Home » Bangkok

Fifth Time's the Charm: Union Thai Language School

Posted by Stuart at 11:26 AM on June 17, 2006

I have to say that my day-to-day life has changed a lot this week. So far this year has been full of travel and a strange twillight-zone feeling where every day is the same for me. Monday is not that much different from Wednesday or even Saturday. But now, on this Saturday, I am very glad for the break that the weekend provides.

What's the change? I started attending a Thai Language school which has classes from 8 AM to Noon every day Monday-Friday. I've also re-joined the gym I used to belong to, because it is near the school and now I have no excuse not to exercise every day after class. That leaves the afternoon for my "real" job and not much time for anything else!

But I think that with the 20 hours of Thai Lessons a week, I will finally start to make real progress on learning to understand and speak Thai. This is my 5th attempt to learn the language, and I think that this will be the one that sticks.

Here are the five methods I have tried and what happened with each:

1. Learning by myself: This has worked out somewhat well. I can read and write about 300 words, but my listening and speaking skills are still very basic. Hopefully though, my small vocabulary will give me a good base to build on.

2. One-on-one lessons with my friend Ekk: This worked out OK too. Ekk definitely gave me a good idea of what those first 300 words should be. But when you are starting out learning a language you have to have a lot of repetition of very basic, uninteresting sentences. Both Ekk's and my patience for saying sentences like pom chuu stuart. bpen kon american ("My name is Stuart. I am American") over and over again quickly wore thin.

3. Thai classes at AUA. As I wrote on this site before, the learning method at AUA is to listen ONLY. No speaking is allowed. Students pay about 30 baht per hour to listen to two people speak Thai. The idea is that all humans learn language as babies by just listening first. Unfortunately my adult mind either was unable to learn this way, or perhaps I was just too impatient.

4. Thai classes at Pro Language. This was an OK solution as well. In fact, I am still enrolled in a Beginning Level class. The class meets two nights a week for almost two hours each time. The approach of this class seems to be to teach as many vocab words as possible, but to be very lax on actual pronunciation. So, almost no time was spent on Thai sounds (some of which are very different from English) and no time on tones (which of course are notoriously difficult). But even though everyone in my class is learning a monotone version of the language, it's still a good place to start if you only have a few hours at night to spend.

   And so now that brings me to:

5. Union Language School. I started at Union last Wednesday. We are spending the first four days (that's 16 hours) doing only sounds and tones. We haven't learned a single new word. Imagine spending four hours a day saying "wa we wu wo wai... wam wem wum wom waim... wang weng wung wong waing..." But I have a feeling that when we do start learning actual words next week, we will all be able to pronounce them correctly.
   

So, that's my new life: 24 hours of Thai language every week. Gym every afternoon. My actual job every evening. (I still have to make some money, you know.) Sleep like a baby every night.

And so far, I'm loving it.