Learning Thai the hard way – the grind!
I learnt thai the hard way. The books I used were photocopied pass me downs from another generation and the teaching style was very much old style, ‘teacher is boss’ and learn by wrote. This is not to say that this would not work with some people but this was certainly not for me and felt as unnatural as riding a bicycle backwards.
I tried several Thai language schools in Bangkok and found the majority taught in this style. I even found language schools that had a more enlightened approach but both sets of schools lacked in fun and interest. After a while I found myself getting bored and this was reflected in poor performance. I need to be able to enjoy the process and doing the same thing day in day out does not cut it for me. I like to mix it up. I think many expat ‘farang’ think the same and this combined with the perceived lack of progress, explains the number of ‘farang’ that drop out of the thai language learning process early.
Learning Thai is not easy for the majority of us expat ’farang’ and for those that find it easy good luck to you …I’m not really referring to you in this piece, I’m referring to the majority of ‘farang’ who when they hear people speaking Thai fast think the people talking are in some kind of pain! There are foreign languages and foreign languages then there is pharsa-thai. I spoke to one student today who was talking about a particular point in Thai grammar. As he put it there were 12 times where this rule applied and there were 18 exceptions – so doesn’t that make the exception the rule and the rule the exception!? Yes there are certain things you have to learn.
At Thai Language Hut we believe in mixing things up. We believe that the best way to get good results is to keep the student interested, that it is the teacher’s responsibility to adapt their training approach to match the students needs and that a change of environment can be refreshing and interesting and can accelerate learning. We call our approach Active Learning. It involves a good level of interaction, games, flash cards, white board, stories, childrens books, ’Walk About Training’, get out of the classroom for trips out (situational learning) - even for a coffee or simple lunch. This is in addition to using a formal book written by a ‘farang’ for ‘farang’ to learn Thai. We have found this approach much less painful and more interesting. This is not a panacea – there is still a lot of work to be put in by the student.
I hope that in this blog and on our website www.thailanguagehut.com we will give you some interesting hints and tips about how to learn the Thai Language. Should you be interested in learning Thai more formally we would be happy to welcome you to our school for a free assessment, where you can meet us and see our training material and we can advise you what would be the best way for you to learn Thai effectively, whether you wish to speak Thai or read and write Thai script.
Good luck with which ever path you take to learning Thai.
Mark Shee
Director
Want to learn more Thai Language …then come have a look at our Thai Language School www.thailanguagehut.com