Thursday, April 1, 2010

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.

11 comments:

  1. Hi Josh, thanks for putting together this list of Thai TV shows, that's awesome. I'll check them out over the next couple of days or weeks. There's one other comic series for children that I know of: Little Leader Geo or แก้วจอมแก่น; check it out if you don't want to add it to your list. And of course fukduk.tv...

    I'll probably post a link to your list in one of my next posts, if that's ok. Nice blog, by the way! Given that you're already advanced in Thai, you have access to different information, and I can certainly benefit from that :)

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  2. Hi Josh, I've just posted a link to your blog and your list. Actually, I've started a resources page myself. I'd been thinking about it for some time, but your list inspired me to start with it right now. I hope you don't see this as an attempt to 'steal your ideas'... if I end up having just a copy of your list, I'll take it down again. Or, maybe we could make it a joint project? I'm not sure how that would technically work, though.

    With regards to ratings: from an ALG perspective, you probably could base your rating on "How much of what's going on do you understand if you switch off the sound?"

    Looking forward to reading more from you!

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  3. I've changed my mind :) Your list is great and there's no need to duplicate it. I'll rather post a static link to it, so maybe include a link back to your blog from the google document.

    Maybe you can include fukduk.tv in your list. There's also a dubbed Thai version of TinTin on youtube, that might fit the requirements of your list as well.

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  4. haha oh man, I wrote my last comment in kind of a hurry, so sorry for the bad typos in it.

    But um, yeah! I agree with you. It might be sort of silly to have two lists with competing information but it would be really easy to add you as an editor of the list if you want to. I think it would be pretty cool. I added a link back to my page already and I wouldn't mind if you added a link to yours. We could also change up the top description thingy and also decide on some format that each entry in the list should follow. but yeah, let me know if you want to, I think all I would need is your email address.

    also I added fukduk.tv it listed at #12 and ill get some other stuff on there as soon as I can. One problem that I have run into is that it is hard to get a nice list of each episode of a certain show because they are all scattered around youtube. It's hard to decide if it is sufficient enough to post a single episode and then let the user find the other from links on youtube or if each episode should be listed. Ideally I would just like to have the name of a certain show and then a sub list of each episode with not many links involved. then I could just avoid posting a bunch of youtube links and just let the user search for the specific episode on any website. Maybe I'm over thinking it though... what do you think? talk to you later man.

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  5. It think it's easier if you're the only editor. I'll let you know of anything of interest that I come across, and other people in the blogosphere will hopefully do the same. You're in a much better position to put such a list together, and you deserve the credit!! There's no need to link back my blog, but make sure you link back yours, because I've put up a static link to the document itself.

    By the way, I've alerted Catherine at http://womenlearnthai.com/ of your list, and she's promised to put it up as a link, too.

    I guess it's sufficient to post the Thai name of the series and the link to one or a few episodes. Once you've found one clip on youtube, it's easy to find the rest. But for you it's quite cumbersome to check everything out and link it correctly (and maintain it later).

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  6. When I load the document, it lists only bullets 1-9. I've refreshed the link (http://docs.google.com/View?id=dfddjr7q_7hgxxc8cx), so that shouldn't be the problem. Are you sure you've re-published it after the changes you made?

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  7. ack! sorry yeah I didn't re-publish it. it should work now, let me know if it doesn't though hehe. thanks for the heads up. but alright cool, i'll just keep adding stuff when I can and if you have any suggestions let me know. also i wouldn't care at all if you made a list of your own :) thats pretty cool that womenlearnthai.com is going to put up the link too! thanks man! I just saw the crazy list a Thai resources she put up up over there and I was like "holy cow!" haha pretty cool anyways, talk to you later man.

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  8. You raise an interesting point with your question whether you're doomed to be never fluent in Thai after 4 years of traditional study. David has made some encouraging comments in the exchange you linked in, and it's certainly true that input helps regardless of what's happened before.

    My own experience with English and other languages is that it's quite possible to reach a decent level of fluency, but very difficult to undo unnatural speech patterns. In English, for instance, I still access a lot of things via German translation or English grammar rules instead of naturally, even though I've been using English as my daily language for many years now. These are often basics like the correct use of 'for' and 'since' or the use of the past tense versus the present perfect.

    How did you study Thai so far? And how does it feel when you speak?

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  9. I think you are right in saying that it's very difficult to undo unnatural speech patterns; it will be interesting to see how much of the "damage" I undo by only learning with natural input. I have a few friends who speak English so fluently that I can tell it is their second language only because of the small accent (which sounds cool anyways) that they still have. I know that they have done a lot of traditional studying as well, so I would be quite happy if I could speak Thai as well as they can speak English. That said, I don't want to limit myself, so I'll just try to go as far as I can.

    I remember in my first year of college I took Phycology 101 where we learned that after a certain age, a person couldn't learn a second language as well as a child. It made me kind of angry that scientists could just generalize the human brain and set limits on everyone's abilities. I didn't want to believe it. Then, I found out about ALG and was like "Hell yeah! maybe there is a chance." But with ALG they say that traditional study can hurt you, which is definitely true, but I don't want to end up thinking "well, I have studied Thai in school for -this long- so if I start learning with input now, I will only be able to speak Thai -this well-". I don't think anyone has actually set limits like this, but I think it is a thought that people can get that might hurt their language learning even more. Anyways, I'll see how it goes; it's a new experience for me because so far I can only speak one language fluently.

    But ummm yeah, I started learning Thai when I was an exchange student at Thammasat University for a year. We had around 3 hours of Thai class every week and I like to think that I studied pretty hard out side of class. I always kept this little note book with me that is now totally jam-packed with sentences and vocab words written in tiny font. It helped me out a lot because I could just study and review when I was stuck in a traffic jam or something. But even though I was studying hard I think I did get a pretty good amount of input since I was lucky enough to study Thai in Thailand. I remember I tried to listen to random people on the bus and stuff a lot too. Then when I was back going to school in the US I didn't have much time to study Thai so I would just look up a word here or there and I would talk to some friends in Thailand on the phone every once in a while.

    I visited Thailand twice after that, and I seemed to be better than I was before, but I was definitely not fluent. Right now I can speak ok and don't really have to think when I say some sentences. But sometimes I'll start saying something and then I just have to stop because I have no idea how to finish the sentence. It's also hard for me to speak for a long time in Thai. Especially if I'm trying to tell a story or talk about some event in the past I can't do it well at all. Hopefully after watching TV shows it will slowly get better though. dang, that was long! sorry dude! Anyways, what has your experience with learning Thai been like?

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  10. Wow, that's a long answer! :) Cool to be able to study a year in Thailand. You must have had a great time!

    I guess you're right that one shouldn't limit oneself by assuming this or that being impossible or irreversible or whatever. And, even if it's true and you'll never be mistaken for a native Thai, you've gained access to Thai culture. You'll continue to have many cool and exciting experiences, and this alone will enrich your life immensely.

    I'm just a beginner, I started a year ago. In the first 4 months, I worked through a course book. Then I discovered natural learning theories and played around with podcasts, a folly in itself. In November, I spent 50 hours in Bangkok at AUA to check out their approach. It's only recently that I switched over to watching TV, but now I'm completely bought in to ALG. And what gives me hope (from the ALG viewpoint, that is) is that I've never ever spoken, neither to people nor to myself :)

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  11. whoa nice! since you have become fluent in more that one language, it should be really interesting to see how well your Thai compares to your other second language(s).

    Thats pretty cool that you were able to take some classes at AUA too. I read the article you posted about studying there and it seems like you had a pretty good experience. I'll be going back to Thailand later this month and if I have time, I really hope I can stop in for at least few classes. hmmm yeah, well good luck man, and happy Easter!

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