Women Learning Thai… and some men too ;-)

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Sourcing a Thai language school in Pattaya… On moving to Pattaya one of my first orders of business was to find a decent Thai language school that could fulfill my two main requirements: provide me with a 1 year education visa and be able to teach me to speak Thai competently. While the Education Visa [...]

Learning Thai with Skype language exchange partners… For the past two weeks I’ve been writing about Skype and learning Thai. How to learn Thai via Skype was a brief introduction. I then interviewed my Thai Skype Teacher, Khun Narisa Naropakorn to share how she teaches Thai via Skype. Thai language school Study Thai Online graced [...]

Where to find Skype teachers… Teaching Thai via Skype is a growing industry. And learning languages via Skype is ideal because the students don’t need to be in the same exact location as their teachers. They can reside in the same city (like I do), or live on different continents. Being in different countries means [...]

The magic of learning Thai via Skype… Disclaimer: Having a series about learning Thai via Skype wouldn’t be complete unless I jumped in as well. I know that. But I was a bit leery about sharing my experiences because I didn’t want to swamp Khun Narisa, my Thai Skype teacher. But after hearing that a [...]

Study Thai Online… I am a long-time user of Skype and for many years used Skype-out credit to call friends and relations back in the UK. On the Skype website one day I came across a case study for toniks.com, a UK-based company providing online language lessons using Skype. Some further searching revealed that many [...]

The Polyglot Project: In Their Own Words… I’m a slooooow mover in the mornings. I flop out of bed, stagger stiff-legged and mostly blind to the kitchen, turn on the kettle, and then fix my breakfast while waiting for the water to boil. With pot, cup, and bowl or plate in hand, I point myself [...]

Interviewing a Thai Skype teacher… When I got stuck into the research for this series, the basic benefits of learning Thai via Skype weren’t that difficult to suss. Especially for a hermit such as myself! But as I was fairly clueless about what happens on the other side of the connection, interviewing a Thai Skype [...]

The series: Learning Thai via Skype… Welcome to the first post on learning Thai via Skype. At this point I’m not sure how many posts will be in this series. Originally, I’d planned on just a handful: How to use Skype to learn Thai, my Thai Skype experience, an interview with a Skype teacher, finding [...]

The Teach Yourself Thai Complete draw… again… Well, this is a fun outcome (as well as a fabulous selling point for David Smyth’s new TYT). Last week I wrote a review and announced a draw: Complete Thai: David Smyth Updates Teach Yourself Thai. And I didn’t do it alone, I had help from two fabulous [...]

The Do-Be-Do-Be-Do system of learning Thai tones… (Apologies to Frank Sinatra) If language were like a song, then the vocabulary and grammar of the language would be the words. The vowels, consonants, syllable stress and sentence intonation in English, and the tones in Thai would be the music. You really have to sing both the [...]

The expat woman’s guide to living in Thailand… The Expat Woman’s Guide to Living in Thailand is the only guidebook for foreign women living in Thailand. It is a book based on my experiences with living in Bangkok. What I learned I’d like to pass on to other women (or men) to make their transition [...]

The Teach Yourself Thai Complete draw… Running a draw can be loads of work, so I aimed to keep this one simple. I went to two fabulous bloggers in the Thai language community, Kaewmala (Thai Women Talks) and Ajarn Pasa (Tweet Yourself Thai) and asked for help. Kaewmala threw numbers into a beautifully coloured bowl, [...]

Interviewing Successful Thai Language Learners… Name: Hamish Chalmers Nationality: British Age range: 30-40 Sex: Male  Location: Bangkok Profession: EAL Faculty Head Website/blog: Tweet Yourself Thai Twitter: @AjarnPasa What is your Thai level? In the language world we have two basic benchmarks between no language and full fluency. These are BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills) and CALPs [...]

The mystery of the red boxes… Waiting behind a long line of cars at a stop sign in Ari, I watched two tandem riding motorcycle cops drive onto the sidewalk. One policeman got off the back of the bike, opened a red box attached to a building, took something out, scribbled on it, and then [...]