AUA uses a student's cumulative number of classroom hours as a guideline for expected level of acquisition. Every 200 classroom hours or so, most native English speakers are ready to advance to a new level of Thai. Classroom time at AUA is primarily spent actively listening to native speakers.

Inspired by AUA, I started keeping track of how many hours I listen to Thai. I took 32 hours of AUA classes in April. Since then, I've listened to 80 hours of other content, so I'm currently averaging around 27 hours a month, for a total of 112 hours.

I only count quality time. Mp3s count, but only if I'm paying attention. Movies count, but only if I watch without subtitles or significant distraction. Thai radio playing in the background does not count. Little snippets here and there don't count. In other words, my total is a conservative measure of high-quality input since April, but it's not anywhere close to the number of hours I've actually been exposed to Thai.

For the last three months, I've blogged mainly about my ongoing epiphany that people can acquire languages naturally through input. Now I think it might be interesting to reflect on changes as I listen more and more, using this cumulative total as a measure.