Sweet music: Something About Us

This is probably my most favorite Daft Punk song of all. It's from the album Discovery.

It helps me sleep at night to naively believe that everyone in the world likes Daft Punk; I just don't know how anyone could not like them. For the next presidential election, I'll will probably be voting Daft Punk for president.

Changing The Way You/I Study Thai

After the past 4 years of studying Thai the traditional way (books, spelling tests, general memorization), I am ok at reading and writing in Thai. However, according to the ideal way to study a second language using the 'TV method' (or another input-based method like ALG) the learner should have virtually no prior experience with the second language. Moreover, the learner should not even attempt to speak the second language until they have over 300 (at least) hours of watching TV (input). And even moreover, the learner should not even begin reading/writing the language until they are pretty fluent! These are the exact steps a child takes when learning a second language:

listen/observe => understand => speak => read => write => awesome.

People in favor of such input-based methods claim that traditional language learning is not only inefficient, but also creates irreversible problems in ones ability to acquire the second language well enough to be totally fluent. One of my biggest goals right now is to become fluent in Thai, but since I have been studying Thai the "wrong way" for so long, am I totally screwed!? Is it too late for me to change the way I am learning Thai?

I asked these same questions to David Long at The AUA Thai Blog and he assured me that "It’s never too late to build your ability with input." along with some other good advice. Though satisfied, I was still not completely convinced that I wasn't doomed to never be fluent in Thai. After some searching around on the internet, I found hope when I came across some good blog posts at a blog called Spanish Only where an advanced learner of Spanish has just recently switched from traditional studies to the TV method. In these four posts (0, 1, 2, 3) he explains his positive experience with switching to the TV method even after traditionally studying Spanish for so long. In the future I'll post more stories of people who have had good results from watching TV but for now, I'll leave you a link to the updated List of Thai TV shows. I added #10 thru #12 this time and there is for sure more to come. see ya.