|
 |
1 Year in Thailand: From basic+ to ....? | ||
Tags: Thai | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| DanWorld Groupie Thailand Joined 4899 days ago 40 posts - 50 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Spanish, Russian | Message 1 of 21 25 February 2012 at 12:31pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Well, I'm back with a new journal. You can find my Russian journal that ended prematurely here:
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=27866&PN=1&TPN=1 Goal: I've come to live in Thailand through the end of 2012 and I'd like to really get my Thai down well, hopefully to the point where I can absorb native Thai materials with reasonable efficiency. Life recap: To summarize my life a little bit, I have been living in Thailand on and off for the past 9 years; ever since I graduated college. I run a successful business dealing with goods purchased in Thailand. Last year I studied Russian pretty intensively and got the basics down pretty well, but I was side-tracked by business and stress and had to stop that. I've since put my life in better order and am pretty happy here in Thailand. I still plan on going to Russia to learn Russian, probably in 2013. Prior Thai language experience: Prior to this year, I had a pretty good feel for basic conversational Thai. When I first came to Thailand 9 years ago, I taught myself a few hundred words from books; since then, I have had extensive conversational practice with Thai speakers. I would guess my active vocabulary was only about 500-1000 words, though I have had so much exposure I seemed more fluent than this. I also couldn't read Thai script. Thanks to everyone who reads my journal. *Edit to clarify that I started getting serious with Thai this time around January 1, 2012. I don't want people to be confused since this log was started late February. Edited by DanWorld on 11 April 2012 at 11:17am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| DanWorld Groupie Thailand Joined 4899 days ago 40 posts - 50 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Spanish, Russian | Message 2 of 21 04 March 2012 at 1:21pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Current learning methods: Anki: SRS is just amazing. This is really the secret sauce that is helping me make progress with languages. I mostly use the Iphone App and plug in new words as they come along. I've been doing 30 new words/day, though many of these words I'm already familiar with. Benjawan Poomsan Becker materials: The dictionary app they produce is great, I go to it all the time. They have the best transliteration system I have seen. I had the paper version of this dictionary years ago, and now I use the iPhone app. I'm currently going through Thai for Beginners, which is a great introduction. This is where I learned much of my Thai in the early days, so it's really cool to be going through it this time around with Thai experience under my belt and my Anki brain. I plan to continue with the intermediate and advanced books. I think they will be about 1 month each. General immersion in Thailand: I'm in Thailand, so I get a lot of exposure to Thai. I have Thai friends that I speak only in Thai with on a daily basis. Many taxi drivers are happy to converse. I try to watch TV in Thai. And Thailand puts out decent Thai movies regularly which are fun to watch in the theater; they usually have English subtitles too. Thai tutor I don't have one yet, but I'm likely going to find one. As I study, I build up a list of things I need clarification on. And it becomes basically necessary to pick the brain of a Thai speaker. I do ask questions of my Thai friends, but I don't want to impose on them. Thai class I'm considering taking classes, mostly just as something to do. It will get me in to a new social environment of like-minded people. Though I generally learn things better on my own. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| DanWorld Groupie Thailand Joined 4899 days ago 40 posts - 50 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Spanish, Russian | Message 4 of 21 10 March 2012 at 12:09pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Major milestone: transliteration no longer necessary (about 2 weeks ago, on Feb 20)
I started getting serious approximately January 1, 2012. That's when I started to teach myself the basics of Thai script. Then on January 7, I started my new Thai Anki deck. My deck currently has 1800 cards. I've been aiming for 30 new cards/day and have kept this up most of the time. I have been familiar with approximately 50% of the words I created cards for, though I did not know them in Thai script before. Going forward, most of the words I add will be new as I am running out of words I know already. I would enter the Thai word in Thai script on the front, and enter the definition and transliteration on the back. But recently I hit a major milestone where I felt confident enough in my ability to understand Thai script that I stopped writing the transliterations down. In fact, I am now rather annoyed at all my old cards having the transliteration on them. It's clutter that distracts my brain. I find that words stick better now that I just rely on the Thai spelling. Yes, it's invaluable when learning Thai to learn the script, and to learn earlier rather than later. But it is a significant hurdle to get to a point where you can begin to confidently make out the correct sounds, so I can't blame people for not getting there. Heck, it took me 8 years of speaking Thai before I sat down and did it. It happened somewhere around the 6000 card iterations mark in my Anki deck, which translated to doing flash cards for about 1 hour per day for 6 weeks. That's not as bad as it sounds though since I wasn't doing pure reading drills, but was learning new vocabulary in the process. I am far from a quick reader of Thai script, but it is clicking somewhere at an automatic level now, improving daily, and I no longer need training wheels. I also learned Cyrillic back when I studied Russian, and there is no comparison in the difficulty of the two scripts. I would say it takes about 10 times the effort to learn Thai script. Though at the end of the day, Thai script is a rather logical system that you will master given enough practice. My original goal before coming to Thailand was to be able to read/write Thai. So In a sense, I have already reached that goal and am feeling pretty good. But as mentioned in the first log posting, my goals are different now. *Edit to add this comment to this post: I really was mistaken when I said it was 10 times the effort to learn Thai script compared to Cyrillic. Really, it's much more than that. I'm now on about month 4 of working with Thai script fairly intensively and it's still much harder to process than Cyrillic. Though I can tell it's getting better month by month. Edited by DanWorld on 18 April 2012 at 6:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| DanWorld Groupie Thailand Joined 4899 days ago 40 posts - 50 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Spanish, Russian | Message 5 of 21 16 March 2012 at 12:46pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I finished Thai for Beginners by Benjawan Poomsam Becker
I'm happy to report that I have fully finished this book. It was the main thing I studied when I first came to Thailand 9 years ago, though most of it I barely touched before. This time around, it was largely review; but it was excellent review. I used it in conjunction with the matching Iphone app. The app basically just takes all the text in the book and makes it so you can read/listen to it in a convenient format. From what I can tell, it's the best intro to Thai around, and has been for years. It gives you good vocab, lots of practice, and teaches you reading/writing. I just bought the next book in the series: Thai for Intermediate Learners. I'll start at that pretty soon, but I'm kind of enjoying this milestone and not having the feeling of there being a textbook I have to finish. At this point I feel like I can say that my Thai is at the intermediate level. My vocabulary is in the 2,000 word range, I can converse, read, and write. However, I think the standards for learners of Thai are somewhat lower than for languages closer to English, such as Spanish. For example, one may be able to make out Spanish text with limited Spanish ability just due to the similarities with English and understanding something about latin roots, whereas most people who study Thai are not even able to make out the sounds of Thai script, let alone make sense of it. I used to think my Thai was pretty good, but with my new ability under my belt, I think my Thai was rather poor. And I'm sure I will think the same thing about myself in a few months. And I know I can always get an unpleasant perspective of how little Thai I know by cracking open a Thai dictionary for Thai people. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4676 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes  Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 6 of 21 16 March 2012 at 1:17pm | IP Logged | ||
That's all we can wish for you! Good luck! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| DanWorld Groupie Thailand Joined 4899 days ago 40 posts - 50 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Spanish, Russian | Message 7 of 21 18 March 2012 at 2:52pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Anki at 2,000 Cards
Anki is still the backbone of my progress. However, my use has evolved considerably over these 3 months. In the beginning, I was mainly focusing on learning to read Thai. Most of the words I added were words I was already familiar with, and I included the Romanization/transliteration on the back. Around the 1400 card mark, I was done with transliteration. I could now confidently read the Thai script without cluttering up my head with the transliterations. So I would enter the Thai script on the front, and English translation on the back with no transliteration. Now, I am switching things up again by putting the English on the front, and the Thai word on the back. Why? I am afraid that many words are not sticking on a level where I can easily recall them in conversation, though I am able to make them out if I come across them in reading. Using Anki for reading practice is no longer the primary goal, and I'm getting reading practice already through my other study activities. Also, I find that I'm able to do my daily Anki card reviews much faster than before as the script is becoming easier and easier to read. And finally, now most of the words I'm learning are brand new, and I want to be sure I can use them. So far, this definitely seems to be a learning improvement. Trickier words are sticking better, and so is the spelling. I'm now pretty much forced to visualize the Thai spelling of each word before I can pass each Anki card, which is quite a step up. I feel more like I am confidently learning words at a level I can use now. Though still, the previous method did a pretty good job too. Some would argue that you should do it this way from the beginning, and that may be a good approach, but I think the the organic way I've got to this point to be most efficient. Some may even say you should force yourself to type out the answer to each card, and I'm sure that really helps the spelling and words stick, but if you are at a low writing ability, that is very inefficient and tedious. It would have taken me forever to do that in the early days, whereas now I can type/write out Thai script fairly quickly; and I gained this writing ability largely from just reading. Edited by DanWorld on 19 March 2012 at 12:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| DanWorld Groupie Thailand Joined 4899 days ago 40 posts - 50 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Spanish, Russian | Message 8 of 21 19 March 2012 at 4:09pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Back to Thai -> English Anki
Ok, that wasn't such a great idea. English -> Thai on all cards is making Anki feel like a chore. It's definitely more fun reading the Thai words and recognizing them. I'm going back to mostly doing Thai -> English, of course, with no transliteration. I think Thai -> English is better. This gives me much better Thai immersion. With English on front, this seems to emphasize the English, and the English word gets imprinted on my brain as I try to think of the Thai translation. With Thai on front, I see the Thai word, and largely visualize the concept on its own, without reference to English, giving me a good organic feel for the Thai word. Flipping over the card to see the English is largely just a quick reward/confirmation that my visualization was correct. Between the two ways, this definitely is better with regards to reading comprehension. And with regards to active vocabulary, I think this way may be better too. I'm doing 30 cards per day, but this doesn't mean every day I can tell you 30 new words; but over a period of, say, 3 months, those 30 words really will mostly be ingrained in to my brain, including for conversational output. Another option is to make two of each card, one for Thai - English, other for English - Thai. But this adds to the tedium of the process. And it reinforces the English. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
