ศาลาชุมนุม

[tod-daniels]

Well, as a foreigner, you're never gonna "speak Thai like a native", so I wouldn't waste even a second worrying about that for a start .

No matter what the "ever praising" Thais tell you about your language ability, you're gonna be pegged as a foreign speaker of Thai probably from the first phrase outta your mouth. ALL foreign speakers give themselves away by using constructs that Thais wouldn't use, saying things in an un-thai way. Andrew Biggs, possibly the most famous foreign Thai speaker in the country, and Adam Bradshaw a pretty darned clear Thai talking American sound like foreign speakers if you listen to them speak long enough. Now they're perfectly understandable and VERY fluid Thai speakers, but EVERY thai in this country can peg 'em as foreign speakers. that's just how good Thais are at accent identification .

The word fluency is often bandied about, and I shy away from it, because it means different things to different people. I prefer the word FLUID, in relation to speaking Thai. Is your spoken thai smooth, do you pause when Thais would pause during speaking, do you use particles in a Thai way, do you structure your spoken Thai like a Thai would say things or like a phrase book tells you to, have you minimized your mother language interference or over-ride when you get confused? All these things lead can someone down the path to fluidity when speaking. That is critical as far as having native speakers understand what you’re saying.

Marvin Brown and his ALG (automatic language growth) methodology has both its proponents and its detractors. I am in the latter camp on this method of language learning, and NOT a fan of using it "cold" to learn Thai. In the same breath I will say, it is possibly the most valuable and cost effective Thai language school out there to increase your comprehension of spoken Thai, ONCE you have a base-line vocabulary already under your belt .

The problems I have with ALG especially when using the "children acquire language like this" argument is that children have MANY limitations which adults acquiring a second or third language do not.
[*]Children can't speak, so therefore can't ask questions.
[*]Children don't have another language already under their belts to compare the new one too.
[*]Children have little or no life experience insofar as making "leaps in logic" as to why something is done in the target language differently from their mother tongue.
In fact the ONLY thing which makes children learn this way is the fact that they have to, not that they would want to IF they had a choice.

Every learner of Thai is gonna get "fossilization". These are words you learned with the wrong pronunciation, and then hafta go back later and literally chisel 'em outta your head . Sitting thru hundreds of hours of watching Thais talk to one another (like the AUA classes have you do) ain't gonna stop that from happening when you do eventually speak.

Now I'm all for a "silent period", where the target language is listened to, and then applied later on when speaking. There was a study done by someone and that Stephen Krashen cited which pointed out kids learning a second language actually learned it better initially by not being compelled to speak right from the get go. They spoke better, used more complex sentence constructs, and understood far more than the kids who were dragged thru the phrase/grammar books. However, after both groups continued studying they were more equally rated as far as proficiency. So while the silent period can "jump start" language acquisition, I have actually only met a single person who used AUA's method exclusively and was successful; David Long, the current director of Thai Studies at AUA. He speaks really good Thai and he learned only from their method, but that’s the only person I ever met in Bangkok. I just don't think I could sit thru all those mind-numbing hours without askin' questions or wantin' to speak.

Another thing which you can't do is simply go out and sit on the side of the street in Bangkok and think you're gonna just "pick up" Thai. This is the possibly biggest fallacy in language learning going . The reason you're not able to do this is for the most part the "input" is incomprehensible. If you are gonna learn Thai, you hafta be in an environment where you can "understand" what is being talked about without knowing the vocabulary words. This is exactly why AUA has so many levels of classes. The beginner classes rely heavily on the use of acting, mime, and props to make you "understand" what they're talking about without knowing the vocabulary.

To show what I mean by this; here is a video by Stephen Krashen outlining this point quite well. He uses German as the target language, and it is really a good (albeit old) video showing what "comprehensible input" means;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K11o19YNvk

I am all for anyone learning Thai how ever they wanna learn it. I mean there're probably as many different methods as there are people tryin' to learn it (okay maybe not ). At the end of the day, it boils down to what works for you and only you.

Good luck. ..
Tod Daniels

[Mind]

Marvin Brown and his ALG (automatic language growth) methodology has both its proponents and its detractors. I am in the latter camp on this method of language learning, and NOT a fan of using it "cold" to learn Thai. In the same breath I will say, it is possibly the most valuable and cost effective Thai language school out there to increase your comprehension of spoken Thai, ONCE you have a base-line vocabulary already under your belt .

Why you need "base-line" vocabulary under your belt? You learn the base-line vocabulary pretty well in AUA. Yes, you can shorten your time at AUA with learning on the side, but will it help in the long run? I am not sure.

The problems I have with ALG especially when using the "children acquire language like this" argument is that children have MANY limitations which adults acquiring a second or third language do not.

These "limitations" don't seem to be limitations at all. Nearly no Child has a problem to learn a second language to speak like a native, while nearly all adults will never learn a second language like a native.

[*]Children can't speak, so therefore can't ask questions.
[*]Children don't have another language already under their belts to compare the new one too.
[*]Children have little or no life experience insofar as making "leaps in logic" as to why something is done in the target language differently from their mother tongue.

And i think, that these are the reasons why the children learn a second language as good as a native. If you ask what a word mean and you compare it to your first language, you use struktures in your brain from your first language for the second language. If you learn that "blahfasel" means "inside" from the beginning, you always think of inside when you want to use "blahfasel". If you figure out what "blahfasel" means from watching it in context, you build different structures in your brain that are not hard connected to the word "inside". I think one problem with using old connections in your brain is, that you even use it when it is better not. Like with grammar and pronounciation. And it is likely, that you get a constant translation process running in your brain. If you learn the AUA-way, this would be less likely the case.

Every learner of Thai is gonna get "fossilization". These are words you learned with the wrong pronunciation, and then hafta go back later and literally chisel 'em outta your head . Sitting thru hundreds of hours of watching Thais talk to one another (like the AUA classes have you do) ain't gonna stop that from happening when you do eventually speak.

But with the AUA-way, you will hear the words thousands of time in the correct way before you speak. With other ways you hear most of the time wrong pronunciations from you and other students and your brain can't tell the difference about good and bad pronunciation. If your brain heard only correct pronounciation before you start to speak, you will most likely be able to correct pronounciation errors before they sink in and fossilize.

Now I'm all for a "silent period", where the target language is listened to, and then applied later on when speaking. There was a study done by someone and that Stephen Krashen cited which pointed out kids learning a second language actually learned it better initially by not being compelled to speak right from the get go. They spoke better, used more complex sentence constructs, and understood far more than the kids who were dragged thru the phrase/grammar books. However, after both groups continued studying they were more equally rated as far as proficiency. So while the silent period can "jump start" language acquisition, I have actually only met a single person who used AUA's method exclusively and was successful; David Long, the current director of Thai Studies at AUA. He speaks really good Thai and he learned only from their method, but that’s the only person I ever met in Bangkok.

I would like to meet the dan from the blog i linked. He has gone to the method without studying on the side and the blog reads like he did very well with it. In one year from zero thai to speaking only thai for days.

I just don't think I could sit thru all those mind-numbing hours without askin' questions or wantin' to speak.

This is a problem that many or even most adults have. You hear something and want to know if you nailed it. I have this to, but i try to suppress it.

Another thing which you can't do is simply go out and sit on the side of the street in Bangkok and think you're gonna just "pick up" Thai. This is the possibly biggest fallacy in language learning going . The reason you're not able to do this is for the most part the "input" is incomprehensible. If you are gonna learn Thai, you hafta be in an environment where you can "understand" what is being talked about without knowing the vocabulary words.

Yes, you need imput that is comprehensible, but the aua-way seems to be comprehensible enough to get the thing done. Yes, it can be that they can be more comprehensible in the beginning of level 3 and level five, but it still seems to work. The Dan from the blog i mentioned, wrote a interesting thing about the levels:
-----
It is pretty amazing that the ALG system has resulted in an almost identical progression in each of the three levels I've been through. Leaving aside the first 30 hours or so of AT1 when I didn't know or understand ANY Thai, in each level I've experienced the same process.

For maybe 30 hours, I have felt that the new level ranges from feeling similar to an average to hard hour in the previous level (maybe ~75% comprehension), to noticibly harder but still able to be followed (~50-60%?), to too difficult to follow well (~30%).

After that, the difficultly seems to gradually reduce each week, and I slowly move from struggling to comfortable to confident. Each week things get easier, though obviously it's never a simple, straight line progression. This is the majority of the time I've spent in a level, roughly 30-100 hours in AT1 and AT2, and maybe 30-175 in AT3-4. This is just to give some vague timeframe though... it is impossible to really quantify any of this precisely.

In the next stage, the level feels pretty easy, but I have yet to plateau and still feel that progress is occurring. There are moments of incomplete comprehension (say, 50%) but most of the time it feels like 75% or better. This seems to have lasted from about 100-150 hours in AT1 and AT2, and about 175-225 hours in AT3-4.

The last stage is the plateau. It is hard to quanitify this, but it seems that although I don't understand every word, I always understand what is being talked about, even without focusing. In this stage it has always felt like I am not making any more significant progress. Understanding seems to range from 80%-90% or higher at almost all times. AT1 and AT2 I waited out the 200 hours, so it occurred from 150-200 hours, but by AT3-4 I was familiar with the pattern and knew the plateau had arrived, so I moved up at 283 hours rather than waiting for 400.

I started AT5-10 at the beginning of March and really, all I need to do is refer to the above pattern. The first week was rough, and though now (about 60 hours into it) things are still difficult, they are falling into place. Sometimes my comprehension is 75% or better, even 90% in an easy hour; other times I follow but there are gaps, so it feels like 50%-70%. There is a bit of 30-50% comprehension too when I am pretty confused, but not often. Initially there were also moments of 30% when I was thoroughly lost, but these have just about disappeared. The only exception is "News" class... this is consistently over my head, but other students feel the same way, so I'm not too concerned.
http://daninbangkok.blogspot.com/2007_0 ... chive.html

This is exactly why AUA has so many levels of classes. The beginner classes rely heavily on the use of acting, mime, and props to make you "understand" what they're talking about without knowing the vocabulary.

They have only 4 levels. They call them only level "1", level "2", level "3-4" and level "5-10". They call them this, because they say you need to have nearly 200 Hours in each level. So level "3-4" are 400 hours. And yes, they act pretty much in the first levels and this is the reason why you don't need to have thai understanding before you start at AUA. It is easy to get words like walking, running, eating, sleeping from watching them, even if you don't understand thai.

I am all for anyone learning Thai how ever they wanna learn it. I mean there're probably as many different methods as there are people tryin' to learn it (okay maybe not ). At the end of the day, it boils down to what works for you and only you.

Yes, if you think that a school without translations is rubbish, than the AUA-way is not for you. I think that is a feature and i will try it.

with best regards,
Mind

[tod-daniels]

"Mind" -Sorry for the late reply.

Thanx for takin’ time to answer specific parts of my oh-so long post. It certainly helped me understand where you’re comin’ from in regards to the methodology.

I still think that foreigners can learn perfectly comprehensible, good structured conversational Thai via phonetics (coupled with solid dialog) in a far shorter time frame than via “passive listening”.

If teaching conversational Thai via phonetics didn’t work I doubt almost every Thai school in Bangkok would have jumped on that bandwagon. In fact, I can only think of two schools in Bangkok which don’t teach Thai via phonetics, with AUA being one of them.

Believe me as soon as I meet a single foreigner here (other than David Long ) who learned to speak something resembling Thai from AUA’s school or method, I’ll mention it .

It’s just not happened yet, and FWIW: I run into quite a few foreigners learning Thai here as I go scope out different schools for the reviews I do of them.

Good luck in your Thai studies, and thanx again for the reply. ..

[Mind]

I still think that foreigners can learn perfectly comprehensible, good structured conversational Thai via phonetics (coupled with solid dialog) in a far shorter time frame than via “passive listening”.

What do you mean with "a far shorter time frame"? In AUA is this 1500 hours, WITHOUT learning vocabulary or grammar aside. And than you can understand real world spoken Thai and speak without a bad accent. How many hours you need to got to this point with a normal class + vucabulary and grammar learning aside? Yes, you can speak much faster with other methodes, but at what point is a normal learner at a point that an AUA-Learner reach at 1500 hours? I can't see it is so far less.

If teaching conversational Thai via phonetics didn’t work I doubt almost every Thai school in Bangkok would have jumped on that bandwagon. In fact, I can only think of two schools in Bangkok which don’t teach Thai via phonetics, with AUA being one of them.

There is an easy answer for this. In AUA they are interested that you learn the language right, where in other schools they are interested that you learn to speak fast. Most people want to speak thai last week and the conventional schools satisfy this wish much better than AUA. Also, many learners can't bear to have no translations. It is a weird feeling when you hear a word and need to guess what it means and many adults think this is stupid, because it is so easy to know what this word mean. They only need to look it up. Also, many learners have no time to sit 1500 Hours in a classroom. They want a 3-Week-Crashcourse so they know a little more survival-thai. The question is, how many people get with 1500 Hours conventional learning to a good understanding of thai and a good spoken thai. And how many get there with 1500 Hours in AUA. I am not sure, but i think that in AUA nearly all have an good understanding and a good spoken thai, but with other methodes it is far less.... i think.

Believe me as soon as I meet a single foreigner here (other than David Long ) who learned to speak something resembling Thai from AUA’s school or method, I’ll mention it .

It’s just not happened yet, and FWIW: I run into quite a few foreigners learning Thai here as I go scope out different schools for the reviews I do of them.

Your logic is flawed. You will never find someone that learnd to speak from AUA with visiting Thai-Learners on other schools. Why should someone that went through the AUA-Program be in an other school? The best way to get such a person, is to put a letter on the wall of a AUA-Classroom where you ask for a contact.

Good luck in your Thai studies, and thanx again for the reply. ..

Thank you. My biggest problem is, that i don't live in LOS and i am only visiting it max once a year. With living in LOS it would be much easier.

[Toffeeman]

This is an interesting discussion. I had heard about this school before but reading this thread has given me more insight.

But there is one thing I can't believe. If you go this school and sit through all this listening and then gradually understand what they are saying surely you must be tempted to use it outside of the classroom? Surely you must greet people and ask some basic polite questions, surely you must ask for your food in a restaurant using Thai, surely you must see a street sign or billboard poster and want to look it up the words in a dictionary, surely you want to make Thai friends so you can practice what you have learned and get them to correct your errant tones and grammar? Or are there no errant tones and grammar with this method?

[Mind]

But there is one thing I can't believe. If you go this school and sit through all this listening and then gradually understand what they are saying surely you must be tempted to use it outside of the classroom?

Yes, it is tempting to speak outside the classroom and you will use some phrases, but it is up to you how much. Do you really need to speak much thai? Most visitors of LOS can have a nice time without speaking a word.
They say, you feel when you are ready to speak a word and this is what i also experienced. You hear a word over and over and when you speak it to early from your memory, you feel that you don't speak it right, but can't pin down how to speak it correkt. If you speak it from memory in the right time, you feel you spoke it wrong and know how is should sound right. Then it is easy to correct your error.

Surely you must greet people and ask some basic polite questions, surely you must ask for your food in a restaurant using Thai,

Yes, you can be polite, but you should not overdo it. And why you need to ask for food in thai? Will someone without understanding of thai have problems to get food in LOS?

surely you must see a street sign or billboard poster and want to look it up the words in a dictionary,

Even the most farangs that can speak a little thai can't read the signs, where is the problem to wait a little till you start it? But you show where the problem with this method is. Most want to use the language as soon as possible and many don't want to wait a period without showing of the learnd skills. This is ok and then the AUA-Method is nothing for you.

surely you want to make Thai friends so you can practice what you have learned and get them to correct your errant tones and grammar? Or are there no errant tones and grammar with this method?

They claim that you get the tones and the grammar right from the listening method and i believe this. When you learn the words from listening, you hear it always in the correct structure. When you use the words after your listening phase, you use it naturaly in the right structure without thinking about it. With the tones, i am not so sure, but they also claim that you get the tones right. Everytime you hear dog it sounds differend than the times they talk about horses. They claim that your brain can sort it out, even if you don't hear the difference consciously in the beginning. And this is one reason why they say that you should not speak to early. If you speak dog many times like hores, your brain will have problems to see the difference.

[Toffeeman]

I respect the fact that there are different methods and not everyone learns the same but this sounds so boring. I just love having a go at the language, getting it wrong, asking for the person to correct me, sharing a smile and a laugh with the Thai person serving me. It's all part of the language experience.

I am trying to imagine a person learning English, coming to England and not speaking the language at all even though he knows some expressions quite well. If I asked him why he doesn't give it a go and he replies "I will only speak when I am ready to speak it properly or I am sure its accurate" I would think what a stuffy person. He would be missing out on so much more than just language learning.

[Mind]

I respect the fact that there are different methods and not everyone learns the same but this sounds so boring.

For me, normal learning of a language sounds much more boring. Do you enjoy using spaced repetition to learn vocabulary? Do you enjoy seeing that you already forgot the vocabulary that you learned last week? Do you enjoy learning the grammar structur of a language? I don't. For me, this is funless work and i need to force me to do it. While in the AUA method, you watch two people interact and tell you storys from their culture. Its more like a amateur theater. This is much more interesting for me than learning vucabary with dull repetition technics.

I just love having a go at the language, getting it wrong, asking for the person to correct me, sharing a smile and a laugh with the Thai person serving me. It's all part of the language experience.

You can have this with AUA also, but you start at a much higher level. You skip the part where you think you are stupid and you will never learn the tones because you are sure you spoke the word like your friend and she still tell you you are wrong. How many thai learners have this feeling with the normal method? I think this will be many. I found it frustrating thinking you got it right and still beeing wrong, without a clue how to fix it, because it sounded (for me) the same like the right one.

I am trying to imagine a person learning English, coming to England and not speaking the language at all even though he knows some expressions quite well. If I asked him why he doesn't give it a go and he replies "I will only speak when I am ready to speak it properly or I am sure its accurate" I would think what a stuffy person. He would be missing out on so much more than just language learning.

He will miss a few month without speaking but got a much better understanding of the spoken language. And if he don't want, nearly noone knows that he already understands some words and wait a little time for speaking. And his explaination would be differend. He would tell, that he learns at a school that want them to be silent in the beginning. The school claims that you hurt your pronaunciation if you speak to early and that the errors in your pronaunciation sink in, so it is a pain in the arse to get them right after learning it wrong. They claim, that this is one reason that nearly no adult learns a second language like a native and i want to try their method.
And if you think after this explaination that i am a stuffy person, you and my are not compatible anyway.

[tod-daniels]

Well “Mind” you certainly are an advocate of the ALG methodology taught by AUA. So much so that David or that oh-so uppity female Thai principal who runs their Thai studies section should consider hiring you to hawk their program to foreigners .

When I said I routinely run into quite a few foreigners scoping out schools, I meant that I meet foreign learners of Thai all the time all over Bangkok who learned via different methods . In all honesty I've sat almost all the advanced classes at AUA which are of interest to me already. Some of the topics are just things I have abso-tively posi-lutely NO interest in hearing Thais talk about or in picking up vocabulary about either. I'm of the mind that learning words you ain't ever gonna use is just wasting time. . I'm just not interested in the least with "Thai culture", "Thai ghosts", "Thai history" (according to the Thais), "Thai holidays", blah-blah-blah . My only interest in Thai culture is understanding the criteria Thais operate within. By understanding those things I can use them against the Thais to get my way, because Thais act within these cultural rules. Granted, that's a totally self serving attitude; but last time I checked, I'm in this life for me not other people (what ever their nationality is)...

Actually I do love the "daily news" class topic they do at AUA. They use that free rag M2F which is handed out every day at the sky train stations and cover a topic of two in it. This is also one of just a few classes where the teacher will write vocab on the board in Thai about the topic we're listening to.

I've also talked with MANY current and former students of AUA; yet never came across one who spoke any better Thai than people who learned via a different methodology over a much shorter period of time. Some of them even spoke worse Thai than I do, (and FWIW: I speak some pretty roughly toned Thai ). I also speak some really "un-Thai" like Thai (that's by choice not chance). I jokingly tell Thai people I learned to speak the Thai language just so I can be an a**-hole in two languages, .

I still think AUA is way too much 'in-class' time to sit "dumb as a fence post" and listen. I personally know people who've sat 4 conversational levels and 2 reading writing Thai levels at Union Clone schools and they've got a pretty darned good grasp of Thai; speaking, reading and writing. That's a total of 6 levels at 60 hours a level so just 360 hours. . There's NO way anyone's gonna sit AUA for that short of an amount of time and walk away with anything comparable in real Thai language skills.

I still recommend AUA for anyone who has a base line vocabulary of Thai under their belts. To me, that's when those classes give the best "bang-4-the-baht", as far as increasing your comprehension of Thais speaking Thai at a normal cadence with normal pronunciation . ..

Of course, everything I write is my opinion and people are free to disagree. That's the good thing about opinions everybody has one . .

Good Luck, as far as I'm concerned any way that helps you learn Thai is a "good way" for you..

[Tgeezer]

They claim, that this is one reason that nearly no adult learns a second language like a native and i want to try their method.
And if you think after this explaination that i am a stuffy person, you and my are not compatible anyway.

For what it is worth "Mind" I agree with you. I do something similar but with reading, I read Thai aloud and mostly from books where the rules are obeyed. I think it is analogous to the learning to speak using the method you advocate and you can do it at home in England.
I should think it a good way to learn if you can't come to the AUA. It entails learning from primary school book year 4 or 5 or earlier and working through the years up through secondary.
Or you could use this site's lessons to learn the basics, then move on to Thai.