Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Debating the Bear

What are the best Thai language sources for international news?

Kikiat has a great page linking to newspaper websites from Thailand. I've been reading the international news at Naew Na (แนวหน้า), dictionary in hand, and I'm finally at the point where I can make sense out of many articles. This is a big improvement over a year ago, when I could barely read Thai at all.

News about the U.S. is by far the easiest to understand, because I'm often already familiar with the situations and events. News about Thailand and Southeast Asia is very difficult, since there's a presumed knowledge of people, places, and political parties that are less prevalent in the American media. I look forward to the day that I can easily follow news about Thailand, especially since Thai politics are so interesting at this point in history.

Today, Naew Na has a headline about George Bush "arguing with the bear" in advance of the G-8 summit. My wife had to explain that the bear refers to Russia. In hindsite, the meaning is obvious; even the U.S. media used to represent the Soviet Union by a bear. The symbol is less common in the U.S. media since the end of the Cold War, and it would be unusual for it to appear in a U.S. headline.

I wonder whether the U.S. media uses similar idioms in their headlines, but I don't notice, since I understand the meaning.

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Wednesday, May 09, 2007

SpokenThai.Com

The site spokenthai.com has free Thai audio and video with transcripts.

Wow. Very nice.

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Sunday, May 06, 2007

Compliments

This is quite an interesting thought from Stuart Jay Raj, a polyglot who has appeared on Thai television demonstrating his remarkable abilities.


My grandfather used to tell me “When you’re learning a language, you want to try your best to avoid having speakers of that language complimenting you. If people are complimenting you on how well you’re speaking ‘their’ language, it means that you still haven’t arrived”. That’s not to say that you want them insulting you! What he meant was that, if you’re speaking a language proficiently enough to a native speaker, the thought of complimenting you won’t even cross their mind.


This is somewhat unintuitive, but it makes a lot of sense to me.

I do think that there are exceptions. For example, I love to talk about language study and acquisition. At such times, I often compliment people who speak English as a second language with native or near-native proficiency and accent.

Mr. Raj alludes to another mitigating situation in the same post. In some cases, a speaker's physical features may make it unlikely that they are a native speaker. Obviously, this does not apply to ESL students, since native English speakers have all sorts of features. However, I would suspect that a farang speaking Thai with native proficiency could still expect curiosity and a few compliments.

In any case, I think this is great food for thought.

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I'm removing a few posts that are no longer interesting to me. You can reach the homepage here.

Thanks for your interest!

Saturday, May 05, 2007

ALG Principles

I recently noticed this summary of the Automatic Language Growth (ALG) philosophy on the ALG website.


ALG Principles

1. Our point of reference is the native speaker, not other students.

2. Children are the best examples of how to learn another language.

3. The adult ability to translate, memorize, and practice can never produce as good results as naturally learning a language. Trying only makes things worse.

4. Practice cannot help, and in fact it damages one's ability to learn naturally.

5. The ability to speak comes from one's ability to understand. Therefore, understanding is what must be sought after, not practice speaking.

6. Understandable and interesting experiences are the key to learning another language.


I try to follow this approach in my own study. I do sometimes compromise to compensate for the lack of a teacher, for example, by looking up translations. But I dedicate most of my study time to comprehensible input. Once I have a certain level of comprehension, I minimize translation and memorization and try to understand directly. I've been pleasantly surprised by how well it works.

It's interesting that, although these principles are supported by research, they are not taken into account by most language programs. I wonder whether part of the inertia has to do with the practice of assigning grades based on homework and exams, which is difficult to reconcile with a natural approach.

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Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Post Removed

Update 7.23.2010: I'm removing a few posts that are no longer interesting to me. You can reach the homepage here.

Thanks for your interest!

Sunday, April 29, 2007

Galaxy 25

I think television is a good resource for language study. It combines natural audio input with images that aid comprehension. In the United States, many locations have a Spanish television channel. Here in Seattle, we even have a Chinese language channel. But there is no Thai channel.

My wife and I have talked off and on about buying a satellite receiver for Thai TV. Yesterday, we finally had one installed. Our dish is pointed at the Galaxy 25 satellite, which is apparently in geosynchronous orbit somewhere over Texas. Everything is free now that we have the dish; there's no monthly charge. We get several Thai channels and a Lao channel that sometimes broadcasts in Thai.

I haven't had a chance to watch much yet, but I watched the news last night, and I'm satisfied so far. This will be a good supplement to my listening and vocabulary practice. The time difference may be a bit of an inconvenience, since evening in Seattle is mid-morning in Thailand. But so far, so good.

Even if you don't live in Thailand or have a satellite receiver, you can watch Thai TV for free at the Mog Software website:

http://mister-kwai.com/thai/thai-tv.html

(By the way, if you're familiar with Thai satellite TV, the Galaxy 25 has been called Telstar 5 and Intelsat America's 5 at different times.)

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Saturday, April 28, 2007

Classifier Practice Page

This is a nice page. It's a list of common classifiers. The link labeled "choose a drill and practice these flashcards" navigates to online exercises for practice.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Word List Generation

I wonder whether there is any software that can generate a frequency-ordered word list from a piece of Thai text. That is, I'd like a tool that would let me paste a few pages of text, obtaining a list of words in decreasing order of frequency.

There are a lot of those tools available for English and other languages which use space to delimit words, but a quick web search didn't turn anything up which can be used for Thai.

I would like to use such a tool for vocabulary practice, so that I can study the most frequent words in a transcript first. That seems more efficient than studying unknown words in the order they appear.

I do have a way to obtain a frequency-ordered word list from Thai text, but it involves several different applications and copy-paste operations, so it's not very easy or efficient. I'd like to be able to do it with the press of a button.

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Efficiency

Last week, someone asked me, "How do you find time to study Thai?" I had never thought about it, but I am a software professional with a demanding job and a family, so it's a reasonable question.

I like to learn about second language acquisition theory. By reading and trying different ideas, I've picked up a few techniques that allow me to progress without a huge time investment. If I spent more time per week, my progress would be faster, but I'm satisfied with my current rate of acquisition.

These are some of the techniques that work for me.

1. Listening practice: Most days, I download the current mp3 from VOA Thai and listen in my car on the way to and from work. This gives me an easy 1/2 hour per day of listening practice.

I sometimes watch Thai DVDs and VCDs at home, and we're planning to get a satellite receiver soon so that we can watch Thai television.

2. Vocabulary: For efficiency, it's hard to beat JMemorize. It's like flash cards on steroids, and it's free. I learned about JMemorize from Edwin, and it has been a great addition to my toolkit.

3. Reading and Writing: For a Thai student at my level, text instant messaging is an excellent way to practice. I joined a few free language exchange sites like Mixxer. Through those sites, I met a number of Thai people who want to trade English and Thai practice, and I text chat with them on Windows Live Messenger or Skype. I learned to type, and my ability to read and write has improved by leaps and bounds.

4. Speaking: I don't practice speaking at all. I've come to the conclusion that it doesn't really help. The best way for me to improve speech is by listening to interesting and understandable material in Thai. I have greatly improved my pronunciation, grammar, and fluency just by listening to and understanding a lot of spoken Thai. Thai people often validate this improvement. Maybe, at some point in the future, I'll change this approach, but intensive listening on its own is really working for now.

Though I don't practice speaking, I do like to voice chat in Thai on Skype from time to time. I talk with my Thai family (by marriage) and with friends I've met through language exchange sites. It's a great way to check my progress, it's fun, and it's a great motivator.



What are your tips and tricks for efficient acquisition?



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Saturday, April 14, 2007

Happy New Year

This weekend is Songkran, the Thai Water Festival and New Year. Thai people get together with family and friends during Songkran, engaging in water fights and other traditions.

I was in Thailand for Songkran last year, so it's been about a year since I studied Thai at AUA. My short time there really changed my understanding of language study.

Here in Seattle, it's a little too cold for a water fight, but Happy New Year anyway!

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Sunday, April 08, 2007

Thai Core Vocabulary

There are a lot of good internet resources for Thai core vocabulary and phrases. The following sites teach months, days of the week, colors, numbers, telling time, and other essential vocabulary. All of them provide both audio clips and Thai script. They also have more advanced lessons.



If you know of another good site for Thai language students, please feel free to leave a link in the comments.

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Update 7.23.2010: I'm removing a few posts that are no longer interesting to me. You can reach the homepage here.

Thanks for your interest!

Sunday, April 01, 2007

Thai Word of the Week: Subject

My Thai word for this week is วิชา, meaning "subject".

Thai2English.com entry for วิชา
VOA sound clip of a sentence using วิชา
Transcript of VOA clip

Note that the transcript can easily be copy-pasted to thai2english.com, obtaining a word-by-word translation.

Other interesting words in this clip are:

ฐานะ, meaning "position"
ภารกิจ, meaning "duty"
รับมอบหมาย, meaning "to be entrusted"
กำหนด, meaning "to specify"
มาโดยตลอด, meaning "always".

Corrections and clarifications are always appreciated.
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Sunday, March 25, 2007

Thai Word of the Week: Consider

My Thai word for this week is พิจารณา, meaning "to consider".

Thai2English.com entry for พิจารณา
VOA sound clip of a sentence using พิจารณา
Transcript of VOA clip
Original complete story on VOA, with transcript and MP3

Note that the transcript can easily be copy-pasted to thai2english.com, obtaining a word-by-word translation.

Other interesting words in this clip are:
ตัดสิน, meaning "to decide"
เท่าใด, meaning "however much"

Corrections and clarifications are always appreciated.

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Sunday, March 18, 2007

No Thai Word This Week

Last week's "word of the week" mp3 was unusually long, and more words were unknown to me than usual. Consequently, I haven't had a chance to assimilate the clip at more than a superficial level. Rather than introducing something new, I'm continuing with last week's clip.

I'm finding systematic study of a news clip to be a pretty good way to build vocabulary. Most of the vocabulary is repeated and reinforced in different contexts as I listen to the daily news.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Thai Word of the Week: Expert

My Thai word for this week is ผู้เชี่ยวชาญ, meaning "expert".

Thai2English.com entry for เชี่ยวชาญ
Thai-language.com entry for ผู้เชี่ยวชาญ
VOA sound clip using ผู้เชี่ยวชาญ
Transcript of VOA clip
Original complete story on VOA, with transcript and mp3


Note that the transcript can easily be copy-pasted to thai2english.com, obtaining a word-by-word translation.

Other interesting words in this clip are:
ด้าน, meaning "field (of study)"
กฎหมาย, meaning "law"
หอสมุด, meaning "library"
แถลง, meaning "to express"
คณะ, meaning "group"
อนุกรรมการ (อะ-นุ-กัม-การ-), meaning "subcommittee"
วุฒิสภา, meaning "senate"
ทัศนะ, meaning "point of view"
ทั่วไป, meaning "general"
แสวงหา (สะ-แหวง-หา-), meaning "to seek"
เกียรติยศ (เกียต-ยศ-), meaning "prestige"
ความรุ่งโรจน์ (ความ-รุ่ง-โรจ-), meaning "glory"
เข้าสู่, meaning "to enter"
ความสูญเสีย, meaning "waste"
การคลัง, meaning "finance"
ชาติ (ชาต-), meaning "nation"
จึง, meaning "therefore"
ป้องกัน, meaning "to defend"
โจม, meaning "to pounce"
อย่างกะทันหัน, meaning "immediately"
ตั้ง, meaning "to start"
ข้อสังเกต, meaning "remark"
ความคลุมเครือ, meaning "ambiguity"
ยาม, meaning "time"
ควร, meaning "should"

Corrections and clarifications are always appreciated.

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Sunday, March 04, 2007

Thai Word of the Week: Historian

My Thai word for this week is นักประวัติศาสตร์ (นัก-ประ-หวัด-ติ-สาด-), meaning "historian".

Thai2English.com entry for นักประวัติศาสตร์
Thai-Language.com entry for ประวัติศาสตร์
VOA sound clip of a sentence using นักประวัติศาสตร์
Transcript of VOA clip
Original story on VOA, with transcript and mp3


The clip paraphrases a historian, who says that the framers of the U.S. constitution intended to assign most of the authority in matters of war to the congress. Note that the transcript can easily be copy-pasted to thai2english.com, obtaining a word-by-word translation.

Other interesting words in this clip are:
บรรดา (บัน-ดา-), meaning "totality"
ก่อ, meaning "to construct"
ร่าง, meaning "draft"
สร้าง, meaning "to create"
รู้เท่า, meaning "to be perceptive"
การณ์, meaning "event"
แน่ชัด, meaning "obvious"
มอบอำนาจ, meaning "to authorize"

Corrections and clarifications are always appreciated.

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Sunday, February 25, 2007

Thai Word of the Week: Signal

My Thai word for this week is ส่งสัญญาณ (ส่ง-สัน-ยาน-), meaning "to signal". Component words are ส่ง, meaning "to send" and สัญญาณ (สัน-ยาน-), meaning "signal".

Thai2English.com entry for ส่งสัญญาณ
Thai-Language.com entry for ส่งสัญญาณ
VOA sound clip of a sentence using ส่งสัญญาณ
Transcript of VOA clip
The original story on VOA, with transcript and mp3

The clip discusses the debate in the U.S. congress over restricting funding for President Bush's unpopular "troop surge" proposal. Note that the transcript can easily be copy-pasted to thai2english.com, obtaining a word-by-word translation.

Other interesting words in this clip are:

คัดค้าน, meaning "to disagree"
ตัดทอน, meaning "to cut off"
ดังกล่าว, meaning "aforementioned"
สื่อ, meaning "to communicate"
ความหมาย, meaning "meaning".
สู้รบ, meaning "to combat"
เหล่า, the classifier for "group"
ปฏิบัติภารกิจ (ปะ-ติ-บัต-พา-ระ-กิด-), meaning "to do one's duty"
อีกต่อไป, meaning "anymore"

Corrections and clarifications are always appreciated.
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Sunday, February 18, 2007

Is Translation Harmful?

Steve Kaufmann recently posted some interesting comments about bilingual dictionaries.

When I use a dictionary it is always a bilingual dictionary. I want to see the meaning in English, or a language that I know well. This creates an immediate link to what I already know. It is only a hint at the meaning of this word. I will need to see the new word many times before I know it. But I need the bilingual dictionary.

For some reason, there are language teachers who insist that bilingual dictionaries are bad and should be avoided...


I personally use bilingual dictionaries, but I think there are certain pitfalls to avoid. The main problem is precisely that a translation is, as Steve puts it, "only a hint". The meaning does not have an exact translation. This is especially true when languages are very different, like English and Thai.

An example is the Thai word ออก, pronounced something like the first syllable of "awkward". It is usually translated as "out" or "exit", but in some phrases, it clearly has a different meaning. For example, the phrase "to think out" (คิดออก) means "to be able to think", "to solve", or "to recall". There is a similar usage in the English expression "to figure something out", but I suspect the similarity is more coincidental than significant.

Steve's comment, "I will need to see the new word many times before I know it" seems astute. Translation can be used to increase comprehension, but repeated exposure to the word in a comprehensible context is necessary to acquire it.

Students at AUA acquire vocabulary by direct experience, without use of translation. I think this is a great method that completely avoids the pitfalls of translation. However, it requires a live teacher that can gauge understanding and tailor presentations to that level.

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Thai Word Of the Week: Oppose

My Thai word for this week is ทัดทาน, meaning "to prohibit", or "to oppose".

VOA sound clip of a sentence using ทัดทาน
Transcript of VOA clip
The original story on VOA, with transcript and mp3

The sound clip discusses the possibility that the U.S. congress may cut off military funding in opposition to President Bush's "troop surge" proposal in Iraq.

Other interesting words in this clip are:
เชื่อ, meaning "to believe in"
เพิ่ม, meaning "to increase"
การระงับ, meaning "suppression" or "discontinuance"

Note that the transcript can easily be copy-pasted to thai2english.com, obtaining a word-by-word translation.

Corrections and clarifications are appreciated.

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Sunday, February 11, 2007

Thai Word of the Week: Authority

My Thai word for this week is อำนาจ, meaning "authority".

Thai2English.com entry for อำนาจ
Thai-Language.com entry for อำนาจ
VOA sound clip of a sentence using อำนาจ
Transcript of VOA clip
The original story on VOA, with transcript and mp3.

The sound clip explains the constitutional balance of power between the U.S. president and congress in matters of war.

Other interesting words in this clip are:

ตาม, meaning "according to"
รัฐธรรมนูญ (รัด-ทะ-ธัม-มะ-นูน-), meaning "constitution"
รัฐสภา (รัด-ทะ-สะ-หภา-),meaning "congress"
ประกาศสงคราม, meaning "to declare war"
อนุมัติ (อะ-นุ-มัต-), meaning "to approve" or "to allow"
ทุน, meaning "fund"
ปฏิบัติการ, (ปะ-ติ-บัต-การ-), meaning "to take action"
ผู้บัญชาการ, meaning "commander in chief"
กองทัพ, meaning "army"
รับผิดชอบ, meaning "to be responsible"
ดำเนินการ, meaning "to carry out" or "to perform"

Note that the transcript can easily be copy-pasted to thai2english.com, obtaining a word-by-word translation.

Corrections or clarifications are always appreciated.

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Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Reading and Writing Thai

People sometimes happen upon this blog searching for resources for reading Thai script. I am no expert, but I would recommend the free lessons at learningthai.com.

http://www.learningthai.com/thai_alphabet.html

The links marked "Thai Reader" are especially good.

Some books teach Thai reading and writing. The AUA books entitled Reading and Writing are the best I've seen, but they are hard to find. They also assume a small core vocabulary and familiarity with the old AUA transliteration system. The book and CD Thai for Beginners by Benjawan Poomsan Becker is a good introduction if you can't find the AUA books or don't have the prerequisites.

To learn Thai script, most people get help from a teacher or a tutor. Some colleges and universities teach Thai reading and writing, and some cities have a Thai Buddhist temple that offers instruction.

Opinions differ about whether it's best to acquire spoken Thai before learning to read and write. On one hand, a student who begins reading right away runs a risk of developing bad habits, like reading with incorrect tones or no tones at all. On the other hand, students who delay reading often substitute some kind of transliteration, which is inefficient and can lead to an undesirable dependency.

When I studied Thai at the University of Oregon, we began by focusing on basic vocabulary. During that time, we used a transliteration system which distinguished all the features of Thai phonemes, such as tone, vowel length, and plain stop consonants. Instruction in basic vocabulary went on for about 8 weeks, then we learned the Thai writing system.

Students in the ALG program at AUA in Bangkok acquire quite a large core vocabulary by pure listening, with no support from a transliteration system, then proceed to learn to read and write. This seems like the best approach, but it's hard to do if you can't attend AUA.

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Sunday, February 04, 2007

Thai Word of the Week: Provoke

My Thai word for this week is กระตุ้น (กระ-ตุ้น-), meaning "to provoke" or "to stimulate".

Thai2English.com entry for กระตุ้น
Thai-Language.com entry for กระตุ้น
VOA sound clip of a sentence using กระตุ้น
Transcript of the sentence
The original story on VOA, with transcript and mp3

The VOA clip is a translation of comments by Celinda Lake, a strategist for the Democratic political party in the United States. It uses กระตุ้น in describing the controversy surrounding the Iraq war. Note that the transcript can easily be copy-pasted to thai2english.com, obtaining a word-by-word translation.

Other interesting words in this clip are:
ต้องการ (ต้อง-กาน-), meaning "to request" or "to demand"
เปลี่ยนแปลง (เปลี่ยน-แปลง-), meaning "to change"
อย่างชัดเจน (หย่าง-ชัด-เจน-) , meaning "clearly"
จน (จน-), meaning "until"
ระทึกใจ (ระ-ทึก-ใจ), meaning "excited".
ระมัดระวัง ( ระ-มัด-ระ-วัง- ), meaning "to be careful"
วิธี (วิ-ธี-) , meaning "means", "way", or "process"
เสียจน (เสีย-จน-), meaning "so much that"

As always, corrections and clarifications are appreciated.

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Thursday, February 01, 2007

Character Encoding

Does the Thai script on this page show up correctly in your browser?

คุณสามารถอ่านประโยคนี้ได้ไหมครับ

If it does not properly render, that can probably be remedied by selecting UTF-8 character encoding.

Internet Explorer 6+:
1. Right click on the page (but not on a link).
2. From the context menu, open the Encoding submenu.
3. Note the current setting, in case you ever need to change it back.
4. Choose Encoding | Unicode (UTF-8).

Firefox 1.5:
1. Open the View Menu.
2. Open the Character Encodings submenu.
3. Note the current setting, in case you ever need to change it back.
4. Choose Character Encodings | More Encodings | Unicode | Unicode (UTF-8).

If you know of any other tips and tricks, please feel free to post them here in a comment.

By the way, this page does not render properly for me if I select a Thai character encoding instead of UTF-8.

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Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Removed

Update 7.23.2010: I'm removing a few posts that are no longer interesting to me. You can reach the homepage here.

Thanks for your interest!

Monday, January 29, 2007

Thai Word of the Week

A couple of the language blogs I follow have recently posted about "overlearning" (see AJ's post and Jeremy's posts). "Overlearning", as I understand it, is reviewing material beyond the point where it is understood, in order to acquire it at a much deeper level. I had not heard of this previously, but it sounds like a good idea.

I want to experiment with posting a weekly vocabulary word to this blog. I'll also post an audio clip and transcript of a sentence from a news broadcast that uses the word. This gives me the chance to overlearn the word by listening intensively to a native speaker saying the word in context. As part of my Thai study for the week, I'll spend at least a cumulative half-hour repeatedly listening to the clip.

By the way, if you have any other references on overlearning itself, I'd be interested to read them.

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Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Taking a Forced Break

Oops.

I dropped my Ipod, and it stopped working. I've tried toggling the hold button and resetting.

It's dead, Jim.

Update: I replaced the busted Ipod, so I'm ready to go again. Be nice to your microelectronics, and they will be nice to you!

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Saturday, January 20, 2007

Is This Heaven? No, It's the Internet

Here are my top nine* reasons the internet rocks as a tool for the study of a second language.

9. Online lessons.

8. Availability of research, theory, and personal accounts about what approaches work best.

7. Online shopping, through which it's possible to acquire media, books, and other items to facilitate study.

6. Support, motivation, and other help from online language forums.

5. Ditto for the blogosphere.

4. Tools like WordLearner.com and Audacity.

3. Online dictionaries.

2. Skype-based language exchanges.

1. Availability of streaming media, mp3s, and text.

*Listing the top 10 reasons would have been more conventional, but I think I have 9 good ones here.

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Friday, January 19, 2007

Thai Websites for Children

My son loves the activities and games at pbskids.org and nickjr.com.

Are there any sites like this for children in Thai or French?

Update: Over on ThailandQA.com, a forum member recommended these sites. I haven't spent much time with them, but they look pretty good.

http://www.ffc.or.th/tales/ (Stories)
http://www.kidsquare.com/story (Flash cartoon)

A friend also suggested these sites:
http://www.freewebs.com/karavathai/kids%20project.htm
http://www.plawan.com/game/



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Thursday, January 18, 2007

KanTalk

AJ mentioned a new language exchange site called KanTalk on his blog. I registered, and it looks pretty good.

http://www.kantalk.com

I've been chatting on Skype once a week with a couple of Thai people I met through Mixxer, which has been great.

I believe the research that shows the benefit of an initial silent period in a second language. More generally, I don't think conversation practice contributes to fluency. Spending time listening is the best way to develop speaking ability.

However, if a student has acquired enough of a language to speak without having to think about it, and conversation is done in a relaxed way, it can build confidence and give a checkpoint for progress. And, of course, conversation is fun. For most of us, it's one of the reasons we study a second language.

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Removed

I'm removing a few posts that are no longer interesting to me. You can reach the homepage here.

Thanks for your interest!

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Experimentation

I have listened to about 91 hours of news at this time. Recent words include "contest" (ประกวด) and "category" (ประเภท).

VOA recently started making mp3s with transcripts available, which makes a huge difference to me. The online dictionary Thai2English has a feature that allows submission of text from an entire document and easily lookup of any word in the document. Together with transcripts from VOA, this makes it very efficient to find and research new words.

Steve Kaufmann was kind enough to comment on a recent post and give some suggestions about building vocabulary and flashcards. I'm experimenting with new approaches, including modified flashcard practice. I emphasize listening over everything else, but I've recently been uploading unfamiliar words from VOA mp3s to the excellent WordLearner website and practicing them there. This really helps my listening and reading comprehension. I then use repeated listening to help "acquire" what I've "learned".

Since I'm looking up more words and practicing them in an unnatural way, I'm breaking the input model slightly more now than I was before. The upside is that my listening comprehension is much better. On balance, I think this approach is a big improvement. I'm still experimenting and changing it quite a lot.

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Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Spelling is Hard

Now that I'm chatting occasionally on instant messenger, I realize how difficult spelling can be. Reading in Thai is very phonetic most of the time, but writing is more difficult. There are often many different choices of letter for a phoneme (like initial ศ, ษ, ศ, final พ, ฟ, ภ, บ, ป, and so on). Words borrowed from other languages can also have a silent letter at the end that's "cancelled out" (as in "คอมพิวเตอร์"). I suppose this is still much easier than English. In English, even the rules for reading are ambiguous.

Usually, my chat partner can tell what I'm trying to spell, but I need to get better at this. Here's what I'm planning. If anyone else has had to learn to spell in a new language, I'd be interested to get advice.

1. Probably the best thing I can do for my spelling is a lot of reading. Eventually, this should provide the necessary intuition for whether a word "looks" right. Unfortunately, my reading is so slow and my vocabulary is still so small that a lot of reading is going to take a lot of time. But I'd like to get faster, so this seems like a good thing to try.

2. There are certain phrases that come up all the time, like "Hello", "Did you eat rice yet?", and "What time is it in Thailand". My name comes up all the time, and the names of the people I chat with come up all the time. For these sorts of words and phrases, I can practice typing them until correct spelling becomes more automatic.

Between these two approaches, I think I'll eventually learn to spell.

Any thoughts?

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Monday, January 08, 2007

Rosetta Stone

The other day, I learned that my local public library has a site license for Rosetta Stone, which allows patrons to use language courses for free through the library's website. This costs about $50 per month if you subscribe individually, so it's a nice discovery.

I had read some critical reviews of Rosetta Stone, but I've been pleasantly surprised. The majority of each lesson is based on comprehensible input. For example, you hear or read a sentence and select a matching picture from four pictures on the page. This is the technique used by Winitz and Reeds in the papers referenced here*. The exercises are well thought-out and fun.

My main disappointment is that the Thai Level I course (the only Thai course that's available) is much too easy for me. I wish I had learned about this resource 8-9 months ago, when I could have benefited more from it.

I agree with some of the criticisms I've read, but they seem pretty minor. For example, it looks like the authors are using the same sentences and pictures for many different courses, so there's little linguistic or cultural specificity to what is presented.

I have been introduced or re-introduced to a few unfamiliar words (such as the word for "skirt" and certain classifiers). The reading practice is also helpful. But unfortunately, I think I found this resource too late to get a lot of mileage out of it.

I'll be interested to try a course sometime for a language I don't know at all, like Spanish or Japanese.

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* Winitz and Reeds' papers:

Winitz, Harris. 1981. A reconsideration of comprehension and production in language training. The comprehension approach to foreign language instruction, ed. by H. Winitz, 101-40. Rowley: Newburry House Publishers.

Winitz, Harris, and Reeds, James A. 1973. Rapid acquisition of a foreign language (German) by the avoidance of speaking. International Review of Applied Linguistics 11.4.295-317.

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Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Best News All Year

This made my day.

I noticed this morning that VOA Thai is now posting mp3s with transcripts on their homepage. The availability of transcripts makes their site one of the best sources of comprehensible Thai input on the internet.

I don't know how long they've been doing this, but it's great. Welcome to 2007!

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