Learning Thai in a attempt to put my language learning in perspective (and because it is fun). Learning Thai from home in UK for now mostly via the Internet. For some insight into why I blog in general read this.
There may be a lot of heated discussion about the best way to learn a language, but ultimately if you have a way to test the progress of your learning then anything that progresses you at a satisfactory speed is a valid learning method. You can decide what your goals are and use testing to ensure that you are on target. This applies to any kind of learning, the key thing is that the testing has to be valid, it has to be relevant. If the methods used to test your progress are not relevant then you may not have idea what progress (if any you are making).
This is somewhat fuzzy, words like satisfactory are imprecise, if however you are a self-learner than you are perfectly justified to define them for yourself (I would suggest that if are not a self-learner then it is equally import to define them for yourself and see how they map to the course you are on/following) many people are happy to entrust the whole thing to somebody else.
There are a lot of negative posts these days (ironically often in places where negativity is supposed to be bad, and everything is supposed to be fluffy and easy.....) telling you that you must do this, or you can't do that, or you are anti-social, self-deluded, an apologist, moronic, cretinous, for believing in/using method X. Some will even "feel sorry for you"(WTF!), but the purpose of this post is just to highlight one key difference between you learning as a child and as an adult. As an adult you are responsible for determining the effectiveness of your learning, most people can't afford in invest time and money into something that is not working.
keep it real for testing
Whether your learning method is based mostly on "real world" language or not your testing method should be. The best way to test your progress is against real use of the language. listening to real content, reading real content, talking with real people. Grammar tests, tests against numbers of flashcards learned, classroom tests, the number of audio lessons completed, all indicate some kind of progress, but don't guarantee the correct progress.
Testing against real world material requires some discipline, the material you use for listening comprehension, reading comprehension, the people you speak to have to vary and have to represent varying levels of difficulty, when you may be able to understand a childrens story you might only still get a few words from a news report.
Summary
I have been testing my learning against real world application for a long time now, not just for language learning. Hopefully as time goes by I will get better and better at language learning by constantly testing my progress and adapting my methods. When I learn anything I can go down false trails or do something that doesn't actually help, everyone does. There is no reason however why anybody should be able say "I tried method X for two years and made little progress".
Youtube is a great place to pick up some basic vocabulary in many languages. This is not the best example of these particular lessons (they are pretty good ;)) but it is at least seasonal.
Introduction
I don't feel I wrote a single good summary of how I would start to learn a language so here it is.... I am not a polyglot yet, and I have higher personal standards for fluency than many, but this kind of approach works for me, I am currently successfully applying it to Japanese.
Start by listening
If the sounds of the language are unfamiliar then listen to it, listen attentively and listen whilst doing other things, get a feel for how it sounds, get a feel for words, word barriers sentence intonation etc. You can listen to radio, watch TV, news, drama, comedy, people what ever you can get your hands on. You should feel the language get more familiar. At the same time you can watch the style of the native speakers, how they move, how they express themselves, also pay attention to how they speak your language, if they have an accent this gives you clues about the sounds in their language.
A good test is to determine how well you can distinguish the language from others (especially languages that are similar). If you are learning German, you should be able to easily distinguish it from Dutch or Norwegian or Afrikaans. learning Spanish then distinguish Portuguese, learning Japanese then distinguish Korean.
You may find it hard to listen to something you don't understand, I never have had a problem so long as I can feel the progress. You can listen for word-boundaries, mood, names, conjugates at some point the stream of random sound becomes a stream of words that you don't understand. It sounds trivial but the difference is huge.
You may have done most of this stage already if you have been exposed to the language before and you can continue this process whilst doing other things. You have probably done enough when you can say "right that is the language, now what the hell does it all mean". You are going to be speaking in the style of a new language, for most activities if you are going to do something "in the style of" you would expect to have some experience of what that style is. Play music in the style of, dance in the style of, paint in the style of ......
Pick up some basic vocabulary
A few hundred high exposure words and simple phrases, this is not a significant feat of memory in yours or anyone else's life, if you get stuck in you will learn them.
There is much debate about how to pick up vocabulary, in the early stages though I really don't think it matters. Children learn the basic vocabulary for their own language by massive exposure, you can do the same. Find whatever lessons, videos, podcasts you can online that are teaching basic vocabulary in the language you are learning and get exposed. The words will stick with enough exposure. These very high frequency words don't need tests, flash cards, SRS, lists or similar. If you are being tested on or testing yourself for example on simple words like "yes" or "no" or "thank you", then stop. Just get a bit more exposure and you will just know them. Save the arguments for how you are going to learn vocabulary later on, even guys that have a "bad memory" still seem to manage to remember all the names of the players in a bunch of football teams or similar, so at this level of memory exposure is all that is required, no special tricks or techniques needed.
Youtube is a great place to pick up basic vocabulary, many languages have countless little lessons teaching language, some free offerings from commercial organizations and some from members of the public. Quality doesn't matter too much, get as much variety as you can and it will all even out. Free introductory lessons to learning podcasts, free cut-down versions of learning software, all may give you audio you can practice.
People are obviously a good source of vocabulary, friends, family, associates, people around you, anyone who can speak the language. If you are in a foreign country then you are surrounded by sounds that will help you, don't ignore them. If not in a foreign country then rejoice at all the technology available to you that will help.
Play
If you watch small children learning a language you will see them play, babbling, making their toys have pretend conversations etc.. When playing they don't stress about whether it makes sense. Sometimes they may have to talk to a big scary adult they don't know and then you can see the stakes raised, suddenly they are more careful, perhaps more nervous. Have fun with the language, pick up a few words and start mashing them together in ways you think they may work, play in your head or with a trusted friend, or in safe environment (where your ridiculous accidents will spark humour rather than a fight).
Think about when you will talk
Start to think about how you will talk the language and to who. Maybe that bit is easy at first, perhaps there are friends, colleagues people there already, so armed with the style of the language and some basic vocabulary start practising. If not then just start to work out where you will find the opportunities when you will need it. When the speech is bursting to come out you want to have planned an outlet.
Summary
Get yourself used to the sounds of language and when you speak your pronunciation will be OK at least. It doesn't take long to get used to a language, if you really don't like the sound of it then you are going to struggle learning it anyway (you can get to like it but not if you resist it).
Don't stress about the initial basic vocabulary that gets you started, that bit is easy. It is high exposure, you will learn it. If it takes you twice as long or twice as fast then over the course of learning the language it is not a big deal. Keep getting exposed, pay at least some attention and if you have any interest in the language you will learn the basic vocabulary.
Coming up with a title for this little post was difficult, regardless of any arguments about relative hardness some languages are more unusual to learn, some languages stand out more. An English person speaking French or German or Spanish doesn't stand out as much as one learning Arabic, Chinese, Japanese etc. etc. Learning one of the more unusual languages sticks in the memory of people you meet and it is well worth telling them when you have the opportunity.
A long time ago on my Chinese learning blog I posted about telling everybody that you learn Mandarin (warning as usual, hastily written with the odd spelling mistake etc.) I have had enough surprise presents, introductions etc. to be sure that this is good advice.
This works for Thai as well as of course. A recent happy example, I told a Chinese friend I had met a couple of times that I was learning Thai also, when she left Bristol to move elsewhere she couldn't take a lot of videos that she had accumulated, including the videos of a Thai friend who was also leaving etc. To cut a long story short I became the happy recipient of a couple of bags of mostly Thai videos (mainly VCDs). This little archive has resulted in me not renewing my subscription to the excellent DOOTV service.
Apart from lots and lots of films etc. I have 55 hours of Conan cartoon videos, DVDs of Thai stand-up comedians and when I start reading (or learning Korean) a bunch of Korean series subtitled in Thai.
If you are learning something slightly unusual people remember, they pick up things for you from second-hand shops or car boot sales, they divert things to you that are otherwise going to be thrown away and occasionally they arrange introductions to native speakers. It is an advantage of learning this kind of language you may as well use it.
I recently use the word spike to describe the Pimsleur approach whilst commenting on a post at yearlyglot.com. Randy picked up on the term spike as a good term and I realised that although I use this term myself it doesn't seem to be used very much in language learning (as far as I can tell). I am used to hearing the term applied to software development, a definition from here is quite appropriate: A spike is a narrow but deep coding experiment that allows the developers to see how various functions might work and to better estimate both system performance and the difficulty of the coding. The key concepts here are "narrow" and "deep".
The spike
Right from the first time I started learning languages I have seen most learning material as various types of spike. Inevitability learning materials want to give learners a feeling that they are making progress and this often entails build up a conversational exchange and penetrating the language to some depth, without the time to develop related vocabulary, alternative ways of saying things etc. this also inevitably leads to a narrow understanding of single area of the language.
Self learners can also make their own spikes, concentrating on the vocabulary required for a discrete task, a daily chore, a certain interaction with a single person can also involve raising a deep and narrow spike into the language.
Advantages and disadvantages
Spikes generally work better for output, as a speaker you can get away with knowing only one way to say something, even if there is a more eloquent way to say what you want, your spike will give you perfectly acceptable ways to say it. As long as the conversation progresses roughly in the expected direction spikes can give you an opportunity to have a conversation early on and they can introduce elements of the language like grammar that you wouldn't meet at first.
Spikes can rapidly collapse, the more potential variability that is introduced the more chance that the spike will fail you. The biggest problem of course is that there are many ways of saying the same thing, if talking with someone who is helping you learn a language or in a very formulaic situation, then they will probably stick to the scripts but perfect strangers may wander in any direction.
The more spikes you have raised the greater the opportunity to jump from one to the other and the more vocabulary you pick up the broader the base. Eventually everything should hopefully start to join up.
The basic spikes
The most basic spikes that people may acquire first are usually to do with ritualised politeness, food and drink and perhaps interaction with people they may interested in on a romantic level.
A bit of a surprise for me, for a few weeks I haven't been doing much Thai learning. I have still watched a couple of things, the odd Thai word has popped into my head but time spent on task has been relatively small.
I didn't expect that, I assumed that if I am interested in a language (and I am in Thai) then I would do something significant towards learning it every day. The disruptive element is simply learning more than one language. I have had a strong focus on Chinese recently and started learning German, that took up time.
Interestingly, although I haven't been actively studying I don't appear to have forgotten anything. In some areas things seem to have clarified a little. I have started listening and watching Thai again and it seems fresher and easier to pick up new things.
Perhaps I should schedule a similar break every now and again if it does not occur naturally. At some point soon I will also explain how I know that I haven't forgotten things, particualary as I don't have vocabularly lists or SRS cards etc. to test myself.
A quick post about a sometimes forgotten reservoir of language practice material (well someone I was speaking to at work hadn't thought of it). I don't collect a lot of films, but sometime I buy them, particularly as these days sometimes buying a DVD is about the same price as renting it. When learning a language you may find that you have immediate access to a number of films with soundtracks and sub-titles in that language. Perhaps if not directly, then via borrowing films (I have a friend who literally has stacks of DVDs taller than me laying around.
Even if you don't like dubbed sound you may have watched a number of films in the past that were dubbed in your mother tongue, so now you can watch them as they were intended :).
I admit this has not helped me hugely for Thai, although I did have the Eye trilogy which I originally purchased because I like that type of film and because the soundtracks have some Mandarin (also have lots of Thai). The real reminder for this came from starting German and I came across a number of films with German soundtracks.
Will this help much? Well bizarrely there are those that don't seem to rate listening activities as much use, I find them incredibly useful. Besides if you are just replacing watching a film in your mother tongue with one (or the same one) in your target language what can go wrong (no you won't go blind or lose the power of speech :0). Another advantage with tapping the reservoir is that you may try and enjoy some films that you never thought you would (perhaps one you borrow from a family member).
I am back on track (more about that in a later post). The first language I tried to learn was Mandarin Chinese, Mandarin has a huge advantage over Thai (for the remote learner) in that as I pointed out here: there are a lot of Chinese speakers. It is relatively easy to find them, relatively easy to get access to the language either actively or just to listen to how it is used in real life situations.
Ideally I would like to be able to wander around somewhere like here, listen observe, start getting involved:
There would seem to be a huge advantage to learning a language in the place that it is naturally spoken. Not long ago I was at an English market that had a stall selling home made Asian/Indian foods (run by an English lady). It was a very popular store, I had to queue, at the front of the queue were what appeared to be an older Thai lady and her daughter, the daughter acting as interpreter and dealing with the things the elder lady wanted. I wasn't close enough to hear much but at one point the elder lady inhaled deeply and clearly said "hom" and indeed the food did smell wonderful. Imagine if the whole market was full of this, สนุกดีใช่ไหม?
A while ago I was working with a contractor who had developed a passion for Thailand, he started learning Thai in the early 1970's, at one point he traveled to London just to get hold of some recordings of Thai speech, until that point he had never heard Thai, everything he knew was in books (not very helpful books at that), how things have changed, I guess I shouldn't complain.
Recently Benny posted on the results of his C2 Exam in German, in the post Benny questions the usefulness of passive listening, anybody who had the time to read all the posts on this biog from the beginning (and I really don't blame you if you don't ;)) would know that I rate passive listening very highly as a language learning tool. I would like to think that anybody who understands Thai can see me gaining from it. This is a long post but it could be so much longer, I will be posting much more on listening but for now I will try to keep this focused(ish).
Input and "listening" well is as complicated as speaking well and if you want to master a language the scope of what you need to be able to understand by listening is far wider than what you need to be able to produce, listening requires thought and in some cases the learning of new skills. If you wanted to become a good tennis player you would get fit, not too much to ask a language learner to expand their listening skills, it is after all expected of musicians.
Immersion is the earliest form of language learning and can obviously be very successful, for many people throughout history it has been the only way to learn a language, immerse or don't learn, black and white. If I had a choice I would much prefer to have bags of cash (no need to work), bags of time and immerse myself in a country (hey who wouldn't ;)), hardly anyone can indulge themselves to that extent. What has changed? Printing presses, sound recording, the Internet, increased international mobility bring language to you, and technology makes it more and more convenient. I think many of the Victorian language pioneers, the Jesuit priests that learned Chinese etc. would have been delighted to "prepare" and practice with many of the materials and technologies we have available now, I know I am :)
What is Passive Listening?
Here is the usual problem: definition, what Benny describes as passive listening is wavering all over the place ranging into situations where I can easily actively listen to listening in your sleep (yeah I don't see how that is supposed to work either), We could argue about definitions for ages, but passive does not have to mean completely inactive, we have passive resistance, passive aggressive etc. as examples.
Benny appears to think that when you listen yo give it 100% attention? Some languages the speakers regularly speak over each other, you may be in a noisy environment, in a group, you NEED to learn to understand language by giving it part of your attention.
The word passive can have negative vibes but I always prefer to be positive(irony). For the purposes of this exercise I will use one example that Benny gives "listening to language whilst washing the dishes" (apparently Benny gets nothing from this) you could substitute any other reasonably simple task. It is easy to do. with on-line radio, Ipods, audio books, or a cheap mp3 player from the supermarket etc. You can choose from news, podcast conversations, radio chat shows and mix and match depending on your needs.
Passive listening is often listening in dead-time (unless you really look forward to washing the dishes). The more attention the activity requires the less attention you can pay to the audio (duh) but you can increase your ability to concentrate and learn mental techniques to improve what you get out of it even further. Benny appears to have thought he could get something out of passive listening whilst simultaneously studying grammar? and apparently meets lot of learners with similar ideas, all I can say is WOW.
Can I do it?
Can you walk and chew gum at the same time? Yes, well then you can do it, the only thing stopping you is imagination and a little application. Gum chewing doesn't require thought though the sceptic smugly declares. Okaaay then imagine you are in your kitchen washing those complicated, thought provoking dishes, imagine that someone else is there with you doing something else, can you hold a conversation with them? Could you hold a conversation with them in a language you are learning? (if not you are a beginner but don't worry you can still gain from passive listening). Still with me? then having that conversation can you learn anything from it or are you too occupied with the dish washing job to think at all.
Maybe you use this dead time for something else? Benny uses his for SRS but I presume that is a different type of dead time or he has a waterproof iphone. Maybe you use this time for just "not thinking time" that is fine it is just language learning not life and death but can you see the spare processing capability is there? Some people have trouble concentrating, you can improve that just by practice, I have found the ability to concentrate very useful in language learning, I picked it up elsewhere though. Do you think the ability to concentrate and focus is useful when learning?
In the beginning
I am not going to stress this too much because even Benny is prepared to concede(he has posted his war post) that listening will get you used to the sounds of the language early on, I think it goes a bit further than Benny describes though.
You can get the same benefit later on in your studies though, find it hard to understand old people, southern dialect, regional accents, kids talking etc. then a batch of listening later on get your filters for the target language improved.
In the middle
I haven't got anywhere near the middle in Thai yet but a few middle type things have happened already. I hear a phrase that isn't quiet like anything I have heard before that teaches me something new. Simple recent example I pointed out before, len footbun hai sanook (play football for fun) when the opportunity arises I will try pom rian pasa thai hai sanook (I study Thai for fun) usually my guesses are correct but if not I will learn.
Really useful at this point is to be able to replay back in your mind a number of seconds prior to the word(s) that caught your attention (even if you though you weren't listening), if you are a musician or similar you can probably do this if not you can learn to do it.
Later on
Some thoughtless person recently commented that they didn't see the point in acquiring passive vocabulary I can't remember the context but that requires an amazing lack of thought. Various levels of listening build my passive vocabulary. I have not grown up in the language I am learning much of what I want to learn I cannot get from a direct conversation but that does not mean I don't want to learn the words, I need to be able to understand them, perhaps use them in a joke or story. It is hard to find the right context to learn these words in conversation (some) swear words, aggressive words, the language of love (I am happily married thank you), street gang slang, youth culture etc. In real conversation I have better things to do than contrive situations to learn passive vocabulary, I would much rather learn this from listening (not from a book for sure).
Winding up
I suspect that Benny would respond that most of my examples are active listening, if that is the case he should be clearer about what he is talking about.
Seriously I can easily identify a couple of hours a day and I know that I get a steady stream of benefit from this kind of listening and short of kidnapping a Thai or Chinese person and chaining them to my sink or in my car I can't replace that with conversation.
The video above nicely illustrates the point I trying to make in this post, although from a program for small children it is quite funny.
So far songs don't seem to help me learn languages, nor do poems. I have found stories and jokes far more useful for learning Chinese so far and expect to find the same for learning Thai. I have been listening to and recording some Thai radio and over the last few days and have listened to quite a lot of songs, although I can identify a fair few words, they don't sound the same as in conversation so I can't use them as references for speaking.
One problem with songs is that they often use non-standard language and pronunciation particularly in tonal languages (which is possibly why I don't get on with them for learning). When I listen to English songs they don't usually seem to be very useful references for foreign language learners. Another problem for me at least is that although I can often remember a song quite quickly to the extent of being able to sing it (badly) I don't have ownership of the language to be able to use it elsewhere.
I can understand people enjoying songs and using them for study, maybe it is just I pick the wrong ones? In Chinese I gravitated towards punk and rock music and quite liked Shanghai rap (being in Shanghainese not much use for learning Mandarin). Possibly some kinds of folk songs make better learning material.
How can just listening teach you anything?, actually I am a little impatient I help the process on by combining real Thai with lessons in my mother tongue, I don't get out a pen and paper or practice, or think too much about the lessons. Language is full of numbers so I find them a good hook in during the early stages. Islands of numbers that expand are just like the other islands of words and meaning that expand outwards.
A Thai lesson on numbers above, if you follow the link back to Youtube you can see part two. I have made no systematic effort to learn Thai numbers yet (I haven't sat down with a book or a lesson etc. and any lessons I listen to I am doing something else) but I have both listened to a lot of Thai and a fair number of lessons on numbers. I let the lessons wash over me, I pay attention to Thai when I think numbers are involved and now I am pretty comfortable with Thai numbers. I have to say pretty comfortable with them, I think mostly in Chinese numbers now and will probably stick to that. Both Thai and Chinese numbering systems are simple logical and powerful (Chinese more so because of the Thai et and yi). There will be another post on numbers soon, the language you think in when you think about numbers makes a big difference, there is a real reason why many Asian kids are so much more advanced in maths than Western kids of a similar age and it not because they work harder.
When I was a child (and I suppose still) you could buy those "painting by numbers" kits, you had to fill in numbered sections with selected colours. If it was a complicated one you didn't know what it was going to look like until you had filled in enough of the blanks (especially if someone hid the box from you ;)). Listening to Thai is a bit like the paintings it is blank, there is data and information there but you don't exactly what it represents, every blank you fill brings it closer until finally you get the complete picture.
Early on she says a number, five hundred and fifty three, the first time I watched it I heard fifty three, but then I found out a meaning for that roi sound I like so now I hear five hundred and fifty three. Of course she may be saying a bigger number I have not got that far yet, in fact I have not actually deliberately sat down to learn Thai numbers in any systematic way at all.
Now I know the number IS bigger, I was hearing similar numbers all the time now she is clearly saying "year 2553", I have managed to work out that Thailand measures it's own year aside from the international year. This mirrors the way other words are growing into phrases.
One example from many: I hear "len footbun hai sannook" In a Thai radio broadcast. I guess this means something like "play football for fun", I don't know for sure that hai can be used quite like this, if I am wrong I will find out at some point.
This is how it works. The phrases will get longer, turn into sentences etc. It will depend on material and time.
I can both understand and sympathize with the principles of the ALG method I have problems though. I am not going to be able to devote a large amount of time to video, but I can find time to listen, I am not in Thailand, I do not have Thai relatives so my opportunities for experience are limited. I have aggressive plans for learning languages and a scary big number on my last birthday card. I need help.
Observations
A women has been kidnapped in a Thai drama series, in the car that is carrying her away she cries out choi doi, choi doi. Whilst watching one of the excellent ALG videos, the teachers are discussing swimming wai nam, and the female teacher can only swim a little nid noi, she mimes swimming badly whilst shouting choi doi, choi doi.
Right then I don't know if choi doi means "help me" or "save me" actually it just means whatever choi doi means in the situations it is used. Later I hear a phrase float out the mostly meaningless Thai of something I am listening to kun choi pom dai mai? it seem to me that this means something like "can you help me". Maybe I have misheard, I check a dictionary and a phrasebook (Ipod phrase book with English search). The phrase book has choi doi for help. Forget the transliterations I am only approximating the sounds I don't want to get too good at transliterations. So now I know that choi doi has been translated to "help" in English and is seem that choi is detachable. I don't assume that it has the same characteristics as help in English and I don't make a strong connection to the English word.
Next I come accross Choi being used for "please" it seem this word does range beyond the English meanings for sure.
I need help
Some words and phrases come from listening, some from video, some from lessons (internet freebies) a few with the aid of a dictionary or sub-titles. Like a small child that watches TV with help from an adult to explain what is going on I am attempting to boost my impaired learning environment.
I have heard a lot about the ALG method in the past with regards to language learning and having read a lot about it and with it's basis originally in Thai I was keen to find out more.
The TV method is derived from ALG method principles although many people who have reported some success with it already have some knowledge of the language they are studying. There seems to be plenty of material available in Thai that would allow somebody to follow this approach.
I find it very easy to agree with the principles of ALG however I am not in a position to adopt all of them, I will certainly be watching a fair amount of video also but if the TV method doesn't include subtitles etc. them often I won't be following the TV method (this is a question of time).
How it relates to me
Great news, there are a bunch of videos of ALG classes on Youtube, I have embedded the first part of a level one class below.
The video lessons are amazing, to the extent that I have virtually stopped watching other Thai videos until I have got what I can out of these ALG videos. I am sure I would enjoy living in Thailand and learning from these lessons. Despite this there are some things I have to do differently. A major difference for example is simply that I will talk earlier than it seems ALG would recommend. I will need to talk Thai to get Thai experiences, Thai experiences will help me learn Thai. As a time poor family guy with no Thai connections, speaking Thai will be my best source Thai experience (there is a kind of catch 22 there). Whilst I can see the attraction of the ALG method, I personally don't have have classes I can walk into and follow the course, I don't currently wish to invest money in my new hobby and having had a family relatively young I am looking forward to the freedom of many years of potential travel coming up in the not too distant future (just not right now). So all things considered although I may borrow from ALG I cannot follow it.
The reason for not following a pure TV method is one of time. ALG suggests an important milestone occurs around 800 hours of lessons. Even the videos of their lessons are much more effective in teaching me Thai than normal video, if I say three times more effective then that means I would have to watch 2400 hours of regular video to hit that milestone. I would find it hard to find time to watch one hour of video per day, do the math. I am 40 something, my kids are growing up rapidly soon they will no longer need their parents on a day to day basis, I want to start travelling and using the languages I am learning well before I am 50.
Note 01/06/2010: As Bakunin has pointed out some types of Video can make good substitutes for ALG type input. dootv.tv is a good source.
