This article was originally posted on WomenLearnThai.com.
AUA’s FREE Thai reading and writing videos…
Here’s a bit of fabulous news for Thai students. You already know about AUA’s Thai class videos being available for free download. Right? Well, David Long just uploaded AUA’s Reading and Writing videos. For free!
David Long: Following the idea of Sal Khan of Khan Academy. They cover the content of our first 2 R&W courses.
AUA: These videos are available for free and include the main content of each class hour. They can be used for review, or as a self-study program. They should be used together with the books below, and if you are not able to attend our classes, you can study on your own and meet on-line with one of our teachers.
The books mentioned are AUA’s Reading and Writing-Text and Reading and Writing-Workbook and can be ordered through AUA or amazon.com/co.uk. The books might be getting long in the tooth but the materials are totally solid. Some Thai teachers and students swear that these two books are the best for learning how to read and write Thai. How’s that?
The videos can be downloaded in either FLV or MP4. To test them out, I uploaded the first four Mp4 files to my iPad via iTunes and dusted off both books.
The first video starts on page 1 in the workbook and the textbook so I skipped past the lessons on transcription (bane of my life) and went straight to the lessons shown in the video.
The real value of the reading and writing videos is that you get to hear the Thai alphabet and vocabulary spoken as it’s being written on the board. Because with Thai being a tonal language, reading from books just isn’t good enough. You need to get the sounds into your head.
What I absolutely love about these videos is that unlike the books, there is NO transliteration. You get the audio explanation in Thai and the Thai in actual script. That’s it. But if you can’t understand Thai you are still covered because the books have the explanations in English.
A personal note: My writing in English is atrocious so you can just imagine what my Thai looks like! Following AUA’s Thai writing workbook, my Thai teacher demanded that I write in perfectly formed TINY Thai. That just wasn’t going to happen. My fingers cramped up and I grew frustrated. So what I’m saying is that while the writing books are wonderful, don’t sweat the small stuff. If tiny Thai grade school script isn’t your style then don’t quit – buy a ruled notebook to use instead. And if you want to see samples of a free-form style of writing Thai, purchase Reading Thai is Fun mentioned in my post The Easy Way for Beginners to Read and Write Thai. Btw, I’ll be rewriting that post to include the wonderful AUA materials…
Seriously, if you are going the self-study route by learning to read and write Thai on your own, or if you are attending AUA’s reading and writing course, then AUA’s Reading and Writing Thai videos will be a boon for you.
Edit: I checked with David and the rest of the videos should be online before the Xmas holidays. So ho ho ho everyone 🙂
Hi Todd. I imagine AUA used to have the complete set but I’ve read that they no longer do. Not sure.
Unless I’m mistaken (which I am frequently) AUA used to have and sell a set of cassette tapes of those lessons.
Someone I talked to a fair while ago had found them on one of those BitTorrent download sites, I dunno as I didn’t look for ’em.
Tod
Hi Todd, I have the entire set as well. Most everyone I know who’s used the books state that they are topnotch. At one point I started recording the lessons (no sound = useless for self study in Thai) but that project faded away when I found lessons with audio. I realise that you can get the sound files for the AUA materials but the cost is horrific.
I bought the entire set from the AUA bookstore at their Ratchadamri Campus when I sat a few mind-numbing hours of their ALG classes, lol. ..
I especially liked the Reading and Writing Books and another one called “Small Talk”; a book which has “substitution based” dialogs of commonly spoken phrases. I’ve recommended them to quite a few people interested in self study.
Once you get used to the “cursive” (handwritten) looking font, which can take some time, the books are not all that difficult to work thru. There was a chapter in one of them which covered what Thais look for as far as character recognition. There is also a part about how to increase the speed of your hand-written Thai by morphing the characters while at the same time keeping the aspects which delineate them when reading. The part in the book which had the same text written by both males and females to show the great amount of character variation in written Thai was interesting too.
I agree, learning to write Thai using the TINY lines they provide in the book is a ‘hand cramping’ exercise in futility (or at least it was for me early on). I went back and used those over-sized ‘trace over’ character sheets that Thai kids use. Slowly I decreased the size of my written ‘font’ and now can write pretty darned small (and mostly readable) Thai.
Although I no longer have the books (lent ‘em to someone who never returned them), if I remember correctly, they have stories like; “Goldilocks & the Three Bears and “The Stubborn Pig”. They are good resources, very inexpensive and even though they’re old, they still contain a wealth of good learning information.
I didn’t know about the videos, but do now, Thanx
Tod
Snap, taking a break from Thai studies can be a good thing (that’s the excuse I use 🙂 If you don’t have the books already, I hope you won’t have any problems getting them to Australia. They cover what’s needed and are absolutely great for brushing up.
Timely information Cat. Stray and I have gone for one month now, without studying our Thai…apart from occasionally speaking it to each other (which can be quite comical and/or frustrating at times).
This morning we did our first, self supervised, lesson together. These AUA videos will come in handy 🙂
Talen, these are really basic videos but what more does one need besides sound + visuals? It’s a wonderful resource!
Cat, this is great! I really need the help with reading and writing and this will definitely be a big help as I can play it over and over if need be.
My classes don’t start again until January and I have been lazy lately regarding my Thai studies.