continue dealing with the tones beyond about lesson 7, out of 70 (one lesson per letter).

And Thai is probably one of the most consistent languages in the world. I've boiled down the entire writing system to around 22 rules and I don't think I've come across more than about two dozen exceptions or irregularities - and these are for pretty obscure (literary) words anyway that hardly anyone would say in conversation.

If you have already learned to read (or speak) Thai the conventional way then you probably won't benefit from the approach or techniques used in the Rapid Method.

For everyone else who is just starting or who has reached a dead end and can't make any more progress, the Rapid Method will work for you. Try it yourself by registering for the free trial version of the course online and learn the top 30 letters in a few hours [click on the Quick Register menu and select Free Trial].