ศาลาชุมนุม

[tobypowell]

Hi

just wanted to tell every one about a great new thai language school just opened in Ploen Chit, Bnagkok.

RTL-School, has just opened its doors at the end of march. All the courses have 5% discount off between now and the end of june. The teachers are all very experienced and the courses are very cheap!

there website is http://www.rtl-school.com

I highly recommend them. I've previously done private classes with a few of the teachers and they were fantastic! in 4 months, i'm speaking, reading and writing!

thanks

[tod-daniels]

I stopped by this school today (being a nosy person about all things related to learning Thai).

I thought the staff and the school were pretty good, especially for a new school.

In fact, I thought they were good enough for me to write a review about them on the website where I review Thai Language Schools here in Bangkok.

So if you're interested, be on the lookout for the review as it's comin' soon. . .

[claude06thailand]

speaking, reading and writing in 4 months...
I would say it is too wonderful to be true.

but I have seen this sign in Chiangrai that's even better

STUDY THAI.jpg (180.57 KiB) Viewed 11232 times

[tod-daniels]

I think the O/P possibly might be taking a little "creative license" with their Thai abilities after just 4 months of study.

This school is another "Union Clone" school. By that, I mean it's a school using the methodology of the original Union Thai School from 40+ years ago. These types of schools (which there are no shortage of) certainly don't exploit the ED visa loophole, like some other schools where a student studies Thai 4 hours a week just so they can stay here in Thailand . In fact, most "Union Clone" schools are pretty darned intensive places to learn Thai at, and NOT for the half-motivated, visa seeking foreigners who wanna slide thru a Thai course. .

These schools run 60 hour 'blocks' of classes or levels. Students study 3 hours a day, 5 days a week for 4 straight weeks. It is intensive to the n-th degree, and you're NOT gonna get a whole lot outta this type of Thai instruction without a LOT of out of class review and practicing what you've learned.

Anyway, that's all I'll say as I don't wanna spoil my review,

P/S; quite the interesting pic about learning Thai. It reminds me of the plethora of Learn English books which say "Speak English in 100 hours, 140 hours, 99 hours, etc, or of this pic;

Englash.jpg

[tod-daniels]

Hope this is okay to post. .. (Note to Mods; if it's not okay, just delete it )

Here's the review I promised on the school "RTL" - Rak Thai Language;

http://womenlearnthai.com/index.php/thai-language-school-review-rak-thai/

Tod

[daฟาน]

Thanks for the Chaingrai pic Claude, I had a good laugh too when I saw it there Almost forgot about it

[tod-daniels]

Well, not that people are particularly interested but ;

In an effort to get my spoken Thai beaten into something more than the "mangled, off-toned, American accented" stuff I speak; which only marginally resembles Thai , I enrolled in this school for one of their 60 hour modules.

I was less than thrilled I had to "test into" this module as I'd never attended their school before, but I did okay, although I was dripping with sweat after speaking ONLY Thai during the "test in process" . I'm also not all that keen on their "no spoken English allowed in class" rule either.

I'd rather the teacher spit the English meaning of a Thai word out and move on with the class rather than enduring a five minute dissertation in Thai replete with charades, drawings and diagrams on the white board to get a single meaning of a word I don't happen to know.. (Note to self; write down the words so I can look ‘em up outta class.. )

Be that as may, and understanding this is a THAI language class with the objective of speaking the target language; I can say I'm thoroughly enjoying the class (and comin' from me that about the highest compliment I can give) . I know most all of the vocab already but what I am learning is a lot of good correct structural stuff. It was this area I wanted to improve my Thai in the most anyway.

It's my experience that a Thais comprehension goes up incredibly when faced with foreigners speaking off or errant toned Thai IF that foreigner is using correct Thai sentence structure . What I mean by that is IF the foreigner is saying things said the way Thais are used to hearing it phrased they can understand it WAY better (and makes "leaps in logic" to correct the errant tones without that deer in the head-lites ไม่เข้าใจ look they give ).

I certainly bit off a big chunk this month (maybe more than I can chew ). This class is 3 hour a day, 5 days a week class and I am attending class at another school, twice a week for 2 hours a class to get my Thai reading/writing to a higher degree as well. Yesterday was the first 5 hour study day I did. To be honest; I was pretty darned "Thai'd out" at the end of the day .

Time will tell if an old guy like me has the wherewithal to maintain this level of learning. I mean I ain't a "spring chicken" anymore.

Still, like I say; "I'll learn to speak Thai if it kills these people...."

[claude06thailand]

Quoting Tods-Daniels :
It's my experience that a Thais comprehension goes up incredibly when faced with foreigners speaking off or errant toned Thai IF that foreigner is using correct Thai sentence structure . What I mean by that is IF the foreigner is saying things said the way Thais are used to hearing it phrased they can understand it WAY better (and makes "leaps in logic" to correct the errant tones without that deer in the head-lites ไม่เข้าใจ look they give ).

I fully agree with you : a correct Thai sentence structure helps a lot and although I did not learn the tones and I know I am often wrong about them, I rarely have to repeat a sentence if it was correctly structured.

But I recommend to learn tones and vowel length along with sentence structure because it will make your Thai so much better and ฟังแล้วรื่นหู.

As in every language, if you combine bad pronunciation with incorrect syntax and wrong grammar, it's really difficult for people to understand you.

Sometimes, I think I should try a good school, even after 10 years of serious self-teaching, just for the sake of tones and vowel length...

[tod-daniels]

"Claude06thailand"; you're totally correct about vowel length. To me it's possibly even more important to non-native speakers than tones are. Although Thai being a tonal language, tones are right up there too in relative importance.

There is very little restriction put on English as far as vowel length (or the amount of time we can enunciate a vowels sound). Thai much more restrictive in this and quite possibly that's why they delineate their vowels as either long สระยาว or short สระสั้น. This is very confusing for English speakers to wrap their heads around early on when learning Thai seeing as in English long and short vowels make totally different sounds. It takes a little explanation to clue foreigners into the fact that in Thai it relates ONLY to the duration or time you can use to make the sound and that a pair of long and short vowels in Thai actually make the same sound.

I'm reviewing the level 4 conversational Thai text book from this school after that 60 hour course I took, seeing as there's tons of great structural stuff I wanna "lock into my head". This was easily the most interesting and informative Thai course I ever attended, although 60 hours at 3 hours a day, 5 days a week almost chewed me up and spit me out, especially with the "no english in class" rule they enforced rabidly.

Well, I've gotta say, my spoken Thai has been commented on by Thais many many times (even more recently as I've gotten over a LOT of my reticence in speaking Thai to Thais). Still, I've never had a Thai accuse me of speaking ฟังแล้วรื่นหู (pleasing to the ear) . Then again, that's not my intent, I don't wanna ever sound "like a Thai", being able to speak to Thais in Thai is enough for me.

[pensive]

There is very little restriction put on English as far as vowel length (or the amount of time we can enunciate a vowels sound). Thai much more restrictive in this and quite possibly that's why they delineate their vowels as either long สระยาว or short สระสั้น. This is very confusing for English speakers to wrap their heads around early on when learning Thai seeing as in English long and short vowels make totally different sounds. It takes a little explanation to clue foreigners into the fact that in Thai it relates ONLY to the duration or time you can use to make the sound and that a pair of long and short vowels in Thai actually make the same sound.

I can't agree with this, and I can't agree with your statement about English. Just one example:

อะ - sounds like 'u' in 'but'.
อา - sounds like 'ar' in 'card'.

This proves too me that English speakers can hear a difference between short and long vowels (but in fact that is not what English speakers refer to when they use these terms) and that short and long Thai vowels sound different, not just in length, to English speakers.

I know there has been discussion in this forum on the precise length of a short vowel, but I don't believe any of it. A short vowel is a vowel that is 'choked off'. That's all. I said only one example, but I can't help mentioning that there is a perceptible difference in tone quality between คน and โคน.