Bakunin learns Thai

The end

2011-05-02T11:30:00.002+02:00

This is my last post on this blog. I've been learning Thai for two years, and have been blogging a bit more than a year about my activities and progress. I'm very happy with my listening and reading comprehension, and I've made first positive experiences speaking and writing Thai (chatting, sms, emails). I will continue to listen, watch, and read, and I will increasingly seek out opportunities to speak and write. None of this needs further documentation.

I've learned a great deal about language acquisition during the last two years. Different strokes for different folks, but for me
- comprehensible input,
- a very long silent period in the beginning to allow my brain to tune into the sounds of the new language,
- no translation, and
- no grammar study
works much better than formal study and listen-and-repeat. I've also learned to appreciate that the vast majority of language learners is hostile to the ideas put forward by ALG and other natural language acquisition proponents, and that I don't have to change their minds.

I didn't manage to attract a sizable audience of other Thai learners. Most of my (few) readers were interested in natural language acquisition in general, but not in Thai and the resources I posted. If you happen to stumble upon this blog and are actually interested in Thai resources for lower intermediate learners, check out my posts from October 2010-December 2010.

Many thanks to everyone who contributed comments to this blog - I always enjoyed the discussions and exchange of ideas. All the best with your language learning!

Tadoku results

2011-04-30T19:35:00.003+02:00

Tadoku is over, at least for me. Most likely, I'll make it into the top 20. More importantly, I managed to read more than 1000 pages (1114 to be precise) and more than doubled my reading (measured in words) compared to last month. That's more than I had hoped for. Having a friendly competition clearly boosted my motivation to read the extra page. Many thanks to the organizers of the Tadoku event!

Extensive reading is great for vocabulary acquisition and general language consolidation. I learned to recognize many, many words during this month, certainly several 100s of words. Most of them became clear through context, and I either ignored the others or looked them up on google image search or the Royal Institute Dictionary. Sight recognition and overall reading speed have also improved quite a bit.

I even had my first encounter with Thai vocabulary reserved for Buddhist monks, because the last book I read was about a temple dog and his adventures during the (Buddhist) year. Now I know what monks say when they eat, sleep, chant, refer to themselves or to laymen, and practice religious activities.

Reading Thai has become a habit, and even though I will reduce reading a bit to enjoy the outdoors and the mountains in summer, I will try to read on a daily basis. I still have a huge stack of books for young readers in front of me, and I think 3 per month is a reasonable long-term goal.

There are two more Tadoku challenges coming up later this year. If you've started reading Thai (or any other second language), make sure to bookmark readmod and join us next time!

Tadoku contest

2011-03-29T18:50:00.005+02:00

Some Japanese learners have established regular extensive reading contests lasting one month each. The idea is to promote reading in Japanese (or whatever language you're learning) while having fun competing with each other for eternal fame. The contest is called Tadoku challenge (Japanese for extensive reading); you can read about it here. The next one starts on April 1st, and if you want to join you can still register here.

A commenter, e_dub_kendo, encouraged me to take part, and since I started extensive reading this month and just love it, I thought, why not join and add some Thai flavor to the mix. It will certainly be a lot of fun!

I quickly estimated what I've read this month: 4 books, 800 pages, 100'000 words. The books waiting for me now are more difficult and more densely printed, so just keeping the page count up would already be something. Let's get the read on!

Monolingual Thai dictionary

2011-03-24T20:53:00.005+01:00

I was asked in a comment on my last post why I wouldn't use a monolingual Thai dictionary to look up words I don't understand, at least from time to time. My answer was basically: I'd love to, but I haven't found such a dictionary. Two days later I stumbled upon one by pure coincidence: the Royal Institute Dictionary. (I had to switch over to "Thai (Windows, DOS)" encryption to view the pages on my Mac.)

I was reading Winnie the Pooh in Thai and came across the phrase รื่องพรรค์นี้ which somehow captured my attention and found its way into the Google search bar. I was directed to a forum entry discussing the spelling of พรรค์ with a link to the Royal Institute Dictionary. That's how I found it. Don't ask me why I typed that phrase into Google, I wouldn't normally do such a thing. I occasionally use Google image search for objects and youtube for activities, but I wouldn't bother to check a word like พรรค์ in either of the two for obvious reasons. Besides that, the meaning of that word is entirely clear. But anyway.

I haven't thoroughly checked the dictionary yet, but I probed it with a few newly acquired words, and it looks quite good. Here's the entry for เด้ง, a word I learned in the same Winnie the Pooh story (Tiger and Baby Roo climb a tree and can't come down). The Royal Institute Dictionary has the following to say: เด้ง ก. ดีดหรือดันขึ้นเมื่อถูกกดหรือถูกบีบเป็นต้น, กระดอนขึ้น, กระเด้ง ก็ว่า. Another example is ฝุ่น น. ดินแห้งหรือสิ่งอื่นที่ละเอียดเป็นผง เช่น ฝุ่นละออง ฝุ่นชอล์ก; ผงขาว ๆ คล้ายแป้งใช้ผัดหน้าหรือทาสิ่งของต่าง ๆ เช่น ฝุ่นผัดหน้า. It even gives the pronunciation for words with irregular spelling like my old friend monsoon: มรสุม [มอระสุม] น. คราว; คราวลม, คราวพายุ; ลมฝน; ชื่อพายุใหญ่ที่มีลมแรงและมีฝนตกหนัก, โดยปริยาย

หมายถึงความยุ่งยากเดือดร้อนที่เกิดในบางช่วงชีวิต เช่น มรสุมชีวิต. (เทียบอาหรับ mausim).

The Royal Institute Dictionary looks like a great addition to my toolkit. It allows me to do intensive reading in addition to extensive reading, or to check up on words that keep showing up but remain unclear.

While I'm at it: Winnie the Pooh is a great book for extensive reading. Cute stories, easy vocabulary, and a small set of quite predictable characters. But because it's a translation of a Western book, it doesn't contain any references to Thai culture and Thai ways, and it contains lots of references to Western culture, climate and behaviors. If I had only translated books (fortunately, it's the other way round: I have only 10% translated books and 90% books by Thai authors), I would miss out on a lot of important vocabulary specific to Thai culture.

My first experiences with extensive reading in Thai

2011-03-10T13:52:00.003+01:00

I had some back and forth on extensive reading (see here and here), but I decided to give it a go when I was in Thailand last month. My concern with extensive reading was mainly around messing up the pronunciation of new words, but I believe to have found a solution by purchasing and using Paiboon's 3-way dictionary iphone app. For a review, see here.

The 3-way dictionary has two features that make it interesting for me: every word is recorded by a native speaker, and for every word, you can see a phonetic transliteration using standard Thai spelling. This is important for words that have irregular tones or unconventional spelling (of which there are many, e.g., ผลใม้-> ผน-ละ-ม้าย). I don't want to see any "translations", but, fortunately, spelling, transliteration and translation are on separate lines, so that I can simply cover the English line with my finger before typing in the Thai. It's not perfect, but it works. The dictionary itself is very comprehensive and a really solid piece of work.

With the option to check up on the pronunciation of new or unfamiliar words, I feel much more comfortable starting to read extensively. I bought many books in Thailand, about 50 or so, almost all of them books for young readers. Only a handful are translations of Western works, the vast majority are written by Thai authors. I think this is quite important given the huge difference in lifestyle and culture between Thailand and Western countries. 50 books sounds like a lot, but most of them are thinner than your average adult novel, and I know from reading in other languages that I enjoy books for young readers and won't easily get bored.

I've read already three books and am well into the fourth. Reading is much easier than I expected, and the more I read the better I get at it. However, my comprehension ratio is usually around 95%, which is clearly too low for pleasure reading. But it's high enough to get the story line and most of the details, and this clearly keeps me going. I'm amazed at how much vocabulary I'm able to pick up without any effort. It seems to be much easier to acquire new words through reading than through listening, because I can slow down and make a guess, or re-read a passage, without losing what comes after. I don't try to memorize new words, so I'm forgetting almost as much as I'm figuring out, but with enough repetition things start to stick. It's exciting to hear newly acquired words used on TV or in my free speech recordings.

A coverage ratio of 95% is problematic in that I have to interrupt the reading flow too often to simply enjoy the story. I try to mitigate this by ignoring many new words. When I encounter a new word, I usually just glance briefly at the letters and ignore it. Only when it continues to come up (which is often the case), maybe after the third or fourth encounter, and I have a feeling for it's meaning, I look it up and listen to the pronunciation. But it's still a bit cumbersome and I can understand why a coverage ratio of 98% or more is recommended for pleasure reading.

My plan is to balance reading and watching/listening at a ratio of about 1:1. I still feel that improving my listening comprehension is more important than working on any other language skill at this point in my studies (for want of a better word), so I will continue to put the focus on watching and listening. But extensive reading seems to be an excellent way of picking up and acquiring new words, and I'm glad I've reached the point where I can benefit from it.

My first experiences speaking Thai

2011-03-08T08:27:00.006+01:00

Apart from uttering a few survival phrases during holidays in Thailand, I hadn't spoken any Thai for the 22 months I'd been learning the language. I'd been following a program of comprehensible input (videos, TV, recorded books, recorded free speech), and I hadn't tried to switch languages with older Thai friends.

As my comprehension improved over the past 6-9 months, more and more Thai started to pop up in my head when watching Thai or daydreaming, and it became clear that I was ready to start speaking. And that's what I did when I went to Thailand last month.

I didn't pay much attention to what happened during the first few days, but I assume that I was mixing English and Thai quite a bit. But in the second week, I realized that I was having conversations entirely in Thai lasting for hours and, sometimes, days. I met quite a few new people on this trip with whom I spent a lot of time, and with the majority of them I didn't speak a single word of English. I found it quite amazing that they never tried to switch to English, but this might be more a reflection of their English skills (which I rarely established) than of my great Thai.

I also found it amazing that everybody understood what I was saying; this gave me a lot of confidence in my pronunciation. I had been harboring doubts about my pronunciation abilities before, but that's not a concern anymore. Since I had so much input before starting with output, I intuitively know if what I say is right or wrong, and I can correct my pronunciation pretty quickly.

My Thai speaking abilities are still very weak. Most of the time, I just say individual words and phrases, and I can't string complete sentences together. My active vocabulary is also very, very limited. But since my comprehension abilities are much better, it is possible to have meaningful conversations. If I were to continue speaking, I'm sure I would catch up.

This experience has renewed my confidence in the ALG claim that comprehension is the basis for all language skills. I'm back in Switzerland now and will focus again on input activities. I still have a long way to go with my comprehension skills, and I'm not concerned about having too little speaking practice.

Is extensive reading a good way to acquire new vocabulary?

2011-02-07T16:30:00.002+01:00

Since I've realized that I can read Thai, I've looked into reading, and in particular extensive reading, ie., reading large amounts of text for pleasure. I was enthusiastic about stocking up big time on books next time I'm in Bangkok, but this enthusiasm has waned.

By the way, there's also intensive reading - repeated slow reading of short pieces of text in order to fully understand or analyze. Intensive reading may happen naturally when you really want to understand something that's beyond your current level, but most often it is used intentionally as a study technique. Since I'm not into analyzing, memorizing, studying or anything that feels like work when doing Thai, I wouldn't use intensive reading unless I really want to get at the meaning of a particularly interesting text.

Back to extensive reading. I had an interesting discussion with Chris over at his blog on when to start reading, and he seems to be of the opinion that you shouldn't learn new words through reading at all, unless you have accompanying audio. The problem is, of course, pronunciation. Written language is only an approximate representation of spoken language, and individual spelling can be quite misleading for historic or other reasons. Chris mentioned that even native speakers of English tend to mispronounce 30% of the words acquired through reading. Not sure what this figure is for Thai, but given the various ambiguities and inconsistencies of Thai spelling, a comparable figure is likely.

I've already noticed some inconsistencies with respect to vowel and tone values with simple and inconspicuous words that I know well from listening, and I expect this to be even more of an issue with advanced vocabulary. On the weekend, I came across a word in one of my comics that had to mean monsoon (as in monsoon rain), and from the spelling I was sure it's pronounced 'monsum' (private transliteration). The next day, I listened to a recording on the topic 'rainy season' sent recently by Kruu Ladawan that featured monsoon rain as well, and realized that the word is actually pronounced 'morasum' (private transliteration). I hadn't actually misread anything, both pronunciations are compatible with Thai spelling rules (at least when applied mechanically). But I clearly got it wrong, and, what's worse, would have reinforced the wrong pronunciation again and again in my reading if I hadn't come across the correct one so quickly. Even though I now (believe to) have a solid grasp of Thai pronunciation in general, I can easily be tripped up by ambiguous spellings. That's exactly what Chris is talking about.

So, I think I agree with Chris in that audio always trumps text, and reading (extensive or whatever) on its own is not a good way to acquire new vocabulary. This means that I should stick to watching TV and listening to audio, and should read only when I have a recording, a native speaker next to me, or am familiar with 100% of the words. Since finding books that meet the latter condition is close to impossible, and there is no Thai audio book market to speak of, my options remain limited. What do you think?

What to expect from extensive reading

2011-02-02T10:53:00.003+01:00

Igor the Macedonian, a well-known Krashenite in the language learning blogosphere, has pointed me to research on extensive reading during a discussion over at Keith's blog. I've read a few papers by Paul Nation (Victoria University of Wellington) as well as by other authors, and I would like to summarize some of their results. Since this blog post is not an academic article, I won't give proper references, but a good starting point for finding these references is Nation's and Waring's paper "Second language reading and incidental vocabulary learning" (2004). I’ve deliberately simplified the findings and figures quoted here, so please take them with a grain of salt. Another caveat is that the research is based on learning English as a second language, but I expect it to generalize to most other languages, including Thai.

What is extensive reading?
Extensive reading (in a foreign language) is reading large amounts of text for pleasure, focusing on comprehension and not on language learning, without (or with only sporadic) use of dictionaries. Extensive reading has many benefits, including developing reading fluency, consolidation of known words and grammatical structures, acquisition of new words and grammatical structures, and, very importantly, fun.

Coverage ratio needed to read pleasurably
It has been found that one needs to know about 98% of the words in a text (coverage ratio) to read for pleasure and be able to infer unknown words from the context without interrupting the flow. A coverage ratio of 95% might already be acceptable, in particular if motivation and interest are high. Lower coverage ratios have been shown to be detrimental to comprehension and incidental vocabulary acquisition.

How many words do we need to know in order to read effectively?
This number clearly depends on the text. For authentic adult material in English, we need to know about 3000-8000 word families in order to have a coverage ratio of 98% and read pleasurably.

At what rate can learners learn new words from their reading?
There have been studies on the rate of incidental vocabulary learning through extensive reading. Most of these studies have methodological flaws, the most important of which are small number of tested words ‘up for learning’, time frames that are too short, and a too rigid understanding of what it means to learn and know a word. Results vary by study, but I’d say that a statement like “the probability to learn an unknown word in one encounter is about 5%-10%” seems to be a reasonable summary.

What does it mean to know a word?
That’s a big problem with all of these studies. There are many shades of knowing a word, only few of which can be tested properly. Here are some:
- having seen or heard the word before
- knowing whether it’s an object, activity or qualifier,
- knowing the context in which it is used
- knowing collocations
- knowing the register
- knowing a translation in one’s native tongue, provided there is some context given
- knowing a translation in one’s native tongue (without further help)
When we acquire words, we grow our knowledge of them gradually. It’s very difficult to define whether we have learned a particular word, and translation tests are usually a not very meaningful assessment.

Number of times we need to meet a word to learn it from reading
The answer to this is related to the uptake rate. 10-20 encounters of a new word have been shown to be sufficient for solid (well over 50%) long-term retention rates.

Implications for learners following a natural approach
Always aim for very high comprehension rates. If you’re reading, go for a 98% vocabulary coverage ratio, if you’re watching TV, go for a 95% comprehension ratio (including visual clues). If you’re listening to audio, go for a 99% vocabulary coverage ratio. In order to achieve these high comprehension rates, choose your materials carefully. You will learn more effectively from material that appears to be too easy than from material that is complicated.
Don’t bother with translation tests. The ability to translate accurately comes late (or not at all) in the natural acquisition process and is a skill that is rather useless unless you’re a translator. Don’t measure your language abilities by how well you can translate back and forth.
Don’t try to control the acquisition process. Acquisition is a slow and gradual process. Read, listen and watch for enjoyment and content.
(These are my own conclusions, you may disagree.)

Reading Thai

2011-01-20T18:02:00.007+01:00

Not long ago, I realized that I can actually read Thai. It came as a bit of a surprise. What I mean with "I can read Thai" is that I can read without too much difficulty through pages of text (about a not too complicated subject), recognize most words and understand most sentences. Since then, I have read many bits and pieces on the internet, and I'm planning on reading much more in the future. I love reading, and I'm looking forward to the day where I can pick up any book in Thai and just read it.

I started learning Thai a year and 9 months ago with the Becker books, where I learned the script but, lacking vocabulary, was far from being able to read. Later, I switched to natural acquisition methods and, apart from a few kids videos on Thai consonants and vowels, had almost no exposure to written Thai. Instead, I've focused on developing oral comprehension, the results of which I'm very happy with. I can now watch basically any TV show and get the gist of what's going on. I still struggle with comedy, religious discussions and fast dialogues (as in some movies and TV series), but I'm usually comfortable with story telling, documentaries and normal conversation.

The Thai script is not rocket science, and even though I've had little exposure to it during the last one and a half years, I haven't forgotten the letters. I don't recall exactly what triggered it, but somehow I started looking at webpages in Thai and realized that I could read and understand what's written there. It feels surprisingly easy, and the reason is simple: I know the words and how they're supposed to sound. There are, of course, many words that I still don't know, or don't recognize. Whether I read (and subvocalize) these words depends on whether the spelling is straight-forward or complicated. I tend to ignore the complicated Pali loanwords, whereas I usually read (and subvocalize) the easier unknown words. I'm confident that I'll learn the words I don't know through continued exposure to spoken Thai.

My reading speed is still very slow, but I'm sure it'll speed up with more practice. When I read too slowly, I understand the individual words but not the sentence. Only when I read at a decent speed, I can understand the meaning of the text. Time will sort this out.

Apart from just googling something and looking up random webpages, I have used wikipedia and dek-d on a more regular basis. The Thai wikipedia is clearly underdeveloped, articles are usually short and succinct. Ideal for a quick read in between other activities. I often enter wikipedia by looking up an article in English ('water', 'ice cream', 'roof', ...) and switching over to the Thai version. From there on, I follow the links for as long as I'm interested. dek-d is a web portal for teenagers with many short articles (or posts) on all kinds of topics: stars, fashion, hobbies, behavior, sports, products, movies, lifestyle, etc. Great easy-reading stuff.

I also started reading comics that I bought in Thailand last year, and reading along when listening to my Go Genius recordings. Next time I'm in Thailand, I will buy some real books. I'm looking forward to it :)

The Series Method

2010-12-07T17:56:00.006+01:00

A few weeks ago, I found some interesting articles on language learning on the no longer actively maintained site languageimpact.com. Most of the ideas suggested there fall into the broad category of natural language acquisition methods and are either consistent with ALG or can be adapted accordingly. In my previous post, I've described my experience with TPR and picture books. TPR didn't really work for me, but that was mainly due to my limited patience in training my tutor. Working with picture books, however, really works well for me and I've set up regular sessions with a Thai tutor.

The third idea I wanted to try is called 'series method'. I think the idea goes back to François Gouin, a Frenchman living in the 19th century who got frustrated with the academic way of teaching second languages (German in his case) and devised his own method. On languageimpact, the series method is introduced as follows:

The Series Method involves getting your teacher/tutor/friend to tell you the steps involved in doing something that you pretty much already know how to do. For example, perhaps your tutor would tell you how to make a cup of tea. Ideally you have learned your first 1,000 words and thus already know the words for teapot, teabag, sugar, spoon, water, stove, match, light, etc. Now you ask your tutor to tell you the steps involved in making a cup of tea, while you of course record it. You should be able to follow what your tutor says because you already know the main vocabulary, but most likely there will be some words you won't understand the first time. (Always aim to be exposed to stuff of which you understand 80-90%.)

This sounded like a good idea, and I immediately wanted to try it. But I didn't really want to find someone locally to do it live, I thought it might be more convenient and time efficient as a recording job for someone in Thailand. This job, however, requires some equipment (computer, microphone, recording software, fast internet connection to sent email attachments), and that's where Catherine's recent article series on 'Learn Thai via Skype' came in handy. I figured, online teachers should already have the equipment and might be interested in taking on this job to fill idle hours. I approached a few teachers and schools featured in Catherine's posts (and elsewhere) and suggested the idea. Surprisingly, only two of them got back to me and only one of them (Kruu Ladawan) wanted to give it a try. I guess, most of them thought I wanted to use the recordings commercially, which is certainly not the case. With hindsight, I should have been more specific about the idea and intended use.

Anyway, Kruu Ladawan responded positively, we agreed on a price, I bought a few hours to test it and supplied her with a list of topics. In the meantime, we've also had two brief Skype conversations to chat a bit and get to know each other. Kruu Ladawan is very friendly and responsive, and even though I haven't tried Thai lessons with her, I can imagine that she's very pleasant to work with.

Here's a sample list of topics (and it's easy to come up with hundreds more):

- hanging a picture on the wall

- brushing one's teeth

- taking the BTS skytrain

- ordering a bowl of noodle soup

- buying a train ticket

- washing clothes with the washing machine

- ironing shirts and trousers

- taking a taxi to the airport

- giving food to the monks in the morning

- cleaning the bathroom

- going to the bank to change money

- going to the night market to buy food

- going to the dentist

- preparing sticky rice with mango

- playing badminton

- recharging a mobile phone

- taking a motorcycle taxi in Bangkok

For each topic, we agreed to do three recordings of about 5 minutes each (15 minutes in total). The three recordings can be three separate little stories, they can be narrow descriptions of the actual steps involved, they can be loosely related anecdotes, they can play in the past, present or future, they can be parts of only one story, they can be phantasies or role plays (from the perspective of a child or a parent) etc. There's a wide variety of possibilities. Of course, the recordings are 100% Thai, 0% English.

When I got my first delivery of recordings, I was enthusiastic, and still am! I didn't expect it to be so good, useful and fun. Kruu Ladawan seems to really like telling stories, she's creative about the settings and her voice is pleasant to listen to. Some recordings are funny and some are informative about Thai culture and Thai ways of doing things.

Since I know the topic, I usually have enough context to be able to follow along. Most of the time, I understand most of it. Sometimes I struggle to keep up, but that doesn't matter in the long run. Since most of the time I understand most of it, I constantly pick up new words, notice new expressions, or refine earlier guesses. It's perfect "i+1 comprehensible input" for me.

Another thing I really like about the series method is that it allows me to focus on topics that are usually neglected on TV (or in my science books for kids) like household activities or certain social interactions. On TV, detailed descriptions of how to use the BTS ticket machine or how to iron clothes are hard to come by. I also find getting three stories per topic very useful. Often I begin to understand things in story 2 that were still unclear in story 1, because they are phrased a bit differently now.

I'm glad that Kruu Ladawan enjoys doing the recordings for me, and I'm planning to work with her for a longer period. I have a list with hundreds of topics I would like to get recorded, so we certainly won't run out of ideas.

The series method can obviously be adapted to various proficiency levels, but is, in my opinion, most useful in the intermediate stages when context alone starts to be sufficient to guide comprehension. Earlier on, more visual clues are needed.

I haven't found many other references to the series method on the web, which strikes me as odd. I find it very useful. It's like getting ALG lessons level 5-10 as a podcast. I can really recommend it to intermediate learners.

If you are interested in piggybacking on my arrangement with Kruu Ladawan, please contact her. I'm sure she would sell the recordings she made for me to other people as well.

Working with a language partner

2010-11-20T20:32:00.003+01:00

There are many ways to work with a language partner in the initial and intermediate stages if you follow a traditional approach, and you can find lots of tips on what to do elsewhere on the web. With a natural approach / ALG, it’s not so obvious.

AUA Thai proposes crosstalk, a technique where both sides speak in their native tongue. This may very well be useful (or awkward), but I haven’t tried it myself.

Total Physical Response (TPR) is another option, but not strictly ALG. In a TPR session, the learner acts out commands given (and shown) by the teacher or language partner. TPR avoids translation and early speaking and can be good fun. However, TPR seems to focus on immediate memorization (albeit using your body and not your native tongue), which sets it apart from ALG and other comprehensible input approaches that are much more liberal about what to learn when.

I’ve tried two TPR sessions with one of my language partners, but the experiment failed and I’m not going to try it again. In TPR it’s key that the learner is always able to act out the commands. The instructor has to introduce new words at a slow and well-planned pace and needs to repeat and re-combine newly acquired words and expressions very often. Hesitation or lack of understanding on part of the learner is usually the instructor’s fault. However, I found it impossible to ‘train’ my language partner to appreciate the number of repetitions and re-combinations it takes to really internalize new words.

But the two TPR sessions were also good fun, because I realized how much Thai I already understand. Most of the time, I was able to act out exactly the command I was given (typical commands: ‘Leave the room, get a piece of paper from the bathroom, come back, knock with your left hand at the door, but enter using your right hand’ or ‘Close your eyes, touch your hip with your left hand, and point to your right earlobe with your right index finger, then turn to me’). Watching tons of videos on yoga and other sports has certainly helped a lot in getting familiar with body parts and movements.

The other thing I tried is working with pictures. This is very simple: we look at a picture, the language partner describes it, and I listen to the description. I’ve tried pictures from Thailand (downloaded from the web, e.g. flickr) and Wimmelbücher, but in recent weeks I’ve settled for the latter. Wimmelbücher are large picture books for kids, full of objects and activities, but without text or apparent story. Not every Wimmelbuch is suitable for language learning, but some are. I can recommend these two. Both show a huge amount of everyday objects and activities, have cute illustrations and develop various little stories from page to page. Both books are German (but without text, so no big deal). I don’t know whether similar books are available in other countries.

We usually spend 2 hours on one page, which equals 2 hours of perfectly comprehensible input. I find it very enjoyable and effective, and the fact that I just listen hasn’t been a problem.

That’s it on working with a language partner as an intermediate silent acquirer :) If you have other ideas that might work, please leave a comment!

'100 interesting things' book series

2010-11-13T17:49:00.006+01:00

The most efficient and arguably also the most enjoyable kind of input for learning Thai (and any other language) is the so-called level i+1 input. This is input which is slightly above the learner's current level of understanding, so that he understands the gist of it and most (but not all) of the details. Understanding, of course, is not limited to the understanding of language but can be based on visual and other clues as well.

The '100 interesting things' book series, published by Se-ed, provides such input for lower intermediate learners. The books in this series are colorful little books for first or young readers. Each book has a theme and contains 100 related questions and answers or explanations. Each page has a picture and text which takes 20-60 seconds to read.

As with my Go Genius books, I had some books of this series recorded as mp3s. Because there's only one picture per page, I thought they might be too difficult, but this week I started listening to one of them and found it very appropriate for my current level. I look at the picture and listen two or three times to the audio, and then move on to the next page. Sometimes I understand everything, most of the time I understand most of it, and occasionally I don't understand what's it about.

The books I have as mp3s are on the human body, the sea, and on inventions. The book on the sea covers topics like 'Why is the sea blue?', 'What is the coldest ocean?', 'What is the biggest ship?' and 'How much fish do we catch each year?', and explains, among other things, tides, waves, currents, radar and pollution. The other two books follow a similar concept.

I find material for kids extremely useful and enjoyable. The topics are relevant for daily life and cover a wide range, the language is of moderate complexity, and, because I'm familiar with most of the concepts and facts, the content is very predictable. Last but not least, it's good fun :)

Edit (Nov 25th): Here's a typical page from the book on the sea. Not my best picture ever taken, but you should get the idea...

Learning Thai is a pleasure

2010-11-04T18:55:00.003+01:00

I've read a number of funny posts lately of people struggling with their Thai studies. These posts are sometimes very entertaining, but at the same time I get the impression that learning Thai is frustrating and difficult. Complaints about procrastination tendencies and lack of discipline are also common. My experience with Thai is completely different.

Well, the reason probably is that I'm not studying Thai the way most other people do. I try to implement ALG ideas as an independent learner. In a nutshell, my approach is based on the following principles: look - listen - guess at the meaning; don't translate, don't memorize, don't analyze; lay a solid foundation for understanding Thai first, and only later move on to speaking, reading and writing. One could also characterize this kind of learning as right brain learning (in the present moment, focus on experience and meaning, parallel processing, growth of meaning in layers, subconscious, being receptive [listening]) as opposed to left brain learning (concerned with past or future, focus on words and structure, serial processing, exact definitions immediately, conscious, producing [speaking]). This approach also means: no textbooks, no dictionaries, no pronunciation drills, no grammar drills, no listen-and-repeat, no early reading, no early speaking.

In summary, I don't study.

Learning Thai is a pleasure. Every day, I'm looking forward to my Thai time. I watch TV (in particular documentaries) and videos, and I listen to picture books. There is so much material out there, I'm spoilt by choice. I love certain TV characters, I love observing and learning about Thai culture and Thai ways, I love my science books for children, I love Wimmelbücher that language partners describe to me, I love cartoons and travel shows, cooking shows, yoga training, drawing tips and and and. It's fun and entertaining. It's a hugely enjoyable process. If I don't understand something, I stay in the present moment and move on. If I understand something, I stay in the present moment and move on. The transformation of 'understanding what's going on but not understanding the language' to 'understanding what's going on and understanding the language' completely by itself is like magic. Learning Thai is really a pleasure.

I'm not going to stay silent in Thai for the rest of my life. After laying a solid foundation with understanding, the three other skills - speaking, reading and writing - will follow. I've noticed already that more and more language pops up in my head. I'm not there yet, but based on my experience with listening and understanding I expect speaking to happen on its own, too.

I know that most people think of this approach as eccentric, lunatic or outright stupid. I can't do much about it, but I still wish I could share this joyful way of learning Thai (or any language for that matter) with more people.

Go Genius รู้รอบตัว - contents

2010-11-04T08:57:00.006+01:00

This is a follow-up on my October post on the Go Genius books. I've almost finished listening to the first of four encyclopedia type books for young readers, the one on general knowledge / the world around us (Go Genius รู้รอบตัว). This book is a translation of Usborne's children's encyclopedia, which seems to be a publisher from the UK. The other three books available in Thai are on physics, geology and animals/plants, and are also translations of Usborne's encyclopedia series. I've got the one on physics as well, and I've ordered the other two a few weeks ago.

The books, at least the two I already have, are aimed at young readers aged 6-11 (according to Usborne's website). They're full of beautiful, funny and descriptive little pictures that illustrate the topics and concepts explained. The texts are short, but not too short, and either explain a concept in simple terms or illustrate it with examples. The book on general knowledge presents all cultures equally and is only a bit eurocentric in its presentation of modern human history. See my earlier post for two examples of double-pages.

As explained earlier, I had someone in Bangkok record the books as mp3s, and the remaining two that I've ordered are currently being recorded. Here's what I do: I listen to the recordings, look at the pictures and guess at the meaning. I don't translate, I don't memorize consciously, I don't repeat words and I don't read. I try to let language growth happen on its own and focus only on guessing at the meaning and having fun. It works marvellously, and I pick up many words every day without any study effort. Understanding more and more without any conscious work is very enjoyable and rewarding. Of course it helps immensely that I'm already familiar with all the scientific and cultural concepts.

To give you a flavour of how general, useful and interesting the content is, I list the topics of the book on general knowledge below. A double page covers usually one topic and contains 10-20 little pictures with explanations. At the very end, I list a break down of one particular double page (the one I did this morning) by picture.

Here's my suggestion: Get this book, meet up with a Thai friend, bring your iPhone or any other recording device and have the book recorded. Transfer the recording onto your computer, cut it into small, digestible pieces (ideally one per picture) and start listening, looking and guessing at the meaning. Repeat each picture a few times, and then move on. Don't read along, don't translate, don't memorize, don't try to pronounce new words, just let it flow. Go back every so often and listen again to whole pages. You'll be amazed at how much you're able to pick up just naturally. Throw away your textbooks and start enjoying Thai :)

Go Genius รู้รอบตัว
p. 2: world
p. 4: solar system
p. 6: moon and stars
p. 8: interior of the earth, tectonic plates, earthquakes
p. 10: mining
p. 12: time, measurement of time, time zones
p. 14: seasons
p. 16: weather
p. 18: climate
p. 20: rivers and lakes
p. 22: sea and deep sea
p. 24: explorers
p. 26-35: maps
p. 36: earth history and life
p. 38: plants and flowers
p. 40: trees
p. 42: insects
p. 44: fish and sea creatures
p. 46: reptiles
p. 48: birds
p. 50: mammals
p. 52: human body
p. 54: human senses and the brain
p. 56: agriculture
p. 58: history overview and human evolution
p. 60: Stone Age
p. 62: Egyptians
p. 64: Romans
p. 66: Middle Ages
p. 68: industrial revolution
p. 70: modern time
p. 72: different people
p. 74: huts, houses, igloos etc.
p. 76: food
p. 78: sports
p. 80: writing
p. 82: arts
p. 84: music
p. 86: handicraft and trade
p. 88: clothes
p. 90: mythology
p. 92: religion
p. 94: dancing and theatre
p. 96: education
p. 98: government
p. 100: air and water
p. 102: light
p. 104: electricity
p. 106: sound
p. 108: transportation and traffic
p. 110: ships
p. 112: aviation
p. 114: health

Breakdown of pages 106-107 by picture:
1) what is sound
2) waves in a pond - soundwaves
3) eardrum
4) speed of sound
5) lightening and thunder
6) sound needs atmosphere
7) echo
8) high frequency sounds of mosquitos
9) low fequency sounds of bees
10) animals can often hear higher frequencies than humans
11) telephone: who invented it, how does it work
12) radio waves, used for what purpose, eg. communication between airplane and tower
13) TV

List of educational kids videos (APS Intermusic)

2010-11-03T11:23:00.007+01:00

I've outgrown my APS Intermusic educational videos for quite a while now, but I thought a more detailed description of the various videos I bought might be useful to beginner learners.

APS Intermusic has a wide range of educational videos for Thai kids, generally aimed at the age range 3-6. The videos are extremely useful in bridging the gap between no Thai and some Thai for the following reasons:
- many visual clues,
- easy, predictable language,
- lots of repetition,
- natural language at normal speed,
- useful basic vocabulary.
I'm pretty sure you could start watching these videos with no Thai whatsoever and would be able to understand most of it after, say, 200 hours (5 rounds à 40 hours).

If you're too much of an adult, you may have difficulty with these videos, but I'm not and really enjoyed most of it. ALG is all about not using your adult mind when learning a language, so I already approached it with the right attitude :)

Below is a list of the VCDs I bought, with their product number, which you can use to order the VCDs, and a short description of the content. See also my other post on APS Intermusic, including their address in Bangkok if you want to pay them a visit.

13776: various kinds of animals (land animals, fish, insects, birds, reptiles etc.), means of transport, fruits and vegetables
13777: introduces Arabic and Thai numbers 1 to 10 (counting of animals); addition and subtraction
13778: Thai consonants, objects referred to by Thai consonants
13779: Thai consonants that are similar to each other
13780: writing Thai consonants
13782: 300 questions (animals, tools, vehicles, food); without answers
13784: cartoon faces and facial expressions
13785: paper folding
13786: water colour painting 1
13787: water colour painting 2
13792: school 1
13793: school 2
13794: drawing cartoon animals, dinosaurs and robots 1
13795: drawing cartoon animals, dinosaurs and robots 2
13796: clay modelling 1
13797: clay modelling 2
13802: what sound is it? (animals, means of transport, tools etc.)
13803: how to be a good child
13804: drawing animals
13805: drawing objects & food
13806: Thai consonant pictures
13808: spot the odd animal
13809: counting
13810: Thai festivals 1
13811: Thai festivals 2
13814: what’s wrong with this animal/object?
13817: learn to speak (animals, vehicles)
13818: learn to read (animals)
13820: learn to read (thai vowels)
13821: comparisons
13823: what can you do with it? (objects)
13824: drawing and coloring with crayons
13825: dinosaurs
13826: general knowledge
13827: some words, IQ training
13828: what animal is it? (3 characteristics, 3 choices, then the answer)
13829: drawing faces, postures and clothes of children and grown-ups (unfortunately spoken with high pitch)

The VCDs are between 50 and 65 minutes each.

Learning without translation

2010-10-28T18:55:00.004+02:00

I've recently read a remark on WLT that I would like to comment on. Inaki, a fellow Thai learner, referred to the TV method as "an artificial way of crippling your abilities", and asked: Why on earth would you refrain from using a dictionary or reading?

Before going into this topic, let me quickly recommend checking out Inaki's youtube channel. It's a great collection of Thai TV snippets, mostly from TPBS. I enjoyed in particular the clips on painting techniques. I hope he keeps adding to his channel!

Learning without translation and dictionaries is a key concept of natural language acquisition methods - be it ALG, TPR, the TV method, the method presented on languageimpact, or any other "natural" method -, and it doesn't harm to discuss the issue again. In my understanding it's about two things: (1) The natural learner doesn't want to tap into the wrong associative network (borrowed from his first language) when learning new words. He wants to build up the correct associative network in the second language. (2) The natural learner wants to establish direct neural links between meaning and language, without going through an intermediary.

Words are symbols that usually refer to a wide variety of "things" (objects, activities, qualities, concepts, ...), and they aren't easily mapped between languages.To convince yourself of this, just type in any not too technical word into a good online dictionary. This is true even for nouns that denote concrete objects. For example, the German word Schwein is used to denote pig (the animal), to denote pork (meat), as a symbol for luck (Glücksschwein), to express being lucky or being spared of something bad (Schwein haben), for 'poor bugger' (ein armes Schwein sein), to intensify certain adjectives (schweinekalt), to express that a place, e.g., a bar, is empty (kein Schwein da), etc. Apart from denoting the same animal, the English word pig doesn't share these meanings. If I want to use the English word pig correctly, I don't want to refer to food, I don't want to tap into the positive connotations of luck and being lucky, and I also don't want to refer to other people as pigs (of some kind) in the way I can do this in German.

Proponents of the natural approach would argue that it's counter-productive to translate and thereby identify words between languages because it's likely that you end up transferring the whole network of associations and not only the one specific meaning that the two words may share. They would argue that, in the long run, it's more efficient to build up the network of associations from scratch and to encourage strong, direct neural links between meaning and second language, as opposed to establishing links from meaning to first language to second language and then trying to undo the many wrong ones later on.

Not using dictionaries is not meant to cripple your abilities in an artificial way but rather to acquire high levels of fluency and native language use in the long run.

Shortcomings of the TV method

2010-10-22T16:52:00.006+02:00

In a comment to Eating dogs, Julien has suggested to do a post on weaknesses of the TV method. I think this is a good idea, and I'm happy to provide my views. The TV method, as I understand it, is the process of acquiring a second language through watching TV. Compared to taking ALG classes, I see at least three shortcomings of the TV method.

Lack of physical involvement

ALG classes are not terribly interactive, but they always keep students engaged in some way or the other, e.g., by asking them for their opinion, showing them pictures or just looking at or addressing them. Being engaged in a social situation keeps you focused and results in 'deeper'/more intense experiences. Watching TV, however, is only to a limited extent a social situation (if at all), and fails to engage certain biological processes going on during real encounters between human beings. A good example for such a biological process is our bodily and mental reaction to being looked at by someone, but I also mean smells, spatial movements etc. I hypothesize, and I think this is in accordance with ALG, that language is acquired more easily if the experience is intense and involves many senses.

In social, communicative situations, tuning out is rarely seen as acceptable behavior. This is obviously different with watching TV, where mentally tuning out and drifting off is ok.

Incomprehensible input

ALG classes provide graded input and progress over time to more advanced language. This is particularly important for beginners. Just switching on the TV and watching some random program is usually way too difficult for beginner and intermediate learners. If there are too few contextual, visual or other clues, including already acquired language, then the brain is just overwhelmed and confused and won't learn (much).

Lack of feedback mechanisms

In the ALG classroom, the teachers know whether the students can follow or not, and they respond to that by repeating, explaining, drawing or demonstrating. TV just blares on, whether you get it or not. Being able to influence the session and adjust it to your specific needs (to some extent) is certainly psychologically more pleasant and more conducive to language acquisition than being completely ignored.

Conclusion

Watching TV is a very valuable tool in the toolbox of natural language acquisition, but it can't be the only one. Beginners in particular will need to address the issue of incomprehensible input. Learners at all stages may find human to human interaction more effective.

Eating dogs

2010-10-21T09:19:00.002+02:00

Some ALG classes I attended were centered around topics Western people usually find embarrassing or difficult: going to the toilet, farting, belching. Thais apparantly not, and therefore it's just a natural part of the curriculum. I've read elsewhere that it's actually quite a good idea to be confronted with emotionally challenging topics, because the experience is more intense and gets stored more easily. And language, of course, is part of this experience.

For this to work, however, I think you have to be involved directly in the experience. As a bystander, and this applies in particular to watching TV, it's much easier to tune out, to stop listening and watching.

This happened to me last week when I watched the latest Tonight Show episode on channel 3. ณวัฒน์อิสรไกรศีล, the host of the travel segment of the show, talked about his recent trip to Indonesia. Among other things, he also showed a dog restaurant, some dishes with dog meat, and then went on to show the backyard where the dogs are slaughtered. A cute young dog was being led in and tied to a post, wagging his tail and looking scared and confused. A knife was brought out and put within reach, while a guy did something with some kind of smoke producing generator. ณวัฒน์อิสรไกรศีล left the scene at this point in time and walked out.

Because the young dog was so cute and scared and helpless, the scene was extremely difficult for me to stomach. I probably wouldn't mind eating dog meat in real life, if I came across it in Asia, but seeing this poor creature waiting to be slaughtered was a bit too much. I tuned out as soon as the dog was brought in, and I only tuned in again when ณวัฒน์อิสรไกรศีล went back, stopped the procedure just in time and bought the dog.

Maybe my subconscious didn't really tune out and took in everything that happened. That's impossible to assess and I can't rule it out, but it doesn't feel like it. If I'm right about having tuned out, then this points to a general problem with the TV method: not being directly involved is less intense, focussed and efficient than acquiring a language through real experiences.

Some observations on the acquisition of vocabulary II

2010-10-20T08:41:00.004+02:00

This is a comment on my last post on the acquisition of vocabulary. What I described there, that it basically takes several hundred encounters with a word or phrase before it becomes clear, is rather conservative. During the last few days, I continued to pay attention to this topic, and I've noticed a few more specific examples that have been different.

Concrete objects, activities or characteristics that are either visually shown or contextually important, are often picked up much faster. When I was watching the first Yoga DVD, I quickly got quite a few new words of that kind (e.g., to feel a stretch, to bend over etc.). With these words, it took only a few, up to 20 max, encounters plus a night's sleep, before I firmly got them. The process of getting familiar with pronunciation and usage is still ongoing and certainly takes longer. Listening to my Go Genius book on general knowledge, it often takes only a few encounters of a particular word or concept before I get it, if it is contextually key. When someone explains how fish breathe, not with lungs but with gills, and I see the picture of water flowing through the gills of a fish, the word for gills is immediately clear.

Other words take longer, in particular structural words ("then", "in spite of", words with grammatical functions), some maybe more than several hundred encounters. The same is true for many adjectives or words describing abstract concepts. It took me a very long time and certainly a few hundred encounters before I figured out a word describing something like "convenient", even though it's a very frequent word. In English, I've recently started coming across the word "malleable". I've had about 10-20 conscious encounters by now, and even though "malleable" was contextually key in these encounters, I still only know roughly what it means. I wouldn't be able to explain what it exactly means and how it's different from, say, flexible or deformable.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say here is that the acquisition process is extremely varied and depends on a number of factors. Understanding can occur immediately, or it can take several hundred encounters in meaningful contexts. With enough comprehensible input, however, you brain will eventually sort it out.

Some observations on the acquisition of vocabulary

2010-10-16T21:33:00.005+02:00

In an earlier post, I've written about my observation that it often takes hundreds of times before I notice (and understand to some extent) a particular word. But that's not the end of the story. Once I've noticed a word for the first time in a particular context with some rough idea about its meaning, I start to notice the word more often. Usually, I need the same contextual and similar visual clues for that, otherwise the word may slip by unnoticed. At this stage, I have, if at all, only vague ideas about pronunciation, meaning and usage.

If I keep hearing the word in the same or a similar context, it becomes more and more familiar, until I blends in - in terms of being noticed - with all the other words I already understand. At this stage, pronunciation, meaning and usage are still vague, and I usually wouldn't be able to repeat it confidently (let alone recall it without being prompted) or explain its meaning. This process may take several hundred encounters more.

As time progresses (with sleep cycles and breaks in between to give my brain enough time to sort things out), pronunciation becomes clear. The meaning I started out with becomes clear, too. However, most words have many layers of meaning, and I keep adding layers for a long time. Even with very familiar words, it happens frequently that I suddenly notice some new meaning or use. This takes many more encounters, certainly in the hundreds.

When pronunciation has become clear, I sometimes feel like repeating the word (or phrase) when I hear it in a video. Repeating words or phrases takes my attention away from what's going on, but it feels good, so I do it. With "pronunciation has become clear" I don't mean that I can spell the word or identify tones, but rather that the way I pronounce it (aloud or in my head) feels right. Before "pronunciation has become clear", it doesn't feel right.

What I've just described is the general case. But there are also many words that I immediately get without hundreds of repetitions. Then there are words for which pronunciation has become clear but meaning continues to stay vague. There are also words I notice and would like to know but can't figure out. Then there are words that I understand quite well but the pronunciation of which continues to be unclear.

I don't try to influence or steer this process, and I don't try to fix or work on what I don't get (meaning, pronunciation, usage). I try to let everything go by, trusting that my subconscious will figure it out in its own time - which it does. It's a very enjoyable process.

If I compare my progress in understanding Thai with my progress in understanding other languages outside the indo-european family that I studied before, I have the impression that the natural acquisition method is faster. What I describe above might seem extremely slow, but it isn't really, for at least two reasons: (1) Natural language contains about 150 words per minute. A few hours of watching documentaries gives you exposure to several 10'000 words. That's a lot of exposure and a lot of repetition. (2) The subconscious brain is able to process language in parallel. It's working on hundreds of items at the same time. There is no brain overload with the natural acquisition method.

It's too early to come to a definitive conclusion. But what has become clear in the meantime is how very different natural acquisition is compared to studying a language.

Do-it-yourself videos

2010-10-10T18:09:00.004+02:00

A few days ago, I received 40 VCDs from misbook.com on cooking, baking, yoga, painting and radio controlled airplanes. I've watched 6 of them from the cooking, baking and yoga sets already.

All 6 VCDs so far have been great in terms of learning. The language is very repetitive, but natural, and either the content or the pleasure of understanding Thai keeps me interested. The yoga VCDs focus exclusively on describing the movements and postures, but a lot of that is new to me and therefore very interesting. The cooking and baking VCDs are more varied in their content, covering ingredients, preparation, tools, presentation and some tips and tricks.

The last time I checked misbook's webpage, I got malware warnings from my browser. Moreover, they didn't accept my order to Switzerland, so that I had to get the VCDs through a friend. But if you're in Thailand, I can only recommend to check out their products!

TPR & Wimmelbücher

2010-10-10T10:37:00.009+02:00

This afternoon, I've got another appointment with a potential language partner who wants to learn German in exchange for Thai. If I get to actually working with language, I'm going to try out two ideas I found on languageimpact.com.

1) TPR with objects

I'll bring ten matchboxes with me. I'll use these boxes to demonstrate some of the following words and concepts: to push, to pull, to move, to turn, to turn upside down, long side, short side, upper side, lower side, to stack, to open, to close, to take out, to put in, to break, next to, between, on, below, first ... then ..., ... after ..., higher, lower, longer, shorter, where?, to touch, Try to ...!, to shake, to take up, to drop etc.

I won't bring that list of words with me, I'll just use whatever comes to my mind. I will also have to adjust to my language partner's German level and maybe use more complicated language. However, I will try to introduce one concept at a time and be very repetitive.

I'll demonstrate these words and concepts myself, but I'll also ask my language partner to show me or do what I'm asking for: "Show me the box I touched first!" or "Take two boxes, drop one and give me the other!" (as examples of a more advanced use of language).

If that works well, maybe my language partner can do this for me in Thai.

2) Wimmelbücher

The existence of Wimmelbücher is new to me, but it's an exciting discovery :)

Wimmelbücher are books for kids with lots and lots of stuff in a big picture. I think the idea is that the kid and an adult look at the pictures together and talk about the things they see and that happen, have happened or will happen. As you can see from my example page, there are endless possibilities:

These pictures offer the native speaker many easy options to introduce vocabulary or get into storytelling. With the "show me ..." technique ("Show me the kid that is feeding the rabbit!"), it's also easy to engage the learner in a meaningful way without making him speak.

I'm quite excited about trying this out this afternoon, and if it doesn't work out today then with someone else very soon. It's easy, creative and good fun.

languageimpact.com

2010-10-09T20:07:00.005+02:00

I've recently come across the webpage www.languageimpact.com. It contains a number of articles on language learning, inspired by Krashen's ideas. It seems to have not been updated since 2001, and if that's the case it's fortunate that the owner still keeps it online. I've read a few articles from the archive, which I found very interesting, e.g., maximize your language learning through TPR or kick-starting your language learning.

The author(s) are very much into TPR, support the silent period, and emphasize learning about the culture. The ideas presented on languageimpact.com differ from ALG with respect to the role of words in language learning and when to start speaking (ALG believes that speaking occurs naturally given enough input), but it's easy to adapt the activities they suggest accordingly.

I'm in the process of finding language partners for Thai. So far, it hasn't been easy for a variety of reasons: majority of Thais in Zürich are from Isaan, I find it difficult to establish a formal language learning setting as opposed to just being social, openness towards the language activities I suggest, and others, but I'm quite confident. I will try out a few of the suggestions found on languageimpact.com next time I meet somebody for that purpose (which is tomorrow).

Go Genius book series

2010-10-05T21:55:00.005+02:00

When I was in Thailand this summer, I bought a couple of books for children and teenagers. Books with many pictures, about animals, the world, geography, physics and the environment. I thought maybe I'll start reading soon. But it didn't take me long to realize that I only want to start reading when I know a lot more Thai, say 98% of the words in these books. (According to Krashen, a comprehension ratio of 95%-98% is ideal for extensive reading.)

So instead of taking the books home and storing them for later use, I found someone in Bangkok who would record them for me and send me the books and audio files. A few weeks ago, the long-awaited package finally arrived, and I started listening to the books.

My current favorite is รู้รอบตัว from the Go Genius series:

It's a book about general knowledge, as far as I can tell, covering geography, animals, history and society. Here's the page about birds:

And here's the page about climate:

As you can see, the pages are full of small pictures accompanied by short texts. Looking only at the pictures, I can understand most of the audio. The language used is easy (for teenagers aged 13-18, according to the description), and I know most of the concepts or facts described. I've acquired most of the words by watching TV, and it still amazes me how easily and quickly my understanding develops that way without me doing any conscious study at all!

In a first round, I usually listen 3-4 times per small picture, and then once or twice to the whole two pages. Over the following days, when I feel like it, I listen again. Unfortunately, when I commissioned the audio files, I didn't get exactly across how I wanted the recordings, and they ended up being done at a slightly faster than normal speed. It's my fault, I actually said "fast speed" because I feared they would be slower than normal which I wanted to avoid by all means :) So it really helps to listen a few times.

I almost never look at the text, only at the last word of a paragraph to check that I've select the right audio piece for looping. I don't want to get into the business of "deciphering" the pronunciation of new words from the spelling. I want to acquire new words, not analyze them.

I like the content of the book very much, geography, nature, history and society have always interested me. When I've finished a page, I often have a quick look at what's coming next so that I can look forward to it :) Today I had crocodiles (which was cool!), frogs and birds, and tomorrow I'll have 'roos, yaks and other big game, and maybe my first section on the human body.

The book is from a series of 4 books. I've got a second one on physics already recorded, and I'll probably get the other two, on animals and on "our world", recorded as well. The book on physics is similarly designed, and I expect the other two to be as well. I've got other books as well, but that's for another post.

I think having picture-rich kids and teenie books recorded can be a smart addition to the repertoire of the TV method learner (if you can find someone to do the audio for you, that is). What do you think?

Why I don’t want to (consciously) learn grammar

2010-09-16T22:13:00.003+02:00

When a colleague at work leans back and folds his hands behind his head, I often mirror that gesture immediately. When my boss does this in a discussion with me, I sometime mirror it and sometimes not. When my boss talks to me in a room full of other team members, I don’t mirror this gesture.

I don’t have explicit, conscious rules for that. It just feels right to behave like that.

When I’m talking to someone, I usually observe body language and gestures. In order to form an opinion about the emotional state of the other person, his or her attitude towards me, the social relation between us etc., and then use this to react appropriately, I could try to explicitly notice the various signals I receive, analyse them and come to rational conclusions. In order to do this, I would need to be consciously attentive to all these signals, I would need to relate them to a learned framework, maybe I would have to make some difficult decisions about how to classify certain signals within this framework, most likely I would have to weigh conflicting signals or solve contradictions, I would have to refer to and take into account cultural norms about social relations, I would have to perform some kind of analysis and then come to an explicit conclusion. Then I would need to do a similarly complex analysis about how to react.

This is certainly possible, and we can describe body language, social norms etc. in great detail, describe how to weigh conflicting signals etc. But doing what I’ve outlined above is a quite complicated task that consumes a lot of attention.

I can also delegate this task – the analysis, the framework, the classifications, calculations and conclusions – to my subconscious. My subconscious is a powerful pattern analysis machine, shaped and refined through evolution to deal with and react to all kinds of patterns I may be confronted with in this world. My subconscious works extremely fast and immediately comes back with behaviour that ‘feels right’ and with intuition about the other person’s attitudes. My subconscious is especially good at dealing with fuzzy situations where there are conflicts and contradictions and many options. It is also able to work in parallel, quite in contrast to my rational, analytical brain that can only process a few things at a time.

I suspect that my subconscious is way better at doing certain tasks than my conscious brain: breathing, keeping the balance while walking or running, observing and appropriately reacting to other people’s body language, recognizing a situation as dangerous, dealing with social hierarchies and cultural norms, etc. – and grammar as well as all other aspects of spoken language. In learning these skills, I never had to consciously describe and learn the specific details of the relevant frameworks in a systematic way. I may have occasionally learned or realized individual facts or associations with my conscious brain, but never systematically.

It may even be counterproductive to engage my conscious brain in these tasks. My conscious brain, limited as it is, would pick out one or two specific rules and try to apply them to the task at hand. Most likely this would slow things down considerably and impact the result in a negative way, in particular since my conscious brain has the tendency to simply overrule intuition, thereby disregarding a lot of valuable information and knowledge.

I feel I’m much better off delegating the acquisition of grammar and patterns of usage to my subconscious by simply exposing myself to these patterns over and over again, together with visual and other clues about the meaning. Once these patterns are well established, intuition and correct usage will come by itself.

What I currently watch on dootv

2010-09-10T22:06:00.008+02:00

I have a subscription with dootv.tv for Thai TV on demand. The UK-based company uploads the Thai TV program with a certain time lag and stores it for on-demand access. This is my main source of TV material, and I can truly recommend spending a few bucks on such a service.

Most of the programs I watch are from the sections Travel, Food & Healthy, and Variety Show. I usually select shows that are rather concrete, with a focus on showing and explaining things. Some travel shows are like that with someone walking around and describing what he sees and what's happening, e.g., เมืองแปลกบนโลกใบนี้, First Class by ปิ่นโตเถาเล็ก, or สมุดโคจร. Variety shows come in every format, but I found a few like อาชีพนี้คุณทำได้ ("you could also do this job") and เนตรนารี (featuring lifestyle, beauty and fashion) that are interesting and suitable.

Another show I really like is the Tonight Show on channel 3. It's a weekly 60-minute talk show with two main segments, a travel segment by ณวัฒน์ อิสรไกรศีล (who's also the host of อาชีพนี้คุณทำได้ and เมืองแปลกบนโลกใบนี้), and a talk show segment that I usually skip. ณวัฒน์ อิสรไกรศีล has a lot of stuff going on on TV, and I love all of it. He's really hands-on, and I can understand him quite well. On the Tonight Show, he shows footage of his travels and talks about it, but every so often the other 3 hosts come in and ask stuff, comment or make jokes.

In the Sports section, I sometimes watch programs that teach how to do a certain sport (yoga, swimming, snooker, table tennis ...). These are usually VCD or DVD uploads, as are most of my favorite cooking programs, and therefore don't come on a regular basis.

I occasionally watch shows twice, and I also browse around at random. As my ability to understand Thai develops, I can slowly but surely move away from the very concrete documentary type programs to more conversational material.

Thai musical instruments

2010-08-28T19:46:00.004+02:00

I'm still here, and I'm still learning Thai following the 'natural approach': watching and guessing what's going on, but no translation, no grammar/analysis, no language construction. I have been steadily losing interest in the learning technique debate going on in the language learning blogosphere, because the natural approach (slash TV method slash ALG) works for me like magic. I don't mean that I'm learning super-fast or so, but my ability to follow conversations about a wide variety of topics is developing at a solid rate, without any conscious study whatsoever.

Today, I've been watching a series of video clips on Thai musical instruments which I downloaded from fukduk.tv. It made me realize that I get so much more exposure to Thai culture and customs by watching documentaries for native Thais than I got using the traditional translation-grammar approach for other languages I studied before, like French. With French, I spent most of my time reviewing flash-cards, doing grammar drills, working through short texts ('mining') or stumbling through class-room conversations. I spent 90% of my time on language analysis and 10% on enjoying myself and experiencing the other culture. Now I spend 100% of my time on enjoying myself and experiencing Thai culture by watching TV material for native Thais, and 0% on language analysis. It's way more sanuk, and it seems to work at least as well (and I suspect even better).

There is plenty of good-quality TV material available on the internet for intermediate learners of Thai, more than I could ever watch. The short (10-15 minutes on average) documentaries on fukduk.tv are a good example (head over to womenlearnthai for a more detailed review). Browsing through my downloads, I discovered a series of 7 clips on making Thai instruments. These clips demonstrate clearly what I mean: natural language for a native audience, natural presentation of Thai culture, automatic learning.

The clips are as follows:

4) ซอ

6) ขิม

Enjoy!

misbook.com

2010-08-08T18:57:00.001+02:00

On my recent trip to Thailand, I bought two VCD sets (à 4 VCDs each) on water color painting and screen printing. Both are from the same company, misbook.com, as is one of my favorite cooking VCD in dootv's 'Other Channels' section, where they upload, among other things, VCDs from various companies.

Here's a screenshot of one of the VCDs on screen printing:

In the screen printing VCDs, they explain how to prepare the screens, how to clean them, what colors to use, how to mix colors, what motives to select and where from, different techniques to put motives on the screen, multi-color printing and so on. All of that is very tangible and repetitive, and it's easy to guess what's going on. They may use a few technical terms, but 95% of the language is normal in the sense that I would like to be able to know and use it.

The publisher (with the internet address misbook.com) offers a wide variety of hobby and do-it-yourself VCDs for adults, all of which should be good TV method material. They cover cooking and baking, hobbies from painting to radio-control airplanes, sports like yoga, tai chi, aerobic, do-it-yourself stuff like fruit carving, and more.

I tried to order some more VCD sets from them, but they didn't bother to respond to my online order and told a Thai friend of mine that they don't ship to Switzerland (so I asked him to send it to me). Furthermore, their website seems to be malware-infested, at least that's what Safari told me repeatedly, and on two occasions I wasn't able to navigate away from the site without force-quitting. So please exercise caution when visiting their online shop. If you're in Thailand, you should find their VCDs in larger bookstores.

If you know other providers of Thai hobby VCDs or DVDs, please let me know!

Update

2010-08-08T17:52:00.002+02:00

I haven't posted for some time... and the main reason is that things are going very well. I've got plenty of TV material - more than I can ever hope to watch -, and my brain is doing a lot of learning for me.

I have been watching all my kids VCDs from APS Intermusic, about 40 hours in total, and my understanding of those is now quite solid. But I have also continued to watch a variety of shows on dootv.tv, in particular

-- cooking shows

-- travel shows

-- variety shows (on fashion, occupations, lifestyle etc.), and

-- shows teaching sports (table tennis, yoga, golf, swimming, snooker).

All of these shows are excellent TV method material: predictable topics, objects and actions are talked about and shown at the same time, repetitive but natural language.

My understanding of the Thai language develops on its own without me doing anything other than watching and guessing what's going on. The meaning of words and structures grows layer by layer into solid understanding, and my brain works on many words and expressions in parallel. The less I think about the language, the better it works.

APS Intermusic - educational videos for kids

2010-06-25T16:58:00.003+02:00

The kids videos produced by APS Intermusic are excellent beginner material for natural language acquisition. That is, if you don’t mind to be treated like a 6-year old :) I've written about these videos in an earlier post, where you can also see two screenshots.

APS Intermusic is a Bangkok based company with a wide range of CDs and VCDs on offer. Most of that is music or music-related, but they also have more than 50 ‘educational’ VCDs for kids. I’ve seen selected VCDs from their kids program in many bookshops, but rarely more than 3-4 which were being sold at around 89 Baht. They used to have an online shop (http://www.apsintermusic.com) but I haven’t been able to access it for the last few weeks.

APS Intermusic is physically located at 190 Soi Pattanakarn 1 Sathupradit Road Bangphongphang Yannawa, Bangkok, Thailand 10120. This is a Soi off Sathupradit Road (ถนนสาธุประดิษฐ์) in Yannawa (ยานนาวา). My taxi driver asked local motorcycle taxi drivers for details, which worked out fine. I walked into their office and presented them with a list of VCDs I’d like to buy. I already had this list with me, because I’d tried to place an online order with them a few weeks ago. This hadn’t worked because of technical problems with the payment procedure, but I still had a print-out of my shopping cart. Since they have catalogues in the office, it should as well be ok to just show up empty-handed. I bought about 40 VCDs, more or less the entire kids program except the ones teaching English. In their shop, they sell the VCDs for 59 Baht (about 2 Swiss Francs).

The VCDs are 50-65 minutes each, quite cheaply produced, and geared towards 4-8 year olds. You’ll need to get used to being addressed as ‘mouse’ and sometimes the have animal presenters and pitch the presenter’s voice higher, but apart from that it’s normal language. Very simple, though, and highly repetitive. They often ask simple questions and give simple answers, and then repeat this with new pictures or video sequences ten or more times. Spotting the sheep with only two legs as the odd one out won’t challenge your intellectual capacities, but it’s great to pick up and reinforce basic language patterns.

Here’s a (most likely incomplete) overview of the various programs:

What’s that sound? (everyday objects)
What can you do with it? (everyday objects)
Animals and their characteristics
Spot the odd one out, spot the ‘unnatural’ animal, or spot the difference
Thai festivals
Drawing faces
Drawing people
Drawing cartoon animals
Drawing or painting everyday objects
Painting landscapes and everyday objects with watercolours
Paper folding
Clay modeling
Thai alphabet
Thai vowels
Learning to read simple words (everyday objects)
Guess the animal
Occupations
How many animals do you see?
Comparisons and colours
How to behave well
School activities
Fruits, vegetables, sweets and other foods

For me, watching these VCDs and guessing what’s going on is very entertaining and really good fun. It’s simple and repetitive, and my progress in understanding is very tangible without me doing any conscious study effort. And even the adult in me is happy, because he can learn a bit about Thai culture, food and the environment.

If you have used these VCDs in your Thai learning, please leave a comment with your experience! And should you decide to visit their office, please say hello from me :)

Natural language acquisition comes as a package

2010-06-20T20:00:00.005+02:00

Some key characteristics of natural language acquisition (NLA) methods, at least in my understanding, are the following: no translation, no study of words or phrases, no grammar study, no constructing of sentences (i.e., no early speaking), no conscious memorizing etc., but rather experiencing the target language, observing and guessing what's going on.

NLA is simple, effortless, and fun. AUA Bangkok also claims it's effective, and I will be able to form my own opinion on this later.

However, the vast majority of language learners does all the stuff that I introduced with "no" in the first paragraph: translation between L1 and L2, focus on words and phrases, conscious memorizing and vocabulary study, grammar drills, early speaking etc. Confronted with natural language learning ideas, they often dismiss it out of hand. It just doesn't seem to make any sense to them whatsoever.

I was thinking that one possible answer to why these learners can't seem to relate to the ideas put forward by NLA proponents is that you have to take the approach as a whole. You can't just transfer parts of it to the traditional approach, like following a translation based early speaking method and ignoring grammar, or studying grammar but refraining from translation. You have to take NLA as a package, and since it's so contrary to what people are used to and so contrary to the idea of language study, they just ignore it.

Thailand

2010-06-19T16:27:00.006+02:00

I've just returned from a spontaneous trip to Thailand, and I thought I quickly get a post done before the rat race starts again. This post will be more like a collection of observations, but I'm going to elaborate on some of the points later on. Apart from linguistics stuff, I got further irritating insights into Thailand's social inequalities and the deplorable state of the education system in rural provinces, but I will keep these topics off this blog.

I'm quite happy with how my Thai is coming along. There have been many situations where I've been able to understand a lot, and many people felt comfortable chatting to me in Thai with me giving only very basic responses (agreement, disagreement, place names, numbers, individual words). On some occasions, the necessary Thai to formulate a response was there, but usually, it wasn't, and then I resorted to those 'basic responses', body language or English. I didn't try to construct anything in Thai that wasn't just naturally there, which I believe is ALG's central principle with regards to speaking.

I went to APS Intermusic, the company that makes most of the educational videos I've seen on dootv.tv, and bought about 40 VCDs. I also bought two VCD courses on drawing, one VCD course on designing paper lamps, a VCD on traditional Thai architecture, a VCD on how to design showrooms of small enterprises, VCDs on food, and a few comic discs. I also have a few packages that look like 'learning games' for kids; I'll check whether they are useful for me later.

And, for the first time, I also bought a few books. Not books about learning Thai, but books in Thai. With many, many pictures! :)

I've got one Thai history comic with war elephants on the front cover. Then I've got a book for kids with 100 questions and answers along the lines of 'why do we burp?' or 'why do we get teeth twice?'. Then I got books about the different regions of the world, their geographies, animals, cultures, histories etc., and some kids books on the human body and on animals. Here are two pictures from the chapter on cats:

I will see whether and how I'll use these books, because I actually want to avoid reading words that I haven't already heard >300 times.

And, on a final note, I've decided that I have all the time in the world to learn Thai and about Thai culture. The numerous little observations I've been able to make this time again about how Thais act and interact made it clear to me how little I know and how long I still need to observe their ways.

Travel shows

2010-05-20T22:43:00.001+02:00

At my level of Thai, I still need quite concrete TV material. Programs where the stuff that is talked about is actually shown. According to ALG, you should have something like 80% understanding of the experience - including, of course, visual clues. In order to have such a high level of understanding, I need concrete material. Travel shows are excellent candidates for show-and-tell TV, and some might even be suitable for complete beginners.

One show that I've watched a lot in recent times is เมืองแปลกบนโลกใบนี้ on channel 9. The guy presenting this show usually starts out with some history, but then just walks around and describes or explains what he comes across. He's also quite interested in food and spends a lot of time at local markets or in restaurants talking about ingredients, eating habits, preparation methods and prices.

I watched various shows featuring Vientiane, Sydney, Rangoon, Chengdu, Rothenburg and other places. The three or four shows on Vientiane are very much focused on food, but the presenter also visits temples and a local factory. In Sydney, he first visits a zoo with kangaroos, koalas and a sheep shearing show, before traveling on to the Blue Mountains. All of these shows are very concrete, very tangible, and make great ALG beginner material.

Another show I like a lot is สมุดโคจร (not sure about the name...) on channel 5. There's quite a bit of advertising on this show: for a noodle brand, a hospital, and a mobile phone service provider. To promote the hospital, they often have a doctor explaining something about some disease, and to promote the mobile phone service provider, the presenter plays around with his own mobile phone. The mobile phone piece is quite easy to understand, and in the health piece, the doctor often uses pictures, charts or organ models in his explanations. The travel part is usually very concrete, featuring places, buildings, temples, mosques, churches, markets, restaurants, local handicraft, nature, local transport, animals, music etc. This show presents foreign countries as well as places in Thailand, and the last few shows were on Thailand's southernmost provinces close to the Malaysian border - a culturally very interesting, but troubled part of Thailand.

Wrapping up: Travels shows are excellent material for beginners and lower intermediates due to their very concrete show-and-tell nature. The presenters often walk around and explain what they see. If you know the place yourself, it's easy to pick up details about the history or local customs as well. In order to effectively use travel shows as TV method material, a subscription with an internet TV provider, allowing you access to past programs, can be very helpful.

How many times do you need to encounter a word before you pick it up naturally?

2010-05-15T21:17:00.008+02:00

I've been watching something like 10 hours of educational videos for kids on painting and drawing recently (see my last post). When I went to school, I considered myself (and effectively was) quite bad at drawing and painting. Watching these videos I couldn't help asking myself to what extent this belief in my lack of talent contributed to my miserable drawing skills. It really looks simple, and all it takes to get started is to watch carefully and then mimic what you see. But that's a different topic :)

I just watched the first two videos (on drawing people) from that cycle again and was in for a nice surprise: my understanding has improved by leaps and bounds. Now, I can understand the gist of almost every sentence, and almost all of the descriptive words are clear to me. Of course, following ALG, I didn't do any conscious learning at all: no looking up of words, no translation, no memorization, no taking notes. Oftentimes, I was just being fascinated with the drawing process and the pictures, and language was only part of this larger experience.

Especially towards the end of the 10-12 hours, a lot of the words became clear. Once a word clicked in, I could hear it everywhere (the language in these videos is quite repetitive). I must have heard most of the words hundreds of times before they clicked in. And I also encountered a word that seemed clear for hundreds of times and then became unclear again when I noticed other usages.

Hundreds of times before a word clicks in? Yes, hundreds of times! Isn't this incredibly ineffective? Maybe. I don't know. But what I know is that this way of learning is vastly different from traditional language study. There's nothing I have to do but pay attention and guess what's going on. I don't have to write or read anything, I don't have to practice, I don't have to look up words. There's no need to memorize anything, to go repeatedly through word lists or to test myself. My subconscious does all the work for me.

My subconscious brain does all the work for me, and it does so in parallel and at its own pace. Even if I don't consciously notice a certain word, my brain does and starts building up meaning and relationships and whatever else it needs. At some point, the word is ripe and pops into my conscious mind, and from then on it's there. Or rather, its first layer of meaning is there. Other layers will follow, successively refining the meaning of the word. It's almost magical.

In a few years time, I will see whether this way of learning is effective or ineffective. It's too early to tell. At times it seems incredibly slow, and at other times it's pure magic.

Educational videos for kids

2010-05-11T20:05:00.007+02:00

This week, dootv.tv has uploaded four more educational videos to their kids channel. At 50 minutes each, two of the videos teach how to draw people and, in particular, faces, and the other two are on painting with water colors. The audience is in the 8-12 year age range, I'd say.

While drawing faces, going from one emotion to the other, the speaker talks all the time about how and what to draw, whether you can already guess the expression of the face drawn, about the body parts involved, straight and curved lines etc. It's easy to just get lost in watching the drawing process without focussing too much on the language itself, taking it in as a whole.

The next screenshot is from an earlier program about painting with water colors. There are heaps of them in the repository, teaching basic to quite advanced motives. Other motives featured in this particular program are skies, landscapes, rivers, stones, bushes, various trees (coconut, banana), flowers, and since I'm only half-way through, there's more to come.

There are other series on drawing animals, especially comic-type animals, including extended sections on dinosaurs and robots :) Then there are programs on food, fruits, tools, cars, ships and airplanes...

UK-based dootv has been uploading programs like these on a regular basis since I subscribed to their service a few weeks ago, aimed at varying age groups from the very young to older children. They've also been very responsive to my questions and comments, and have promised to upload more such videos and keep them online for a long time. At £ 15 for 90 days (and relatively cheaper for longer periods), this would be great value even if they only had the kids channel :) ... but of course they offer the full range of Thai TV channels as well.

Finding appropriate material for ALG levels 1-4 is a great challenge if you happen to be based outside Bangkok (or are learning another language than Thai), and these educational videos seem to partly fill this gap.

Update

2010-05-02T18:59:00.003+02:00

Busy watching TV... I'm a total TV method convert now. For the past two months, I've been watching about two hours per day, sometimes more, sometimes less. Apart from the odd movie (I ordered a few DVD's in Thailand), it's been mostly TV shows of the show-and-tell variety: documentaries, cooking shows, educational videos for kids.

On dootv.tv, there's a growing selection of kids programs. A recent one was an hour long program on folding paper toys. Great stuff for my level! The presenter talked all the time about what's being done, about colors, basic shapes and, of course, the object being made (a ship, for instance) and what you can do with it. Another one was introducing addition and subtraction with cute little clips of comic animals joining or leaving each other.

I also love cooking shows, especially when they focus on cooking and not on entertainment. Some documentaries are also easy to follow and great fun, but they have to be concrete and visual; fukduk.tv has a lot of these.

In all my TV activities, I don't try to learn or memorize anything in particular, and being relaxed about this is getting easier and easier. My understanding clearly improves, and this experiment is about letting it happen naturally. What I also notice quite often is that after a few days (or just one night), all of a sudden I distinguish and understand words I hadn't noticed before.

Watching slow kids programs on everyday objects, I also realized that I don't really think in German. I guess, I don't think in words most of the time - I think in pictures or concepts or whatever. Even looking at a picture of a pair of scissors for a few seconds and having the presenter asking me repeatedly whether I can guess what it is, I don't think 'Schere' (pair of scissors). I just see the pair of scissors and know what it is. This is true even if I don't know the Thai word (and often I don't).

More TV...

2010-04-17T14:24:00.008+02:00

I've been busy watching FuKDuK.tv during the last couple of weeks, but, a few days ago, I started checking out other stuff again. On Josh's list of Thai TV shows, there are some really good suggestions. For example ihere.tv, the self-proclaimed 'largest Thai channel with original content on youtube' (whatever that means ...). They've got a decent number of clips online, organized by topic into a handful of channels. The cooking shows are really funny and make great 'TV method material'. I also watched a few of the make-up or beauty shows, and with their focus on colors and body parts they're great for my level, too.

In addition to these free resources, I've learned that it's possible to watch Thai TV over the internet for a subscription fee. There are a couple of providers like seesantv, thaitv, ethaitv, or dootv (and more). I signed up for a 90 days membership with dootv for £ 15, which translates into less than 10 Baht per day. dootv is a UK based company with servers in the UK and the US, and so far streaming to Switzerland has been very smooth.

Having a service like dootv is a million times better than just being able to watch TV, because they store past programs a long way back and you can watch them on demand. I've tried a few different shows, and there's a lot of stuff that seems perfectly suitable for my level and/or interests: travel shows, cooking shows, news, and shows for kids.

Yesterday and today, I watched a couple of educational shows for (pre-school) kids. One of them was on 'sounds'. You got to hear, one by one (and at a pretty slow pace), all kinds of sounds like the sound of an airplane, the cry of an elephant, the beep-beep-beep of an alarm clock, etc., and you had to guess what kind of sound it is. Then they showed you, talking all the time about the objects or animals. That's just perfect for my level. Even if I focus on the objects making the sounds, there's so much basic and repetitive talk washing over me, I just can't help absorbing it :)

I also learned a bit about Thai culture, as you might guess. I got to see some traditional Thai instruments and got to hear sounds related to Buddhist rituals. There was also the sound of a bomb, and the bad guys bombed away looked very much like Vietnamese to me. I might be mistaken on this, but what used to be Russia for us might be Vietnam for the Thais...

Another kids show was on animals. They always made three statements (has 2 legs, you can eat the eggs, likes to swim), and then they showed three candidates for the solution. After some further 'who is it' talk, they revealed the right answer, pointing out the decisive characteristic. This went on for an hour or so. Great material!

Something I tried but couldn't endure long was a song about multiplication tables. 5x7=35, 5x8=40, 5x9=45 etc. However, if you want to learn the numbers, watching this will get the job done. Another genre that seems to be great for beginners is cooking shows. Especially if they are explicit about what they do (ingredients, preparation, time, taste).

Guest post @ WLT

2010-04-12T17:21:00.004+02:00

I've written a guest post for Catherine's blog womenlearnthai.com. It's a review of FuKDuK.tv from an ALG perspective (or at least what I consider as such). Check it out here!

List of Thai TV shows

2010-04-02T22:26:00.009+02:00

Josh at sweet and coolbeans has started putting together a list of Thai TV shows for learners of Thai following the TV method or ALG. Great job! There's a lot of material I was not aware of, and I can't wait to check it out! Josh's blog looks quite nice, and I'm looking forward to reading more from him.

The TV method or How to ignore Thai

2010-03-29T20:50:00.008+02:00

According to ALG, if you want to become fluent in a language, you have to ignore it. Take in the experience as a whole, with all your senses, but put the focus on looking and guessing. Don't focus on listening, and, by all means, avoid listening for individual words. Don't separate language from experience. Take in language as part of the experience. Your brain will sort everything out, taking the time it needs, and eventually you'll become fluent.

I didn't really get it. I understood to avoid speaking, grammar, drills and analysis, but for some strange reason I just overlooked* this most basic element of ALG: experience. Not anymore!

If you want or have to learn on your own, the closest thing to ALG is watching TV (movies, clips, ...). Watch and guess what's going on. Ignore the language, just let it wash over you. Everything will sort itself out. No need to pay attention to the language, no need to catch phrases, no need to translate. Thrive on ambiguity. Let go of the desire to nail the meaning down. Just sit back, watch, guess, enjoy yourself (or dance, cry, laugh, desire, be disgusted, be intrigued).

A week ago, I stopped listening to NHK's newscast and started watching movies and clips. Movies are cool, but fukduk.tv is an ALG treasury trove. There are literally hundreds of hours of 5-20 minute clips covering everything in daily life: soccer competition in Bangkok, restaurant reviews, a visit to the Bangkok doll museum, explanation how a printing press works, ..., people, nature, architecture, products, fashion, technology, night-life, music, cinema, everything!

How cool is that! Young Thais exploring their city, their country, their culture. In Thai, for a Thai audience. And you get to watch it in perfectly digestible chunks, for free, hundreds and hundreds of hours!

I'm just so thrilled, I had to write this slightly confused and unorganized post. Stay tuned!

*Do I overlook other basic stuff central to ALG? Help me save further embarrassment and tell me! :)

ALG input II

2010-03-23T20:09:00.006+01:00

After my last post, I did two things: I went back to read again all posts in David Long's blogs (The AUA Thai Blog and ALG World), and I started watching movies.

David is the head of the Thai program at AUA Bangkok, which is run according to the ALG approach. No doubt that he's got a lot of experience using ALG, and I've chosen to try his approach and trust his experience until I've made my own.

I'm pretty comfortable with ideas like no speaking (until you're ready), no grammar, no language analysis, and I can apply these in my own language learning. However, when it comes good input, I've been clearly not following ALG. In his blog, David writes about what input should be like in many posts. Off the top of my head, here are some ideas I remember: good input should be authentic and experiential; the student should watch and guess; the student shouldn't focus on the language or individual words, but on the broader happening; pure verbal input is not ideal; the student shouldn't try to analyze or translate or memorize.

I've started watching movies: clips on fukduk.tv, comics on youtube (TinTin, Little Leader Geo), and yesterday I watched my first real movie. A story about a ladyboy who gets kicked out by his father, goes to Bangkok and becomes successful. The movie is not very ambitious but certainly entertaining and funny.

Now there's no chance I could understand the dialogues. There's not much talk about non-proliferation treaties or the recent drop in exports of consumer goods - areas I would be more familiar with. Well, this is exaggerated, there was actually a bit that I could understand, but my point is that it was very clear to me that I wouldn't be able to understand the movie by trying to understand the language. So I gave up on trying to 'understand' and just enjoyed watching and listening and observing everything I could: gestures, facial expressions, non-verbal utterances (quite a few!), who's doing what, the surroundings etc. Of course, I also listened, but this was just one element of the experience, and not the most important one.

This is so different to the podcast stuff! I started to get a feeling for what David might mean with statements like 'the student should ignore the language and focus on the happening'. I ignored the language and focused on the happening. And this might be key in order to achieve native-like fluency: it enables your brain to establish connections between situations, objects, behaviors, emotions, actions, language, social conventions, culture, etc., connections in a dense web of authentic references. And there's nowhere translation coming in. There's no separation between language and experience. That's how children learn.

ALG input

2010-03-11T19:50:00.003+01:00

David Long from AUA Thai has explained his views on a recent discussion between Steve the Linguist and Benny the Irish Polyglot. Towards the end of his post, David talks about what ALG considers good input and how that differs from what Steve considers good input. For David, good input needs to be experiential and authentic communication, as opposed to input that is completely verbal or word based.

That made me think about my own approach. Listening to the news, picturing the story in my head, is that experiential? I'd say: rather not. Having a cooking session in room 321 at AUA Thai, conducted entirely in Thai, that's experiential and authentic for sure. Having the teacher telling us a story about a farang marrying an Isaan girl, drawing pictures on the blackboard, is that experiential and authentic? If it is, maybe listening to the news is at least to some extent experiential and authentic. I don't know.

Some ideas of the ALG approach are easy to adhere to as an independent Thai learner in Europe: don't analyze, don't memorize, don't speak (before you're ready, and I'm not), let the language grow inside you in it's own time. But I'm struggling to see how I could get real experiential and authentic input. At the moment, I don't see many other options to watching TV (which I don't like too much) or creating the experience in my head while listening to some podcast.

Update

2010-03-07T10:16:00.005+01:00

In my 'Update' posts, I want to give an account of how I've been engaging with Thai and how it's coming along. I do this mainly for my own record, because since I switched over to an input-based approach roughly four months into learning Thai last August, I feel like I'm conducting an experiment.

During the last four weeks, I've still been listening to NHK's newscast. Usually, I download the latest program in the evening. I listen to it once or twice, noting down the topics on a piece of paper. Then I look up the stories in NHK's English section and read through them. Then I listen once or twice to the audio in Thai while simultaneously looking at the English version. Sometimes the Thai version is identical to the English one, often they are slightly different with the English one being longer and more detailed. Looking at the English version, I construct the story in my head, fill in the pieces I wouldn't have understood from the Thai audio alone, and visualize it (which happens by itself). To finish off, I cut out a few stories I like, using audacity, and save them on my ipod.

The next morning, I listen again to the selected stories a few times, and then to the full podcast. Afterwards, I browse for about half an hour through other stories, usually just the previous week's ones.

This NHK thing is a daily routine of about two hours. If I have other stuff to do, I skip the evening part, but I always do my one hour listening in the morning. It's a daily routine, but it's not a chore, because I am genuinely interested in the stories (and what the Japanese focus on), and I also enjoy the voices of NHK's presenters very much.

Looking back at my last posts, I think my understanding has improved further. Just listening to the newscast once or twice, I can identify all topics covered and often get the gist of the stories. I still miss a lot of the details, but less than before.

In addition to this, I started watching video clips on fukduk.tv (I've written about this in my last post) and youtube. I've watched clips on environmental topics, sports and food. Needless to say that that's very different to NHK: ordinary people, daily life, dialogues, Thai culture... My understanding of these topics is much more limited. With more exposure, I'm confident to develop my understanding over the next months.

fukduk.tv

2010-02-27T17:41:00.009+01:00

Although I mostly listen to NHK's news podcast, there are a few other resources I use occasionally. One of them is fukduk.tv. It's a site with video clips, organized into 'channels'. I like channel 13, produced by Jenny, which features ecology-related topics. I haven't systematically checked out other channels, so I don't know whether they follow the same concept as Jenny's (one person, one topic, clips in regular intervals).

Jenny's latest clip is about a biogas farm. The video is well-done, with a neat (simple) explanation of how it works. I was quite excited when I watched this clip, because I realized that I could actually follow parts of the story quite well, and that the speed of the spoken language is no big challenge.

NHK's news podcasts are at a normal speed, I guess, so I'm used to normal speed. I've also grown familiar with letting go of passages that I don't understand (and watching a video you can still see what's going on!). And NHK has brought several news items on biogas production in Japan and SE Asia recently, so I know some key terms.

I'm convinced that motivation is key in language learning. I mean: having fun, being interested, enjoying yourself. I happen to be very interested in geopolitics, so NHK's podcast is fun and entertaining for me, and I like to learn about trends in technology and society (like biogas). For me, there's no need to study Thai. I believe that comprehension will grow and production of the language will eventually come by itself.

Tones

2010-02-20T21:00:00.005+01:00

Thai is a tonal language, which seems to get a lot of attention from learners. Tones are often portrayed as being rather difficult, as something that needs practice or drill. Sometimes people advise to learn to read very early in order to be able to get the tones right (the Thai writing system encodes the tones).

I'm not sure if tones need to be looked at that way, as something difficult, as something 'separate' from other aspects of the language. I think it should be possible (and maybe even easier) to learn Thai without any special focus on tones at all. They're just part of the whole package, together with vowels and consonants, melody of speech, 'grammar', linguistic conventions, culture, etc. No need to separate anything out.

With enough exposure to natural Thai, and refraining from speaking as long as possible (I'd say, until you understand everything, but this is maybe too extreme), tones will come out just right. Once you've heard a word 500 times, you'll know how to pronounce it.

I suppose that native speakers normally have to do some kind of mental analysis in order to identify tones. They might even come to wrong conclusions about which tone it is, if they are asked. But they will always pronounce the language correctly. I might be wrong here, but if it's true, I don't need to 'study' tones either.

Update

2010-02-07T20:07:00.003+01:00

My flirt with putting words on a list (that I wouldn't really review) was short-lived. I stopped it a few days ago, after about 2 weeks.

I'd love to have a growing list of acquired vocabulary, something tangible to measure progress, a proof of knowledge, meanings nailed down. But I don't really need this list, it consumes a lot of time, and it might even be detrimental in the long run.

I don't need the list, because I'm anyway familiar with these words when I encounter them in my listening. If I'm not sufficiently familiar with a word or expression, having it on the list might help me notice, but often sends me off into trying to remember the meaning. This distracts me from following the story and takes away input. Looking up words takes a lot of time (even if online dictionaries are quite efficient), and it feels like work. And, last but not least, looking up words might be detrimental in the long run (see, for instance, these articles, in particular Mr. Browns book "From the outside in").

So I'm back to just listening (and familiarizing myself with the story). Language will come by itself (so I hope :)).

I guess what's behind that list experiment is my desire to measure progress. Some part of me tends to feel better when I can express my language learning efforts with numbers (words in a list, cards in an SRS deck, chapter worked through, ...). Another part thinks this is stupid: firstly, because language learning should be fun and not an exercise or competition, and secondly, because these numbers don't have much to do with language skills.

Narrow listening

2010-02-02T19:31:00.008+01:00

What I'm doing with NHK's news podcasts is essentially 'narrow listening': listening to different programs on the same topic. Just that the programs are all told by NHK, and they differ because the story evolves from day to day. Today, North Korea is shooting some missiles over some island close to the border, tomorrow, South Korea will protest and call for restraint, the day after tomorrow, North Korea will defy calls for restraint and continue it's shooting exercise, and so on.

Because the topic is the same, I get the same vocabulary over and over again, and there is usually also a brief summary of what has happened before, which again brings back structures encountered earlier. That's narrow listening. It's nice and easy to follow: I know the context, I know or can guess the development, I've heard the words before, and it's interesting, because the story evolves.

Usually, I picture the story. Well, at least I have the feeling that I somehow see the story with my inner eyes. The pictures range from quite tangible to very vague and abstract. It works best, and I understand best, if I close my eyes and allow me to 'flow' with the story.

After downloading and listening to the latest podcast, I might go through the audio and check some words or phrases I have heard before. I put these in a list, together with tones, pronunciation (in Thai), context tags and a translation (in the specific context). Maybe I go through the list once the following day, but then I move on. If I notice the words I put in my list, great, if not, no worries either.

I'm not exactly sure what purpose the list serves, and it's certainly a deviation from a pure ALG approach. But I observe that it helps me paying attention to these words and phrases, recognizing them, understanding them. Sometimes I remember the translation I wrote down and get lost in an act of memorizing, but more often I just understand, picture and listen on. (To avoid the former, I figure I should really do this only with words I already have guessed at several times.)
But I still wonder whether this might do 'damage' to my long-term abilities of learning Thai?

Anyway, I wanted to discuss another point: the particular (and maybe obscure) language I'm exposing myself to. The language used in news covers only certain specific topics (politics, conflicts, economy, natural catastrophies, large cultural events), and is very formal. It won't help me ordering food or chatting with friends when going out. I know. And I don't care.
I dont' care, because: It's proper Thai, spoken in it's natural way (which happens to be formal). The content is of great interest to me and varies on a daily basis. And it's an accessible gateway into the language, something I can do here in Switzerland. There's no need to interact with anybody, no need to speak. I can just sit back, relax, and listen.

At some point, I will move on to other content, less news-oriented, less formal. With dialogues, questions, emotions. Because, after all, I'm learning Thai in order to communicate with Thai people. And the Thais I know are not quite that interested in discussing North Korea :)
I expect that starting with the formal language of the news will eventually benefit my overall language capabilities as well as starting with any other area of Thai.

Update

2010-02-02T09:45:00.006+01:00

During December and January, I was still more or less picking out single words or phrases from my daily NHK news podcast. Sometimes, I was able to follow the story to some extent, but most of the time it was more like a succession of key phrases. Theses key phrases allowed me to piece together the story, provided I was already familiar with it.

NHK often has something like a special topic for the day, and this I have never been able to find in the English section. Yesterday's topic was about Germany's policy towards renewable energy, and solar power in particular; a few days earlier, it was on the decline in CD sales in Japan.
Because I am usually not familiar with the details, my understanding of these sections has been quite limited.

But things seem to be changing now. A few days ago, I noticed a new level of understanding. All of a sudden (at least it seemed like that), I was able to follow whole news items and actually understand large parts of what was being said. This applies only to recurring topics that I'm very familiar with (North Korea, Japan's budget, Futenma, Haiti), not to less frequent ones like some new finding in stem cell research, etc. It was quite exciting to observe that I actually understand full sentences, sometimes even sentence after sentence after sentence!
And I start getting the gist of the special topics, too, noticing words and phrases.

Anki again ...

2010-02-01T20:22:00.010+01:00

I threw out my Thai vocabulary deck last year, and I'm not going to build up a new one. Using Anki to learn vocabulary, I felt enslaved and addicted at the same time, and I'm not going to go there again. However, I managed to find a useful application of Anki: teaching me the Thai writing system.

I had already studied the Thai writing system when I worked with Ms Becker's books. After I switched to a listening only approach, I didn't have much exposure to the Thai alphabet anymore and was starting to forget it. And, to be honest, even before that, I kept being confused about high and low consonants and tone rules implied.

Anki is the perfect tool for a limited, tedious, but necessary drill such as learning the Thai alphabet and pronunciation rules. Anki spaces facts I know well far out into the future, while bringing back again and again the few letters and examples I keep struggling with.

I created the deck 2 months ago, it's complete since about last week and contains 550 facts. I put in the names of the consonants, the consonant classes, the tone rules implied by the consonant classes, and lots of examples (from Becker's book). Then I flashed it at me at a rate of 10 new cards a day, resulting in something like 3 min character study per day. Now that I've been through all cards, the time I spend with Anki should go down.

Since I'm putting words on a list, I've had the opportunity to test my reading accuracy again, in particular with respect to getting the tones right. I seem to have mastered this now, mainly because I now know the consonant classes by heart.

I'm looking forward to the day when I can switch Anki off once and for all.

Review 12/09 - 01/10

2010-02-01T14:20:00.004+01:00

Back from Thailand, I continued listening to NHK's news podcast, cross-checking the English translations, if available, without having to cut the news into smaller, more easily digestable pieces anymore. I didn't use the dictionary to look up stuff, but was still able to infer quite a few words or expressions through repeated exposure and being familiar with the story. Slowly, but steadily, progress seemed to gain speed. I imagine something like a hysteresis curve describing progress here: if you don't understand much, you won't be able to guess and figure out new words; if you understand a lot, but not everything, you will be able to guess and figure out heaps of new words; if you understand almost everything, you won't be learning much (apart from reinforcing, which is good, too). I'm on the part of the curve, where it's starting to bend upwards :)

At the end of January, I started to try Steve's LingQ-ing approach to learning words, or at least my version of it. While listening to the news, I pick out words that I recognize, but not fully understand, look them up (here, or here, or here), put them in a list (in excel with tones, meaning, date, and context tags), and move on. Occasionally, I review the words: the ones of the latest podcast usually once before listening again the next morning, and the words for certain topics in spare 5 minutes during the day.

I noticed that this allows me to recognize some (but not all) of these words much more often. Once I've written them down, I hear them coming again and again. At the beginning, I might have to remember the English translation, but after some exposure (5-10 times), I understand them without evoking the English (or German) 'equivalent'. I have the impression that this speeds up my learning substantially.

There are also quite some words I add to my list and review once or twice which don't stick. I note them down, and don't recognize them later on. I have also added a few words several times to my list, and they still don't stick. That's ok. I don't worry about that. I will remember them later, they might need more time, more exposure, more context.

Review 11/09 (Thailand)

2010-02-01T13:24:00.014+01:00

I took out a 5 week holiday to go to Thailand to see some Thai friends, check out Automatic Language Growth (ALG) at AUA Bangkok (if you don't know what ALG is, read their website or google the term; I'm not going to explain it here), and to enjoy myself. November is anyway the worst month in Switzerland: too late for hiking or biking, too early for skiing.

Automatic Language Growth: I went AUA Bangkok for about 50 hours, or a bit more, during a period of about 10 days. I was placed in level 2, which, in retrospect, was about right. The classes were often a lot of fun, we were told entertaining stories, the teachers (there were always 2 of them per class) acted out stupid stuff, we had cooking sessions, less serious sessions about burping and farting, and more serious ones about religion and the king. No speaking, no grammar, no vocabulary, no exercises. It's a very relaxed approach, it's entertaining, free of anxiety (to be put on the spot and speak this strange language), and apparently effective.

Most lessons were really good, and only very few of them boring. It was impossible for me to measure progress as I would have been able when going through a course book (number of pages or chapters), but I noticed improvements. A lot of the words repeated over and over during these 50 hours seem now to be available to me without going through translation.

I was able to follow the gist of what was going on in almost all lessons, and I had a good grasp of the details in about half of them. Towards the end, I felt quite confident in class. Whether it would have been time move on, I cannot say, and I didn't have any kind of formal evaluation at the end (I probably could have gotten that, but I made other plans on short notice).

Apart from the language part, most striking to me was my learning about the culture. Because the program is run in Thai by Thais with Thai topics, there's a lot of exposure to real Thai culture. I mean taboos, beliefs, social hierarchy, family relations, religion, the king, activities & leisure time, ghosts, food, etc. In order to learn a language, you need to learn about the culture, and AUA is doing a great job in that respect.

For a very interesting account of someone following AUA's program for 1500 hours, read Dan's blog.
Keith, who has some interesting ideas about language learning, has brought this blog to my attention.

Speaking Thai: I didn't want to speak Thai, because I was (and still am) far from being ready. It would not have been natural and would only result in stilted, broken phrases. But I was not able to completely avoid it, in particular when I was seeing Thai friends and hanging out with them, and while traveling. I realized, in particular after my 10 days at AUA, that I was able to understand quite a bit, and I had a few words to use and communicate with. I had a few encounters where I actually had quite meaningful and interesting conversations with locals. This was cool and motivating. But I'm glad that I don't have to speak anymore (back in Switzerland), because I clearly feel it's too early.

I tried to get Thai friends to speak in Thai to me, with me answering in English. They never got the concept. It was either Thai, or English, and I had to give up. This is the ALG concept of cross-talk, but it's probably a technique restricted to the classroom.

Review 08/09 - 10/09

2010-02-01T12:23:00.010+01:00

At the end of my course book / SRS study period, I had tried to translate and put into Anki a short VoA news segment on a pan-Asian rail network (with transcript). The content was of high interest to me, but the idea of translating every single word and 'learning' it with Anki didn't work. Given my level of understanding, the amount of unknown words was just overwhelming. Even after I'd picked out the words from the transcript and put them into Anki, I was not able to recognize them in the audio segment.

But this served as a starting point for my post-Anki time, and I researched the web for Thai news podcasts. I have to say that I'm very interested in news (which doesn't seem to be the case for most other learners). Following Steve Kaufmann's advice to get hold of interesting content, looking for news podcasts made a lot of sense for me. I found only two daily podcast shows, the 30-min VoA programs, and a 13-min show from NHK Radio Japan. There's no such thing as 'Radio Thailand' (comparable to BBC, VoA or NHK), unfortunately. Because of the neat length, I chose to go for Radio Japan and added the news program to my podcast feeds.

I started to listen to the program every day, usually several times (3-5). At the beginning, I just listened. Listened to the sound of the language, the tones, the melody, the speed, the voices. I understood practically nothing. A few days later, I was able to regularly pick out names of people and places, and understand the odd word or phrase from my former studies. But all the time I really enjoyed just listening to the sound of the language. I noticed that the sounds became more and more clear to me, that I was able to recognize (but not understand) certain phrases, to sometimes identify single words, and that the speed of talking became more and more manageable.

Later, I checked out NHK's English news and discovered that most of their Thai news seem to be translations from their English news. I used this to aid my understanding: Listen to Thai, notice the names and places in the segment, check the English section, read the story, and listen to Thai again (and again). With this technique, I was able to 'understand' a lot more, because I knew the story and what they were going to tell me. It allowed me to start guessing words, and I realized that my understanding was slowly beginning to improve.

A few weeks later, I started to cut out 1-2 min segments of the news program, and only listen to a few of them every day, but also to old ones (often related). With this, I was able to narrow my listening to fewer topics, which increased the exposure to certain words or phrases and helped me noticing them. For instance, for a few days I was following some swine-flu related news, then something on an earthquake somewhere, or on developments in or with North Korea.

Being liberated from the Anki yoke, I started to enjoy the time I spent with Thai much more; it suddenly didn't feel like hard work anymore, but like fun!
I also found other blogs on Thai, like Scott's one (unfortunately not updated anymore) and Catherine's. Scott tried similar stuff as I did, and I benefited from his experience a lot. Catherine has a wealth of resources, and even though she has a different approach, I like her blog and visit it on a regular basis to check out the material she puts up.

Review 04/09 - 07/09

2010-02-01T11:19:00.008+01:00

In April 2009, I decided to have a go at learning Thai. So I went to the attic and dug out the Thai course books I had purchased a few years earlier during one of my holidays in Thailand. These books are 'Thai for Beginners' and 'Thai for Intermediate Learners' by Benjawan Poomsam Becker.

Good about Ms Becker's books is that they contain quite a useful set of vocabulary and that they start teaching you the writing system right away. Bad is, they're the typical course books with boring dialogues, boring drills, boring example sentences and boring audio, and they follow the usual translation approach with long lists of words, Thai on the left, English on the right. Really bad is, they start with a very lengthy and frustrating pronunciation section. Speak Thai before you've ever heard a single Thai word!

Anyway, I was quite motivated and forced the content of these books into my head. I listened to the dialogues over and over again, and studied words and structures with spaced repetition / flashcards (Anki). I also had the idea that I should not have passive vocabulary: every word I came across, I wanted to know English to Thai as well as Thai to English. (I do not subscribe to this idea anymore.)

However, during that time I stumbled upon Steve Kaufmann's blog, which opened up the world of natural language learning methods to me. I immediately understood the importance of getting lots and lots of input, and the idea of refraining from early speaking also began to make sense to me. With regards to Anki, I started to develop doubts about the translation approach, but since I was thoroughly hooked on SRS (spaced repetition), acceptance took more time.

The more I read about his and other learner's experiences, the more it made sense to me, and finally, at the end of July, I decided to give it a try. I was anyway quite frustrated with Anki, because the deck of vocabulary cards had grown substantially, and I felt enslaved by my daily routine instead of motivated and cheered up. I stopped working on the deck, and never returned to it.

Why this blog?

2010-02-01T10:56:00.001+01:00

I've been following a number of blogs discussing language learning over the past year, and this has greatly impacted my own attitude and approach towards learning languages, and in particular towards learning Thai. I've been experimenting with different suggestions, and I keep shaping and changing my methods. So I thought I'd like to document what I'm doing and how it's coming along - even if it's only for my own benefit. If, in addition to this, my blog allows me to tap into the knowledge and experience of other language learners out there, even better!