Thread: Learn to read Thai in a day!

Peter, are you the same guy who tried to flame my system on ThaiVisa and similar forums? You seem to have the same gripes.

It seems that you are already a fairly advanced speaker if you can talk to Thai people over the phone about engineering and architecture and spell out complicated terms, the Thai way.

The point that you seem to have missed is that the Rapid Read Thai system is for people just starting out in Thai who want to become proficient and accurate - and eventually fluent - speakers without spending hundreds of hours in arduous study.

So it really doesn't matter how they learn to read, so long as they can recognize words and sentences and pronounce them correctly.

THE NEXT PHASE is then to build up understanding and fluency. This is done using the independent Everyday Thai for Beginners first year university course as a basis, with a Thai teacher (face to face, or more conveniently via skype). The 'Rapid' approach requires a considerable amount of self-study. So even though you work with a Thai teacher, it's only one hour a week after already having prepared the lesson for an hour the previous day, and then followed by several days of mental imprinting and speech training, by yourself in your own time.

I wonder why some people seem to nitpick about whether it's 16 hours or 40 hours - and whether it's with or without understanding. Surely, it's remarkable enough that in 12-20 hours you will be able to read accurately!?

Just because it'll still be quite slow and without much understanding at this stage isn't an indictment of the method. Most people who attend a conventional read Thai course for 150 hours over 3-4 months don't even reach this level of competence.

It's like learning to drive: after passing the test you know the basics, but you still need to develop a 'road sense' and drive without thinking. That's where Everyday Thai for Beginners comes in. And that's another 6 months of 'study' - but, again, compared to conventional methods, this is equally remarkable.

The idea is to 'study' about 3 hours a week, but in a very different way from what you'd expect. 1: Prepare the lesson by yourself by reading through and trying to understand the text. 2: Spend an hour with your Thai teacher to master the concepts and practice conversational patterns. 3: For the rest of the week, spend about 10-15 minutes a day imprinting the vocabulary in your mind using Anki flash cards and practising the speech patterns verbally in an exaggerated manner (the muscle training aspect of the Rapid Method).

In six months (compared with about two years of lessons, 4 hours a week, in the conventional approach), you should be able to participate comfortably in most everyday conversations dealing with basic everyday subjects like family, food, shopping, travel, etc.

Thank you for your invitation to participate in your investigation of my methods, but I suspect you are just looking for ways to shoot down the system (why you care I don't really know).

Your skepticism and questions are valid, however. Other people may have similar thoughts, which is why I am replying to you. It certainly doesn't seem like you need my approach as you already know Thai rather well. Beginners are welcome to try out the Rapid Method for free and also to sign up for a free 'Starter Course' that will get them reading simple words after receiving 15 mini-lessons daily.

If you want (or need) independent validation of the approach then please read the article published by the Bankok Post. The editor (fluent in Thai) and a native Thai reporter attended my weekend workshop last year. There are other published reviews of my course also, which you can read if you go to my website.

You know what else? Everything I do is guaranteed. I provide 100% refund to students who feel that their expectations weren't met. So far, over the last 5 years, I've refunded two workshop attendees and about five people who felt the online course wasn't for them. That's a pretty good vindication, don't you think?

you sound exactly like atyclb in thaivisa.com.

Nevertheless, it seems that you are primarily an aural learner - you like to hear words being spelled out to you rather than see them written down in print. So maybe this "revolutionary" new approach won't suit you. But I don't understand why you feel compelled to be so cynical, especially as you are plainly a fairly advanced Thai speaker already. You probably don't enjoy reading much either, preferring to chat with people instead, right?

Yes you are perfectly right: one of the failings of the system is that it only works for people who are reasonably fluent in English. I would have to devise a totally new set of pictures for each language. If there was enough demand for a Chinese or Japanese or French version then I'd do it. Saying that, I've had French, German and Italian students attend my courses - and with a bit of tweaking here and there they've managed to get it and still be thrilled with the approach.

Peter, I know how important it is for you to spell words verbally in Thai. I'm not saying it isn't important. In fact, I said very clearly that it is necessary "when you're not sure you've heard a word correctly and need clarification".

The pont that you keep missing - and it's the crux of the 'Rapid' approach - is that for beginning students who are not yet fluent in Thai, it is the easiest and quickest way to learn Thai - without having to spend hundreds of hours in arduous study. It means you can immediately start reading stuff and use this as a basis for building up your understanding of the language.

You are also right in pointing out that the traditional way of learning Thai sucks! It's the main reason why the majority of foreigners don't bother - it's just way too complicated and confusing. Even those who have slogged through several years of Thai lessons still find it baffling and arbitrary. I've had several people attend my course who are already fluent in Thai, but still couldn't get their head around reading it. One day was usually enough for them to "get it" and they went away very happy.

The 'Rapid' system is a temporary scaffolding that disappears after a few months. In the process of learning Thai in the follow up phases, you will learn the meanings of words, some of which are used in naming the Thai letters. These names are only memorable if you already know what they mean - which is why it works for Thai children and not for foreigners.

I do not know how to verbally spell words in German, French, Spanish, Hebrew or Russian. I don't even know all the names of the letters in Thai. Yet I can speak and read and write competently in these languages, despite my ignorance of their respective alphabets. I wouldn't even begin to consider learning the names of all the katakana or kanji characters in Japanese - I just look at them and recognise them on sight. Maybe because I tend to look up words I don't know in a dictionary, rather than ask native speakers how to spell them...

The Rapid Method is obviously not for you. For everyone else:

"Thank you for putting together such a wonderful reading program. I have completed it, and it is really amazing how much you retain using your method of learning. I am very pleased." April Eichholtz (a German student, what do you know!?)