On 2017-6-12 at 2:05 PM, DekDaeng said:

or listen to the Beeb -

You mean this fool?

 

 

for a few hours a day will help 'get your ear in' so that then learning it will be considerably easier.

 

For a few hours a day listening to the "Beebs" is guaranteed to make your son super gay.

20 hours ago, wump said:

US and UK spelling is almost identical. No need to change anything. Neither systems are phonetic or make any sense. Thai is actually much better in this regard as it is nearly 100% phonetic. In EN, you have to memorize every single word.

Except for the US likes to miss out the letter "u" in a lot of words like colour/color. And they like to say "mom" instead of "mum". And switch the "re" and "er" around, like instead of "centre" they spell it "center"

14 hours ago, EnlightenedAtheist said:

Oh!I hate to burst your ego bubble, but if people are going to do what essentially amounts to conversational teaching, tutoring agencies that are offering essentially the same service, but for a hefty fee will not find this really appealing. Get it now? I am not saying that they are helping the average Thais, but they must pay the bills. Is this clearer or do I need to explain what seems to be pretty self-explanatory, but maybe I am too smart.

You seem to think they are coming to teach they are on Holiday speaking to your hosts on Holiday is accetable. Free holiday accomadation is available  good conversationalist, got it now.! No you havent have you not to smart eh!.

4 hours ago, wildewillie89 said:

It is an elitist country after all!
I would agree with some of that, but I would not fully agree with all of it. I agree with a lot of it more due to the funding that different regions in Thai get from the government. Whether it is education, health, whatever. The World Bank did a nice graph a few years ago showing the disproportions. No surprises about the difference in numbers of Bkk vs Issan. 

However, there is still some good stories. My Issan family initially went to the shitty village primary school and then the grandfather of my wife tried to force his kids (wife's father) into work after primary school. The father-in-law said no as he loved school. He personally went up to a high school in the city as a 12 year old and explained the situation that his father would not pay anything. The school tested him and gave him a scholarship. The teacher who gave it to him is the current Assistant Mayor of the city now actually (my boss). The father then went into the army, and sent back any money he made to educate some of his siblings who also liked school.

As it stands now, the father-in-law made it to the rank of Colonel before taking really early retirement to be the Mayor (11th best Mayor in the country already in his first term- trying to change his sub-district for the better), his brother he sent money to keep in school is now boss of police in the city. two other siblings (sister and brother) are local politicians, heads of village with business on the side. 

His kids (one being my wife) is a Director of Public Health, her brother Army, and sister a Physics teacher. Cousins are policeman, nurses, etc

Smart rural/farming kids can get by and move up in the country. They just need to work that little bit harder than the elite who are handed tutoring or cushy private sector jobs. 

Great to know about your well educated family. Awareness and sacrifices of one of the family member makes some difference in life of the others in the family. Hope the traditions continues for generations.

21 hours ago, balo said:

Really ?  In most European countries they learn to speak English at an early age . A Swiss backpacker will have no problems to communicate in English, just like people from Scandinavia.     Irish and Scottish accents can be just as difficult to understand as the English spoken in my own country Norway. 

 

 

That's true, especially true of countries where the language is a Germanic language. Germanic language speakers have an incredible advantage and are quite good at it. Norwegian is a Germanic language. I agree that some English accents (Scottish, South-African, or NZ) are just as "different" (as they are unusual to most speakers) as the average English-speaking Swede, for instance. Of course, they would need to have proof of fluency and such more than a bona fide English speaker.

50 minutes ago, EnlightenedAtheist said:

I agree that some English accents (Scottish, South-African, or NZ) are just as "different" (as they are unusual to most speakers) as the average English-speaking Swede, for instance. Of course, they would need to have proof of fluency and such more than a bona fide English speaker.

Sean Paul English aka Jamaican English is another type of difficult to understand English.

23 hours ago, EnlightenedAtheist said:

Oh!I hate to burst your ego bubble, but if people are going to do what essentially amounts to conversational teaching, tutoring agencies that are offering essentially the same service, but for a hefty fee will not find this really appealing. Get it now? I am not saying that they are helping the average Thais, but they must pay the bills. Is this clearer or do I need to explain what seems to be pretty self-explanatory, but maybe I am too smart.

Ego  bubble? A  tourist   with  some  capacity  to  converse in English  who   accepts  the  offer  of a  perhaps  lower  cost  accommodation  are  not  offering a  service in threat  to expensive  tutoring  agencies.

It is  the  incidental factor  that the language  for   communication  is  preferentially and  probably  unavoidable is English  that the  hosts  are   taking  to  harmless  advantage.

Your  self explanatory claim  would  infer  that   all  arrivals  in Thailand   would  be  compelled  to   either   converse  in  Thai  or  remain silent  because  to  do  otherwise   would  deem  them  to  be   "educating "   Thai  in  English or  in  fact   by  uttering   any  words   an any  language  other than Thai.

Perhaps  those  that pay  agencies  may  come  to  realize   that  a  free  and possibly   more  productive alternative  would  be  to  find  as  many  opportunities as  possible  to  simply  converse  socially  with  tourists .

In the  past  I have found  that in Indonesian  tourist areas  they  do . Many  are quite  fluent  if  not reasonably capable  in several tourist languages as  well as  Bahasa  Indonesia  plus  their  own regional  language  of  which  there  are   many . They   make  the  effort  to meet  the  need! And  few   have any  money  to  pay   any  agency!

 

 

On 6/12/2017 at 8:46 AM, Suradit69 said:

Even native speaking adults can be totally flummoxed by the accents of other English speakers with "foreign" accents.

Native speakers are MORE LIKELY to be flummoxed by accents. You're right, it is our DOWNFALL and something to be slightly ashamed of. A bit like when you ask a taxi to take you to 'Victory Monument' and he says 'arai-WA' then you try in Thai 'anu-sowrie' and he says 'arai-WA' because your tone is not quite on the dot - or perhaps just because he will not accept someone not speaking his language like a native speaker.

 

I started discussing this with an Italian on a train to Butterworth some 8 years ago. An Iranian and a girl from Belarus joined the conversation. English level was difficult for me - but they had few problems talking amongst themselves.

 

Between them they managed to explain that they are less sensitive to errors. I tend to rely more upon the words and syntax used when communicating. 

 

Observing carefully (and being aware that NVQ is a huge part of language) I have to agree. 

 

This also plays a large part in my approach to dealing with adult learners, which range from the Mathayom dropouts that will start complaining that they could never learn to say 'good afternoon' to fairly competent speakers.

 

 

Most interesting for most students is the communication aspect. When faced with difficult text, we often don't sit with dictionaries when we can discuss it with someone else and make sense of it...

 

My students have extensive exposure to foreigners. They know better than I do how to communicate. Education involves gaining a wide experience of listening and speaking with various sources and then allowing your brain to ascertain which approach works best.

 

 

19 minutes ago, ben2talk said:

Native speakers are MORE LIKELY to be flummoxed by accents.

Agree with what you said, but when I mentioned "foreign" accents, I was including the variety of native speakers accents. Listening to Scottish English, Irish English, some English English, Southern US and Australian English, etc. it can be difficult to handle them all even if you are well traveled and accustomed to many of the variation ... and English speakers who have stayed in one place all their lives may not even believe what they are hearing is actually English.

 

I sometimes watch The Yorkshire Vet on TV. The vets and most of their clients are quite understandable, but when  some of the farmers in the area start talking I wish they'd use subtitles.

 

For a child trying to learn the language it can be incomprehensible when exposed to so many variations.

 

 

On 6/12/2017 at 4:48 AM, Thaiwrath said:

Great to see these people so eager to learn English.

With some of the Westerners I know (myself included), it would be difficult to understand some of the accents and dialects !

trust this as truth .... Nothing Good Will Come Of This .....